When Caroline woke in the morning, she was surprised to find herself still in the green and golden room with the bookshelves. She had rather expected to find that the house with the dim, cool rooms, and the songful piano, the white and nickel bath and the ladies (not her relatives!) who were so kind and friendly, were all alike the fancies of a dream, and that she was back in Cousin Delia’s close little stuffy house, with the smell of frizzled breakfast ham wafting up from the kitchen, and the eldest baby clamoring to be dressed at once.

But the room, she found, was real, and the bath was real. She could almost believe that she was really Jacqueline. She only wished she were!

She dressed herself in the henna-colored frock, and she dressed Mildred very carefully, in a little white muslin with pink sprays, most becoming to Mildred’s blond beauty. Then she opened her bed to air, and sat down by the window, where she could watch the mountain. In the morning light it was quite different from the mountain of yesterday afternoon. The green of the trees and the red of the exposed sandstone were very sharp in the strong sunlight, and gave the huge pile a spick and span look, as if it had made itself fine for the summer day.

She had put on the little watch which was Jacqueline’s, though it seemed almost too nice to wear every day, and the little watch said that it was half past eight, when there came a knock at the door. Caroline flew to open it, and there stood Aunt Eunice, in a cool gray and white lawn.

“Good morning, Aunt Eunice!” cried Caroline. “Oh, how nice you look!”

She reflected then that perhaps she shouldn’t have said anything so personal, but Aunt Eunice didn’t at all mind. Instead she smiled one of her shining smiles, and there even came a little fleck of pink into her soft old cheeks. She bent to kiss Caroline, and suddenly, because she just couldn’t help it, Caroline put her arms round Aunt Eunice and hugged her, and Aunt Eunice hugged her back. You don’t know how good that seemed to Caroline. There had been no one to hug her since her mother died. Cousin Delia was a very busy woman, and then, too, alongside the four babies, Caroline doubtless seemed to her quite grown up, and too old to need cuddling.

Hand in hand Aunt Eunice and Caroline went down the long curved stair and through the stately hall into the dining room. Cousin Penelope was already there and the glass coffee machine, which Caroline found as fascinating as any mechanical toy, was distilling an amber-hued, fragrant liquid. They sat down at once to another of those well-ordered meals that filled Caroline with amazement—almost with awe. She hadn’t known that food could be so good.

There were great red strawberries, which still wore their green elf caps, and little glass dishes of powdered sugar, into which you dipped the berries daintily, after a swift glance to see how Cousin Penelope did it. Then there were bowls of crisp cereal, with rich cream, and bacon, so thin and so deftly cooked that it crumbled into savory slivers under your fork. There were thin slices of brown toast, piping hot, and there were wee muffins of bran, which came to the table in a silver dish, wrapped cozily in a fine white napkin. There were little balls of fresh butter, and in a bewitching jar, shaped like a beehive, there was strained honey. All the milk to drink, too, that one could want. And would Jacqueline like an egg for her breakfast?

“Thank you, no, please,” murmured Jacqueline’s understudy, and then, remembering the cold egg that she had lately eaten from the shoe box, she added: “I—I’m not extra fond of eggs.”

“Neither am I,” Cousin Penelope said heartily.

Funny, thought Caroline, that Cousin Penelope should be so pleased at every resemblance between them, but very nice of her. In time she thought she should like Cousin Penelope, though never so much as she loved Aunt Eunice.

After breakfast Aunt Eunice asked Caroline to come walk with her in the garden, and said, yes, she could bring Mildred. So Mildred, in her pink-sprayed frock and white bonnet, and Aunt Eunice and Caroline walked soberly in the shadiest parts of the garden. Aunt Eunice wore a broad hat, tied under her chin with wide streamers of lawn. She paused once to give directions to Frank, who was gardener as well as chauffeur, and much more human in khaki overalls than Caroline had thought him the day before in his imposing uniform.

Aunt Eunice showed Caroline all the special beauties of the garden—her new rosebushes and her old thrifty plot of perennials, the pear trees that later would furnish them fruit more delicious, Aunt Eunice believed, than any they could buy in the shops, and the row of gooseberry bushes, where the berries already were setting in tiny, reddish furry blobs.

At the farther side of the garden they sat down in a little rustic summer house, covered with woodbine. Caroline gazed with all her eyes at the scene before her—the garden with its bright flowers of early summer, blues and pinks and strong yellows, and its fruit trees, with gray-lined leaves of glossy green, its smooth white walks and dark edges of box, and beyond the garden the old white house, with its clustered chimnies, the elms that shaded it, the mountain far beyond, the blue sky over all. She thought it as breathlessly, chokingly lovely in its color and clear outline as the loveliest of the pictures in her room.

But Aunt Eunice looked nearer home. She took up Mildred, and carefully examined her clothes.

“What delicate fine stitches!” she said. “Did you make this dress yourself, Jacqueline?”

“No, Aunt Eunice. I can’t sew as well as that.” Indeed, thought Caroline with pride, not many people could sew as nicely as her mother, who had made that precious wardrobe of Mildred’s, every stitch.

“Do you like to sew?” went on Aunt Eunice, with a little, mysterious smile.

“Oh, yes,” said Caroline, truthfully.

There had been long hours in her life, when school was over and Mother away giving music lessons, when she must either run the streets or amuse herself in their room. Mother had beguiled her with handiwork to choose the room, and not the street. Caroline sewed really rather better than most little girls of her age, and she liked to sew. She wished that Aunt Eunice could see the pair of rompers she had made, all alone, for Cousin Delia’s youngest baby.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Aunt Eunice. “I’ll get out some pretty silk pieces, and you and I will make this dolly some new dresses. It’s years and years since I’ve had a doll to sew for. Would you like that, Jacqueline?”

Caroline smiled and patted Aunt Eunice’s plump white hand.

“I’d just love it, Aunt Eunice. Can we begin to-day? I don’t want to lose any time.”

Indeed she didn’t, the poor little impostor! She wanted to squeeze all that she could into every moment that she passed in this dream-house. For the moments, as she knew, might already be numbered.

But there was no doll’s dressmaking that morning, for just then Sallie came briskly through the garden with a message. Miss Jacqueline’s trunk had been sent up, and Miss Penelope wished her to come at once and see about unpacking.

Up in the golden green room, all fresh and ordered for the day, Caroline looked helplessly at the big trunk that was Jacqueline’s. When she had got the key from Jacqueline’s vanity bag, and Sallie had opened the trunk, and she saw that it opened like a closet, and glimpsed the frocks all hung on frames, she looked more helpless still. She was thankful when Cousin Penelope took charge of things.

“Sit down, Jacqueline,” Cousin Penelope bade with decision. “Sallie will unpack, and I’ll look things over. It’s the quickest way for me to find out what you have and what you haven’t, and if you are like most children, I shall need to know.”

So Caroline sat down in the rocker, with Mildred on her knee, and in an aloof, cool manner watched the taking out of what seemed to her the princess-like wardrobe that had been wished upon her. There were frocks of organdie and crÊpe de chine, of muslin and fine gingham. There were jumpers of tricotine and of jersey, and delicate little frilled blouses of silk. (Privately Caroline wondered where the everyday frocks could be!) There were a dozen pairs of shoes and slippers and boots and sandals, all on nice little beribboned trees. There were little coats and sweaters of many colors and all sorts of texture. There were stacks of filmy undergarments, and lapsful of silken socks. There were garters and hair-ribbons and handkerchiefs and silk gloves. There was a lovely little blue leather writing-case, and a jewel-case, and a camera.

Everything in the trunk Caroline, sitting gravely silent, admired with all her heart, except the riding suit. When she saw the little white breeches and the sleeveless brown coat unfolded, her heart sank within her.

“Oh, Cousin Penelope!” she cried in despair. “Have I got to ride horseback?”

She was almost in tears. She had never been on a horse in her life. If they put her on one, they’d know in a minute she wasn’t Jacqueline, and the piano and the Polish lady would be lost to her forever.

Cousin Penelope came to her side. For the first time Caroline saw her protective and almost tender. She understood it all, did Penelope. That horsy Amazon, Edith Delane, had forced that sensitive, timid little girl, who was all Gildersleeve, as any one could see, into riding horseback and doing the athletic feats to which the Delane woman had referred in her letters. Well, the Delane woman was hundreds of miles away, and Penelope was here in charge.

“We arranged for a saddle-horse, as your aunt wished,” she told Caroline. “But you are not going to ride at all, my dear, unless you wish to.”

So the horrid specter of a ramping steed was laid at rest, and Caroline went happily through the hours of the day that was brimful of wonders. She played for an hour on the piano. She ate a luncheon that seemed to her grander than most dinners. Then she sat with Aunt Eunice in Aunt Eunice’s room, which was furnished with old dark pieces of polished wood, with glass knobs on the drawers. Aunt Eunice had the dearest of work tables, all unexpected drawers and cubbies, and she had a piecebox full of pretties that she could turn into trifles for bazaars—bits of silk and satin, velvet and brocade, quarter-yards of wide figured ribbon, bits of lace and silver tissue, flowers of silk.

Together Aunt Eunice and Caroline planned a sumptuous party frock for Mildred, and they even cut it out and gave her a first fitting, which Mildred endured with more patience than some young ladies display on such occasions.

They did not get beyond the fitting, though, for Cousin Penelope came strolling in, to say that Jacqueline had better dress now. They must be going along to Madame Woleski’s.

“Just stop at Miss Crevey’s, will you, and get me some thread,” bade Aunt Eunice. “I shall need eighty cotton and a spool of sixty, if Jacqueline and I are going into the dressmaking business.”

It seemed to Caroline hardly necessary to change her frock. She thought the henna-colored crÊpe good enough for almost any occasion. But of course she did not argue with Cousin Penelope. She was terribly afraid lest she might make herself too fine, but she took Cousin Penelope as a guide, just as she did at the table, and she decided that if Cousin Penelope wore a cool muslin, she would wear muslin, too. So she put on a pretty muslin, with small yellow roses on a white ground and yellow flowers of organdie at the ribbon girdle. Her socks were of white silk and her sandals of white kid. From the hatbox she selected a white leghorn, with stalks of yellow wheat and some wee blue flowers round the crown.

She was in two minds about opening the jewel-case. She had the key in Jacqueline’s vanity bag, tied fast to the trunk key, but it seemed rather horrid to make free with Jacqueline’s jewelry. Still if she didn’t wear any, people might suspect she wasn’t Jacqueline. So she unlocked the leather case, and marveled at all the pretty pins and chains that she found laid in the little velvet lined drawers. She selected a chain of queer small beads, with flecks of yellow and blue and green in them that would go nicely with the colors in her dress and her hat.

It seemed that she had by chance selected very wisely, for when Cousin Penelope came to look her over, she fairly flushed with pleasure.

“So you put on the beads I sent you,” she cried. “That’s a very pretty tribute, Jacqueline.”

“I—I like them,” stammered Caroline.

“So do I!” said Cousin Penelope, quite merrily. “How many things we have in common!”

This made Caroline feel at home with Cousin Penelope, and they chattered together, quite volubly for two people so shy and self-contained, while they drove through Longmeadow Street to Madame Woleski’s.

The house that the Polish lady had taken for the summer was quite at the farther end of the Street, right under the shadow of the mountain. It was a little, irregular house which had been an artist’s. The living room had a big window on the north side, and the piano was drawn across it. The furniture was old and dingy, and nothing matched with anything else, thought Caroline. There were dark, rich-looking small rugs on the floor, and on the walls were unframed sketches, which seemed to Caroline to look like not much of anything, unless it were the drawings that Cousin Delia’s eldest baby made. But Caroline didn’t know as much about pictures as she knew about music.

Madame Woleski was thin and dark, with an intense face and untidy hair, and long, nervous hands. She smiled at Caroline vaguely and sent her to play in the garden, while she talked with Cousin Penelope.

Caroline didn’t like the garden. She was afraid of hurting Jacqueline’s pretty clothes. But she found a clean bench where she could sit in safety, and then along came a great fluffy cat, the color of an orange, and he was friendly, after a condescending fashion, so she was able to get through the time until she was called into the house.

Madame Woleski wanted Caroline to play for her, and Caroline did so, quite simply. Mother had taught her long ago that when you were asked to play, you either declined with all courtesy, or you sat down and played. There was no excuse for shilly-shallying and waiting to be urged.

Caroline played, and Madame listened, and when the playing was over, a maid brought in a silver tea-service, and they had some crumbly dark fruit cookies, and fragrant strong tea, and tiny slim glasses of cordial. Caroline of course only had cookies. She said, no thanks! to the tea and the cordial, and Madame smiled at her, and offered her some crystallized fruit in a silver box.

“Next time you come, I have milk for you to drink, little one,” she said. “Because you come again. But before you come, you do every day two hours thees exercise.”

She went herself to the piano and showed what “thees exercise” should be, and she told Caroline she might come and play for her in the morning, three days later.

Then the call was ended, and Caroline and Cousin Penelope were rolling away in the limousine from the funny little house, while Madame Woleski, with the orange cat carelessly tucked under her arm, like a piece of fur, nodded them a good-by from her sunken doorstone.

“My dear!” said Cousin Penelope, with real enthusiasm. “Do you realize that you are now a pupil of Woleski’s?”

Caroline nodded solemnly. She was too happy to chatter as she had done on the way to the little house. But she was no happier than Cousin Penelope. For Penelope had loved her cousin, Jack Gildersleeve, and now she had his child, who in spite of everything was like her, here beside her in the car, and she was going to give her what her coarse and stupid Delane relatives, with all their wealth, had failed to give her—the music that she loved and craved!

So completely was Penelope carried away with her vision of Jacqueline some day a great musician, and turning to her—not to the Delanes!—for understanding and sympathy, that they had driven past the shops before she realized it. Then she smiled at her own preoccupation, and told Frank to turn back.

There were only four shops on Longmeadow Street. They stood in the very center of the village, in the shadow of the Orthodox church, and just across the street from the little inn. There was a general store, and the Post Office, where you bought hardware and sundries, and a meat market, which was open only twice a week, and Miss Crevey’s little shop, where you could buy talcum and tape, peppermints and pins, and altogether the funniest mixture of drygoods and druggist’s supplies, confectionery and notions that ever was seen outside the shop that the old sheep kept in the Looking Glass Country.

“Eighty cotton and sixty cotton,” said Cousin Penelope, as she and Caroline, in their cool pretty frocks, stepped out of the limousine. “I’ll get a cube of black pins, too, and some laces for my walking shoes. One ought to encourage the little local shops—they’re a great convenience.”

Caroline smiled, but not at Cousin Penelope’s words. She was smiling at the world. Because she had on a party frock, and was going home to dinner with dear Aunt Eunice, and she was a pupil of Woleski’s.

Smilingly, Caroline tripped up the steps at Cousin Penelope’s side, and into the little crowded shop, and then the smile left her face just the way figures leave a slate when you draw a wet sponge across it. For she saw two children standing at the counter, where the cheap candies were displayed. One was a boy in old knickers and a shabby shirt, the other was a girl in faded Peggy Janes, and Caroline had recognized those Peggy Janes and knew what was coming, even before the girl turned her bobbed brown head and showed the face of Jacqueline Gildersleeve.