She called back the last words from the kitchen doorway, and next moment she was out in the yard, headed for the road, and running, as if for her very life, to the Gildersleeve place, and the Gildersleeve relations, and the identity of Jacqueline that now, with all her heart, she wanted to get back again.
CHAPTER XX
ACCORDING TO AGREEMENT
By the time that Jacqueline had had her cry out, she was nearly a mile on her way to Longmeadow Street. Her eyes were smarting, and her nose was sore, and her throat felt hot like a furnace. When she came to the boundary brook between Kaplinsky’s lease and Deacon Whitcomb’s field, she was glad to stop and bathe her face and quiet the jumping pulses in her wrists with cool water. She smoothed her hair, too, with her wet fingers, and she even took off her shabby sneakers and washed her dusty feet and ankles. After all, she didn’t want to arrive at the Gildersleeve place looking worse than she had to.
Now that she was refreshed, she trudged on more slowly. She realized that she was tired out with the wild pace at which she had run, and with the scene in Aunt Martha’s dining room, which she winced to remember. Wasn’t she thankful that she really wasn’t Caroline, and that she needn’t ever go back to the Conway farm? How could she have faced them—Aunt Martha, and Neil, and Grandma? Poor Grandma, whose precious cups she had broken!
Again the tears started to Jacqueline’s eyes. She brushed them angrily away. She didn’t need to cry. Wasn’t she going to send Grandma some new cups—the thinnest cups she could buy in Boston—a dozen cups—a whole dinner set? That would make everything all right again.
By the time she came in sight of the first outlying houses of the village, she had added to the dinner set for Grandma an embroidered cap for Annie, a doll with real hair for Nellie, a belt with a silver buckle for Ralph, a camera for Dickie, and a choo-choo train for Freddie.
With great effort, as she entered the village, she finally added to the collection a big, soft, luscious rug for Aunt Martha’s car, and a magic-lantern for Neil—not one of the little dinky toys that get out of order, but the real thing.
When the people at the farm got all those gifts, she rather guessed they’d change their minds about her. Perhaps they’d be sorry then that they hadn’t been more considerate. How they would regret her—and admire her! Maybe she’d go out there once more—just once more—in her wine-colored jumper dress that she liked, and take a big box of sweets to the children. She fairly swelled out her chest, in her dusty Peggy Janes, as she pictured herself playing Lady Bountiful. But when she thought of Grandma, her chest flattened again, just like a toy balloon when you prick it and the air runs out. Oh, she did want to get that dinner set right away! Her eyes filled every time when she thought of Grandma, sitting down to supper, and drinking her tea patiently from the thick, ugly, crockery cup.
The sun had just dipped behind the western hills across the river, when Jacqueline came to a halt outside the box-hedge that enclosed the Gildersleeve place. She had thought all along that she would walk right up to the front door, and knock, and ask for Mrs. Gildersleeve, and simply say to her:
“Aunt Eunice, I am Jacqueline. Call the little girl who’s staying here, and she’ll tell you it’s just so.”