Caroline nodded the little dark head that was bowed desolately upon her hands.
“Well, then!” said Jacqueline, in an injured tone. “What are you crying about?”
(What, indeed?)
Caroline lifted her face and smeared her eyes with her hands.
“When—when shall we—change?” she faltered.
“Now,” said Jacqueline bluntly.
Then Jacqueline remembered something that all her life she had wanted to forget—the look in the eyes of Aunt Edie’s little lap dog, when she had struck him. Of course Jacqueline had been just a tiny thing—only four years old. It was right after her father died. And she had been jealous of the wee dog, because he had sat on Aunt Edie’s knee sometimes when she wanted that place herself. So one day when she found him alone and he turned to her for a caress, she had slapped him—hard. She gave him sugar afterward, and the cushions from her best doll-buggy, and velvet-soft caresses, and tears of penitence. But she had never forgotten the look in his eyes when she struck him, and she saw that look now in the tear-drenched eyes that Caroline turned upon her.
“Oh, Jackie! No! Not now!”
“Well, I’ll be dished,” said Jacqueline. The words don’t do justice to the disgust in her tone. There was no doubt that she did hate a quitter!
But Caroline was past heeding even Jacqueline’s scorn.