But all the days at the Conway farm were not like the day that ended in a blaze of glory, with praises and hot Johnny-cake. No more than a week later there came a day when everything went crooked.

Perhaps Jacqueline got out of bed on the wrong foot. Perhaps she was thinking too much of a pile of story papers, which she had unearthed in the shed chamber, and too little of her work. Perhaps it was simply that she had grown tired of the rÔle of Caroline—even of a virtuous Caroline, who was a help and comfort in the house, and bossed the younger children.

At any rate Jacqueline dawdled and shuffled through her work, and complained constantly of the heat. It was a hot day, true enough, but as Grandma said, talking about the weather only made a bad matter ten times worse. Let it alone, and likely it would let you alone!

But Jacqueline groaned and grumbled, and finally lay down on the dining room couch (with a story paper!) and gave herself up to being uncomfortable. Presently she fell to thinking of the Gildersleeve place, and the big, cool, dim rooms that she knew such a roof must cover, and the white porcelain tub, with lots of hot water, and a maid to wash the tub when you stepped out of it. She began to think that she had treated Caroline very generously, and treated herself very badly.

Dinner was a horrid meal—pickled codfish in white sauce, cold peas from last night’s supper, slabs of home-made bread, molasses cookies, and cottage cheese. The room was hot, and the boys were sweaty and tired. Freddie upset a mug of milk, and Neil fussed about the heat, and said his head ached. Jacqueline was quite disgusted that he should be so babyish.

After dinner Aunt Martha insisted upon Grandma’s lying down in her room. Grandma looked “tuckered out,” and no wonder, for she had been step-stepping all the morning, while Jacqueline loafed. Of course, Jacqueline told her uneasy conscience, she would have helped, if Grandma had asked her. But you know, it is easier sometimes for a tired old woman to do things herself than to ask a sulky and unwilling little girl to do them for her.

Aunt Martha sent Nellie off into the barn with the babies. She was to be sure that they did not disturb Grandma. Ralph and Dickie went back to the fields, and Aunt Martha herself drove off to Northford, to see a man who owed her money that she very much needed. Jacqueline was left face to face with the dinner dishes.

“Come on, Neil,” she said bossily. “I’m not going to wrassle these alone.”

“I gotta headache,” Neil answered, from the couch that Jacqueline coveted. “I don’t have to work this afternoon. Mother said so.”

“She meant work in the fields. She didn’t mean the dishes.”

“She did, too.”

“She didn’t, neither. Get up, you great, lazy boy, and help me. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, making such a fuss about the weather. You let it alone, and likely it’ll let you alone. Come on now!”

“Won’t!” said Neil.

Jacqueline’s face flamed.

“Then the dishes will stay right there till Aunt Martha comes,” she said. “I won’t touch ’em.”

“Don’t!” mocked Neil, and settled himself more comfortably.

Well, Jacqueline didn’t touch those dishes! If you’ll believe it, she took her story papers and went out and read in the hammock for two mortal hours, while the dinner table stood just as the family had left it, and the stockings in Grandma’s basket cried: “Come darn me!” and patient little Nellie struggled all alone to keep two hot and fussy babies amused and quiet.

In the old papers Jacqueline found a continued story of the sort she liked, about a girl who went to a boarding school, where most of the teachers were mean and malicious and incredibly stupid; about the pranks that she and her friends played, and the mystery of a buried treasure that she solved. Jacqueline was so deep in the mystery that she scarcely heeded when Aunt Martha drove into the yard. She came out of the treasure vault with a jump, only when she heard her name called. Then she looked, and saw Aunt Martha standing in the kitchen doorway.

Full of the spirit of her heroine, who put tyrannical teachers in their place, Jacqueline rose and went into the kitchen. She was almost eager for “a scene.”

“Why aren’t those dishes done?” Aunt Martha asked directly. Her shrewd gray eyes went right through Jacqueline.

This was drama with a vengeance. Jacqueline’s heart began to beat fast.

“There were so many of ’em, and the day was so hot, and I had a headache, and Neil wouldn’t help,” she poured out all her reasons glibly.

“You leave Neil out. I’ll attend to him. It was your job to clear up the dining room, and wash those dishes. Go about it now.”

Jacqueline turned slowly toward the dining room door, but as she turned she said aloud, with a toss of her head:

“I don’t have to!”

She looked round to make sure that Aunt Martha heard her, for Aunt Martha had a way of not always hearing saucy and hateful speeches.

“If you stay in this house,” said Aunt Martha, as she unpinned her cheap hat, “you’ll have to do your share, like all the rest of us.”

“Well, maybe I won’t stay in your old house,” Jacqueline told her superbly. “There are better places I can go to.”

“All right,” said Aunt Martha easily. “Trot along—only get those dishes done before you start.”

That was too bad of Aunt Martha, for in the rÔle of tyrant, which Jacqueline had thoughtfully assigned her, she ought to have lost her temper at Jacqueline’s threat, instead of turning it into a kind of joke. Since Aunt Martha kept her temper, Jacqueline lost hers. She snatched the tray from its shelf with unnecessary clatter, and she went into the dining room, and banged it down hard on the table. She began to pile the soiled dishes upon it, helter-skelter, with as much noise as if she were a raw Polish girl, just out of the onion fields.

Neil turned a flushed face toward her, where he lay on the couch.

“Tell-tale!” he softly sang.

The justice of the taunt made it sting.

“You’re a slacker,” Jacqueline retorted promptly. “Everybody hates a slacker. I was going to give you a birthday present, and something perfectly scrumptious at Christmas, but I never will now—never—never!”

To emphasize the threat, she banged down the heavy milk pitcher on the tray, without noticing that the tray overhung the edge of the table perilously. There was a tilt—a sickening slide and crash—then plates, glasses, broken food, spilled milk lay all in a mess at Jacqueline’s feet, and among the dÉbris, shattered to bits, were the two green-dragon cups and saucers of thin china.

Jacqueline felt the anger ooze out of her. She stared at the wreckage, conscience-smitten. Neil sat up and looked at her.

“You’ve done it now!” he said.

“I don’t care!” Jacqueline flung at him the first words that came. She had to say something, or she would have burst out crying.

“Caroline!” spoke Aunt Martha’s voice. She stood there in the room, with her tanned face really white round the lips. “Don’t tell me you’ve gone and broken Grandma’s cups!”

“Nothing but two old cups!” Jacqueline almost sobbed.

Aunt Martha did not seem to hear her. She went down on her knees and groped among the fragments for bits of the shattered green-dragon china. Her hands fairly shook as she gathered them up.

“They are all that was left of her wedding china,” she said, more to herself than to the startled children. “We ought not to have used them common—but she didn’t relish her tea in a thick cup—and she wouldn’t drink from china while I drank out of kitchen ware. No, I can’t mend ’em, ever. They’re smashed to smithereens.”

“I don’t care—I don’t care!” Jacqueline screamed across the awful lump in her throat that was choking her. “I hate this house—and I hate you all—and I’m never coming back again!”

She called back the last words from the kitchen doorway, and next moment she was out in the yard, headed for the road, and running, as if for her very life, to the Gildersleeve place, and the Gildersleeve relations, and the identity of Jacqueline that now, with all her heart, she wanted to get back again.