Aunt Eunice looked at the glowing little face of her companion.
“You’d like to go to Italy, Jacqueline?”
Caroline nodded.
“I want to ride in a gondola on a blue lagoon,” she said, “and see the Alpine glow, and a castle on the Rhine, and walk in those streets of old ancient houses in Paris where Notre Dame is that you tell about.”
Aunt Eunice paid close attention to her stitches.
“Of course,” she said, after a pause, “you’ll go abroad some day soon with your Aunt Edith.”
Caroline gave a quick little sigh. Oh, if only she need not be made to remember, every now and then, that she was not—could not be—Jacqueline!
“I suppose perhaps I shall,” she said, since she must say something.
To herself Aunt Eunice said indignantly that it was clear enough that Edith Delane had starved the soul of this sensitive, beauty-loving child.
“If only I could show her Venice!” thought Aunt Eunice, and then, in her turn, she gave a quick little sigh. She had waited ten years to have Jack’s little daughter with her for a summer. She might have to wait another ten years, before the boon was granted her a second time. In ten years more Aunt Eunice would be eighty-one. Too old for long journeys. No use for her to plan!