“Hush, hush!” warned Aunt Eunice.
Caroline took out her handkerchief (Jacqueline’s handkerchief!) and wiped her eyes.
“Jacqueline, dear,” said Cousin Penelope awkwardly. She moved closer to Caroline and actually put her hand on her shoulder. “I wasn’t angry with you. I was thinking of something else, if I spoke sharply.”
“Must I go to the dentist?” persisted Caroline.
“But we’ll do more than go to the dentist,” urged Cousin Penelope. “Listen, dear, we’ll go shopping. We’ll buy all the things for the party I promised you—invitations, and favors, and prizes. We’ll select the candies and the ices. Why, we’ll plan the whole party on this trip, and shop for it.”
Caroline looked at her, with wet eyes. One word of the truth, and she would save herself from being dentistried under false pretenses. But she would say farewell to the piano, and Madame Woleski, and the party. Caroline was going on eleven, and she had never had a party.
“I d-don’t mind the dentist,” she assured Cousin Penelope, with a watery smile. “You’re very good about the party. I shall love to go to Boston with you.”
Cousin Penelope smiled at Aunt Eunice, who smiled back. They wouldn’t have admitted, even to their own consciences, that they smiled a little for triumph over Edith Delane, as well as for pleasure at the pleasure they gave the supposed Jacqueline. And Caroline smiled to herself, as she dried her eyes, because she thought of her party. Mildred, you see, with her fixed, calm smile was the only one of the four who knew the situation upside down and inside out and roundabout, and who was able therefore to smile tolerantly and perhaps a little compassionately at them all.
CHAPTER XVIII
OVER THE DARNING BASKET
On that fine summer afternoon, neither too hot nor too cold but just right, when Caroline sewed her silken seam and dreamed of foreign lands, Jacqueline sat in the shabby hammock in the Conways’ scuffed-up side-yard, and darned stockings.