She rose, and with a lofty air, patterned on what she thought Uncle Jimmie would do in similar circumstances, she strode toward the gap in the hedge. Honestly she tried to whistle as she went. But just as she reached the gap, Caroline came pattering out of the dusk and clutched her.
“Now don’t go and begin all over again!” Jacqueline scolded.
“Please, Jackie!” Caroline’s teeth fairly chattered. “I shan’t let you—it isn’t fair—it’s your party really—it’s you Cousin Penelope meant it for—and I—I didn’t tell you all about it. I was afraid you couldn’t give it up—if I told you everything. There’ll be little satin boxes of candy on the table, one for each of us—and darling little dolls, with baskets of nuts—one apiece—to keep—and birds that hold the place-cards—and oh, Jackie, a pie full of presents! You pull a string, each of you, and then——”
“Oh, g’on!” said Jacqueline. “A Jack Horner Pie. I’m fed up on ’em—had ’em since I was knee-high to a hopper toad.”
“Oh!” gasped Caroline, softly, incredulously.
All in a minute, a self-revealing minute such as she had seldom known, there flooded over Jacqueline the realization of all that she had had and taken for granted—all that this other little girl had never known, and valued all the more. She was not angry with Caroline any longer. She felt that she was sorrier for her than she had ever been for anybody, and then suddenly she knew that she loved Caroline, poor, little, sobbing Caroline, whom she had it in her power to lift into a heaven of happiness.
“Don’t go and eat too much at your old party,” Jacqueline bade gruffly. “Now don’t hang on to me like that. I gotta go. And I guess I won’t come back for quite a while.”
“But to-morrow——” Caroline hesitated. A hope that she was ashamed of trembled in her voice.
“I was fooling when I said we’d swap,” snapped Jacqueline. “I’m not coming to-morrow. I’m not coming near this mean old place till I have to. You hear me? I like it at the farm. I’m going to stay there till Aunt Edie comes, if she doesn’t come till next Christmas. And you can just stay here till you’re dead sick of it—the old piano—and starched people—and prunes and prisms and——”
“Oh, oh! Do you mean that?” Caroline’s cry was sheer rapture. “But I couldn’t let——”