But now that the moment for action had come, she hesitated. To do it that way seemed not quite fair to Caroline. Like stealing a march on her. Really she must see Caroline, and tell her what was up, before she gave away the trick that they had played upon the Gildersleeves and the Conways.
“Not that Caroline won’t be as glad as me to have it over with,” Jacqueline tried to quiet an uneasy something within her. “She must be fed up by this time on that old piano.”
A little path, as narrow as a cat track, ran between the Gildersleeve hedge and the rose tangle that bounded the Trowbridge lawn. Jacqueline knew all about that path, and a few others. She hadn’t come into the village with that born rover, Neil, for nothing. She slipped up this path in the shadows that were cool and dark, and she quickly found the gap in the hedge for which she was looking. She wriggled through it, with some damage to the Peggy Janes (Caroline’s Peggy Janes!) and there she was in the garden, among the flowers that were already half asleep. She peered about her eagerly. If only Caroline would come that way! Then she spied the summer house, and stole to the doorway that gaped beneath the over-hanging vines, and peered in.
The summer house was empty. The tea table was folded up, and the wicker chairs set trimly in place against another day. Under one of the chairs a bit of clear orange color caught Jacqueline’s eye. She pounced upon it, and found it was a little doll-smock of orange, cross-stitched in dark blue. This must belong to Mildred, and no doubt Mildred’s careful little mother (“fussy,” Jacqueline called her) would find it missing and come to look for it. Why, things couldn’t have fallen out better for her!
Jacqueline sat down on the bench that ran round the wall inside the summer house, and waited with what patience she could scare up. She could see a bit of the house through the elms that stood round it—a gleam of white clapboards, that caught the last light of the afterglow, a green shutter, a window like an anxious eye. She wondered if that were the window of the room that should be hers.
Then she saw a little girl in a leaf brown dress come from behind a clump of shrubbery and head toward the summer house, with eyes bent upon the path, as if she looked for something. Caroline, in the name of all that was lucky! Gurgling with mischief, Jacqueline drew back and waited in the shadows that now were quite thick in the summer house. She didn’t have to wait long. Framed in the doorway, Caroline stood before her, dainty in Jacqueline’s leaf brown smock with orange stitching, and Jacqueline’s amber beads, and with a soft sparkle in her face, which came from thoughts of pleasant things that had happened and pleasant things to come.
“Boo!” cried Jacqueline.
Caroline gave a little squeak, and clutched the side of the door.
“Don’t be scared, goose!” bade Jacqueline, stepping forward. “It’s only me.”
Caroline’s pale little hands fluttered to her throat as if she wanted to push off something that choked her.