“Y-yes,” she stammered. “H-hello, Jackie.”
That was all Caroline said. She didn’t help Jacqueline one bit, though she must have known that Jacqueline hadn’t come there simply to say: “Hello!” She just clung to the side of the door and stared like somebody who expects to be hit.
“I’m not a ghost,” said Jacqueline, impatiently. “Don’t look at me like that. I just came over to say I’ve had enough of the farm, and if you don’t mind, we’ll swap back.”
Caroline nodded.
“Yes,” she agreed, in a dry little whisper. “All r-right, Jackie.” Then she slid into the seat by the door, just as if her legs had folded up under her, and she hid her face in her hands and began to cry.
CHAPTER XXI
AN HOUR TO TRY THE SOUL
What do you suppose Prince Edward would have done, if Tom Canty hadn’t wished to be Tom Canty any more? Suppose that Tom, instead of being a well-mannered little English boy, willing to keep his proper station, had cried out at the mere thought of going back to the foulness and cruelty of Offal Court, and insisted, not unnaturally, perhaps, that he preferred to be comfortable in a palace?
Jacqueline had never thought of this possibility, when she read “The Prince and the Pauper,” nor when she tried to translate the story into modern terms. But she faced it now in deep dismay, as she looked at Caroline, sobbing her heart out, there in the dusk of the summer house.
For a moment Jacqueline shifted her weight from one foot to the other, and hardly knew what to do. But she was not in the habit of being turned from a purpose, once her mind was made up, and her mind was very much made up to sleep that night at the Gildersleeve place. So down she sat beside the weeping Caroline, and laid a hard little sunburnt hand upon her shoulder.
“Don’t be a baby, Carol,” she said, quite fiercely, because she didn’t want to let herself pity Caroline. “You know you said you’d change, the minute I wanted to.”