It was thoroughly wrong, the deception that Jacqueline had suggested. She knew it was wrong, but she didn’t care. As for Caroline, her mind was such a jumble of cows and boys and fierce half-aunts (so much more ogreish in suggestion than whole aunts!) and an Institution, looming in the background, that she hardly knew right from wrong.

Only as she followed Jacqueline’s example and began to unfasten her rumpled frock, she mustered the spirit to falter:

“But they’ll find out right away——”

“No, they won’t, unless you’re a silly.”

“But some day your Aunt Edith who knows you will come——”

“Not before September,” said Jacqueline cheerily, “and by that time summer will be over, and we’ll have had our fun. Think of the piano!”

“Oh, I don’t know what to do!” wailed Caroline. She was a shivering little figure, barelegged, in her underclothes, with her soiled and mussed checked gingham in a heap at her feet.

“Now you do as I tell you,” counseled Jacqueline in her most masterful manner. “Why, Caroline, it’s nothing but a joke, and just the minute you want to, we’ll change back. Be a good sport now! Come on!” When Jacqueline smiled she was irresistible. She smiled now. Caroline wavered.

“If you don’t,” said Jacqueline sweetly, “you’re a quitter, and I’ll never speak to you again.”

To lose Jacqueline, the one friend she had in this new world into which she was being cast, was more than Caroline could bear.

“I’m not a quitter,” she vowed. “I’ll show you. Wait till I get out some clothes.”

The big shabby much-traveled suitcase that was Caroline’s, and the smart black leather case that was Jacqueline’s, alike held fresh changes of clothes. In these the little girls dressed themselves from the skin out. Caroline gasped a little at the silk socks, the delicate undergarments, the knickers and the frock of henna-colored crÊpe in which she rather guiltily encased herself. Jacqueline tumbled gleefully into cotton socks, much-mended plain cotton underwear, and a fresh frock of brown and white gingham, with a big patch in the back breadth.

“I’m bigger than you,” she chuckled. “These clothes look awful skimpy on me. I’ll tell your half-aunt that I shot up last winter. I did really, so it isn’t a fib.”

“Your clothes look—nice on me,” said Caroline, as she caught a glimpse in the mirror of the strange child into which she had turned herself. “They fit me.”

“That’s because they’re short for me,” Jacqueline told her. “Aunt Edie has ’em made that way—it’s the smartest thing, this year. She’d think you looked dowdy with your skirt way down to your knees, but probably Great-aunt Eunice won’t mind.”

In a businesslike way she restrapped the black leather suitcase.

“That’s yours now, remember,” she told Caroline, “and the hatbox, and the black hat, and the coat, and my watch here,—don’t forget to wind it!—and those two books, and the vanity bag. Hang on to it! The check for my trunk—your trunk it will be now—and the key to it are there in the little purse.”

“But there’s money in it, too,” protested Caroline. “Oh, Jackie, I can’t take your money.”

“You won’t take much of it,” Jacqueline assured her. “I shall slip three dollars to the porter, and tell him not to give us away.”

Caroline looked at her admiringly. She hadn’t thought of the porter. She felt quite sure that if ever a woman became president of the United States, as she had heard was now possible, Jacqueline would be that woman.

“Now sit down,” bade Jacqueline, and poked Caroline into a seat. “We’re only half an hour from Baring Junction——”

“Oh!” Caroline softly squeaked.

“Don’t oh! We’ve got to get things straight because they may ask questions. Now your father was John Gildersleeve——”

“No, he wasn’t!” protested Caroline.

“You ninny! Don’t you see—you’re me now—Jacqueline Gildersleeve. Your father was John Gildersleeve. He was born and brought up in Longmeadow, and he and Cousin Penelope went to school together. By and by he grew up, and his father and mother died, and he went out to California. He was in the oil business. My mother—I mean, she’s your mother now—was Marion Delane. Her father had a big ranch, with horses and things, and Aunt Edith is her sister. And she died—not Aunt Edith, but my mother that you must call your mother—when my baby brother came, and he died, too, and my father was killed the next autumn in the oil fields. I’ve lived with Aunt Edith ever since, and our place is called Buena Vista—that’s Spanish for Fair View—and first I had governesses, but last year I went to boarding school. Aunt Edith married my new uncle Jimmie Knowlton on the fifth day of June. He’s Colonel Knowlton—he was in the air service—and he took me up twice in his plane, and we did a tailspin—oh, boy! He’s some uncle. But they didn’t want me on their honeymoon—they’ve gone to Alaska—that’s why I’m going to Great-aunt Eunice. She’s wanted me to spend a summer with her for years and years. I don’t believe she likes Aunt Edith much.”

Jacqueline paused at last for breath, and fixed her eyes on the trembling Caroline.

“Can you remember all that?” she asked sternly.

“I—I guess so,” Caroline answered dubiously.

“You’ll be all right,” Jacqueline encouraged. “Aunt Edie hardly ever wrote letters to Great-aunt Eunice, so she doesn’t really know much about us. Now see if I remember what I’ve got to know. I’m you now—Caroline Tait. My father was Henry Tait, and he was born in Longmeadow, and he came to Chicago years ago and was on a newspaper when he died. And he met my mother out there, and her name was Frances Meade, and she was a music teacher, and none of the Longmeadow folks ever saw her. And I’ve been living with her cousin, Delia Meade, and I’m going to my father’s half-sister, and her name is Martha Conway. Is that all right?”

“Yes,” Caroline nodded, “but oh! I’ve just thought. Won’t we have to write letters back to your Aunt Edith and my Cousin Delia—and they’ll see that the handwriting isn’t ours?”

For as much as half a second, Jacqueline hesitated. Then she rose to the occasion.

“I’ve got two post-cards shut up in my Robin Hood book. Quick! Write to your Cousin Delia on this one that you’ve got safe to Baring Junction, and your half-aunt met you and is very nice.”

“But I don’t know if she is!” protested truthful Caroline.

“You’ve got to take chances sometimes,” Jacqueline silenced her. “Hurry up and write, and I’ll write one, too, to my Aunt Edie.”

Hastily and in pencil the post-cards were written. From a recess in the vanity bag Jacqueline dug out two stamps, the worse for wear but still stickable. These she fixed upon the cards.

“The porter’ll post ’em,” she said. “That’ll satisfy your Cousin Delia and my Aunt Edie—and we’ve simply got to get out of writing them any more letters, somehow.”

Then the black porter hammered at the door, and Jacqueline bade him enter, and in her lordly manner permitted him to brush her off.

“Ain’ yo’ done mix yo’ clothes up, Missy?” he asked with interest.

Caroline quaked. Jacqueline merely dimpled.

“Of course we have,” she said. “We’re going to put something over on our relations. You see, I know her folks just like she knows mine.”

(Which was true in the letter, but not in the spirit. Jacqueline might as well have told a fib and been done with it.)

The porter seemed to hesitate.

“It will be all right,” Jacqueline told him loftily. “Here’s something for you. Take off that young lady and her luggage as soon as the train stops. I’ll look out for myself.”

So sure of herself she was that the porter, like Caroline, was put to silence. He pocketed the money that she gave him, chuckled, muttered that she was “de beatermost,” and went his way.

“We’ll be there in five minutes now,” said Jacqueline. “Put on this hat. Here, give me yours. Take the books. Give me the doll.”

“Oh, no!” cried Caroline, and clasped Mildred to her.

“But look here,” said Jacqueline, “I’m you and the doll is yours, so I’ve got to have her.”

“Oh, I can’t—I can’t!” cried Caroline. “Not Mildred! Don’t you see? Daddy gave her to me—the Christmas before he died—and Muzzy made all her clothes—I can’t give her up, Jackie—not even to you—she’d be homesick.”

“Now stop it!” commanded Jacqueline. “I don’t want your silly old doll! Take her along with you. It won’t give us away.”

“But her clothes—they’re in my suitcase—your suitcase—”

Already Jacqueline was tearing open the shabby suitcase.

“You shan’t gum the show now,” she panted. “We’d look like—like a couple of boobs. Here are the clothes. Take ’em, quick!”

“I can’t get your suitcase open,” chittered Caroline.

The train was slowing down for Baring Junction. Moments counted. Jacqueline seized the nearly emptied satin candy box and crammed its remaining contents into the pockets of the brown and white gingham that she wore.

“I told you her clothes would go into the candy box,” she said as she hastily crushed Mildred’s wardrobe into the satin receptacle. “Take it quick—here’s the porter—I’ll strap the suitcase.”

“Oh, Jackie!” Caroline turned wildly to her friend, like a frightened kitten that doesn’t know which way to run.

“Wipe your eyes, kid, and don’t weaken!” bade Jacqueline stoutly. “Porter, take the books, too—her hands are full. Beat it now, Carol! Ask for Mrs. Eunice Gildersleeve and don’t forget there’s sure to be a piano!”