Perhaps her honest protest would have moved Jacqueline to recall the promise she had so rashly made. But just at that moment a clear, imperious voice called: “Jacqueline!” and when both little girls pivoted at that name, they saw a figure, in soft white summer clothes, come into the dusky garden. It was Cousin Penelope, and by the way in which she headed straight down the path toward the spot where they stood, they knew that she had spied them.
CHAPTER XXII
PENELOPE TAKES ALARM
Like the hero of the old music hall song, Jacqueline felt that “now was the time for disappearing.” I wish I could say to her credit that she fled, simply because she was afraid that if she came face to face with Cousin Penelope, she would be tempted beyond her strength and withdraw the promise she had so impulsively made to Caroline. As a matter of fact, I suspect that she ran away, because she had had enough drama with Aunt Martha and Caroline to satisfy even her drama-loving soul for at least one day. At any rate, she dove out of the garden through the narrow gap in the hedge, like a scared and nimble rabbit, and Caroline was left to face alone the onslaught of Cousin Penelope.
Of course Caroline ought to have been just as noble as Jacqueline. She ought to have called Jacqueline back, and presented her to Cousin Penelope as her really, truly little kinswoman, and then for her own part subsided gracefully into the company of the cows and the awful boy-cousins, just as Tom Canty was willing to go back to rags and dirt and misery.
But Caroline thought of the party, and the darling little doll-favors. Sweet little Watteau gowns they wore, of figured silk, with their powdered hair piled high and topped with wee, beribboned hats of straw that would have turned a fairy green with envy. Caroline thought, too, of the look that would come into Cousin Penelope’s pale, stern face, when she knew that it was upon a little cheat that she had wasted kindness, and music lessons, and dentistry! No, Caroline hadn’t the courage to tell the truth. She just stood there, dumb and trembling, while Cousin Penelope bore down upon her.
“Jacqueline!” Cousin Penelope’s voice, as she spoke to Caroline, was sharp with what an older person would have recognized as anxiety. “Who was that child you were talking with?”
Mercy, what a chance to tell the truth—the whole dramatic truth—in a dramatic manner! But Caroline, like Jacqueline on several occasions, told half a truth which, like many a half-truth, was as deceptive as a good, big whopper.
“A—a little girl,” she stammered. “She lives down in the Meadows.”
Through the dusk she could almost feel Cousin Penelope bristle, like a lady-dog when rough strangers come too near her precious young.
“That bold, forward Conway child? Of all the audacity! What brought her prowling into our garden?”