“Well, I don’t know,” said Maggie, unwilling to give up her cherished plan; “maybe she won’t think about sour things, and I’m sure she’d be very thankful when she’s seasick, and finds an unexpected pickle just on hand.”
“I think she’ll like it just as well if she knows about it before,” said Bessie. “And I don’t believe it is quite right; and, besides, it is such a very bad-smelling secret to have. Tell her, and see what she will say.”
But even as they were talking, they found that the “bad-smelling secret” had betrayed itself; for nurse, going to finish the packing of the trunk where the pickles were concealed, also perceived the scent of vinegar.
“What have you been putting in here that smells so of vinegar?” she said to Jane.
“Nothing,” was the answer. “I’ve had no vinegar.”
“But it’s here, surely,” said nurse, sniffing around in her turn: “it’s about this trunk, spilled on something I suppose: that’s some of your carelessness, Jane.” And Mammy, who was rather apt to snub her younger helpmate, lifted several articles in turn to her nose.
“Oh dear! I’ll have to tell: she’s scolding poor Janey for it,” whispered Maggie, in great dismay.
“What’s this?” exclaimed nurse, when, having pulled out half a dozen things, she came upon the tiny tureen. “Pickles! and the vinegar dribbled out of them on the master’s clean shirts. Well! that naughty Frankie! he’s gone beyond himself in such a trick as that. He’s been busy with your doll’s china, Maggie, my honey; but where in the world did he lay his mischievous hands on pickles? I’ll just speak my mind to Patrick for leaving them in the child’s reach. Pickles indeed! but he’s a pickle!”
This was too much for Maggie. She could not hear her little brother and Patrick blamed, and she spoke out at once.
“It was not Frankie who put them there,” she said: “it was I, and I want them to stay there.”