For poor little Caroline the moment was tragic.

Quite sincerely she expected Jacqueline to step up to her and say in a loud voice:

“I am Jacqueline, and you are Caroline. Take off that dress of mine, and go away with this horrid little staring red-haired boy. I shall go home with Cousin Penelope in the limousine.”

What else could Caroline expect? Why should any living child continue to wear clumsy, hateful Peggy Janes, with patches, too, when she could have a beautiful muslin, with yellow roses? No, Jacqueline surely would never go on with the deception, now that she saw with her own eyes the glories of which she had deprived herself!

But to Jacqueline the encounter that to Caroline was tragic seemed downright funny. To think of her, standing there in Caroline’s Peggy Janes, and Caroline in her muslin, and that prim-looking Cousin Penelope (whom Jacqueline disliked at sight!) innocently lavishing attention on the wrong child. So good a joke it was that Jacqueline wanted it to last a little longer, and she was afraid that Caroline, with her shocked face, was going to give it all away.

So the moment Cousin Penelope spoke to Miss Crevey—and she spoke to her almost instantly, for the two children had taken stock of each other in far less time than it has taken to tell—Jacqueline edged up alongside Caroline.

“Hello!” she spoke softly, like a child who wanted to scrape acquaintance.

Caroline stared at her dumbly. Her lips quivered. If she should begin to bawl, she certainly would spill the beans, thought Jacqueline, and acted with a wisdom that was almost inspired.

“My name is Caroline Tait,” said Jacqueline, slowly and emphatically. Like the Ancient Mariner, she held Caroline with a glittering eye.

Caroline drew a fluttering breath—the first she had drawn since her eyes fell on the Peggy Janes. If Jacqueline said that, why, perhaps Jacqueline meant still to keep on being Caroline!

“I live at my aunt’s farm, down to the Meadows,” went on Jacqueline calmly. “What’s your name?”

“C-C——” clucked Caroline helplessly, and quailed before Jacqueline’s furious eye. “C—Jacqueline,” she achieved the name with something like a sneeze.

Cousin Penelope suddenly became aware of the by-play going on at her elbow. She turned and looked coldly at the dusty little girl in the uncouth, shabby clothes, who had been so rude as to address her darling. Caroline trembled, just as she had trembled when she first saw Cousin Penelope. But Jacqueline looked up at Cousin Penelope coolly and without terror, and even with her chin slightly tilted.

“Hello!” she addressed the august lady.

Cousin Penelope’s violet eyes looked through Jacqueline, quite as if she hadn’t been there. Then she turned with a smile to Caroline.

“Come, Jacqueline,” she addressed Jacqueline’s substitute. “You must help me buy this thread.”

Deliberately she turned her back on Jacqueline, and made Caroline turn with her, as if she snatched her little charge from contamination.

Jacqueline laughed outright. It was rude and horrid of her, although Cousin Penelope had herself been rude. But Jacqueline really hadn’t meant to laugh. Only Cousin Penelope struck her as funny, and the whole situation, too, was funny.

A slight flush rose to Cousin Penelope’s cheeks. Of course it was foolish to let one’s self be annoyed by the bad manners of a country child.

“Who is that bold little girl?” she asked Miss Crevey.

Her voice was louder than she meant it to be, or Jacqueline’s ears were sharper. Jacqueline overheard, and hugged herself for joy, the naughty thing!

“It’s one of the Conway children from down in the Meadows,” lisped Miss Crevey, as she tied up the little parcel of thread and pins. “Call again, Miss Gildersleeve. Sorry I didn’t have no shoelaces, but people buy ’em off me so fast I jes’ give up keepin’ ’em.”

Cousin Penelope nodded graciously, and with the parcel in one hand and Caroline’s limp fingers clasped in the other, walked out of the shop. When they were once more shut in the limousine, away from the vulgar herd, she turned to Caroline and saw that she was quite pale and trembling.

“You don’t like strangers, do you, any more than I,” Cousin Penelope said sympathetically.

Caroline nodded. She really didn’t know what else to do.

“That was a very rude, coarse, pushing little girl,” Cousin Penelope spoke with more heat than she realized. “I don’t want you to have anything to do with such people. She belongs to a quite ordinary family down in the Meadows—and blood, you know, will always tell.”

She smiled as she said the words. How blood had told in this charming little quiet girl beside her, who was all Gildersleeve! Cousin Penelope smiled and was glad when she saw Caroline smile at last in answer.

“You know there are some nice little girls, here in town,” said Cousin Penelope. “As soon as you feel at home with us, I’ll give a little party for you and ask them to meet you.”

“Oh-h!” cried Caroline softly, a real little trill of rapture. She had never had a party in her life, nor expected to have one. How good Cousin Penelope was to her, and Jacqueline, too, who was going to keep on with this precious play! The world was beautiful once more, as beautiful as it had been when she went into Miss Crevey’s shop. All the way home she chattered again, almost volubly, with kind Cousin Penelope.

While Caroline was rolling homeward to The Chimnies in the limousine, Jacqueline was trudging along the same road on foot. She and Neil had made their purchases. The little red and white candies, in the bag that Jacqueline had insisted upon having, in spite of Miss Crevey’s grumbling, were in the breast pocket of the Peggy Janes. The stick of candy was in the stomachs of Jacqueline and Neil, all except that portion of the moist chocolate that was round their mouths. Neil went in manful silence, lost in pleasant memories of the departed sweet. But Jacqueline now and again chuckled to herself.

“What you snickering at?” Neil challenged at last.

“Aw, nothing,” said Jacqueline.

“Only fools laugh at nothing.”

“Well,” said Jacqueline unabashed, “I was laughing at a fool. Where does she live?”

“Who?”

“That stuck up old thing, Miss Gildersleeve, that we saw in the shop. Gee! I’d hate to have her bossing me.”

“She’s an old hen,” said Neil. “You’d ought to ’a’ heard her bawl me out, time I run acrost her old lawn with the cream Mother forgot to leave. Mother won’t like it though if you sass her.”

“I will if I like,” Jacqueline answered calmly. “Where does she hang out?”

“We’re most there now,” said Neil. “It’s that big white house with the hedge.”

“Shucks!” said Jacqueline. (She had added to her vocabulary already at the farm.) “That isn’t half as big as Buena Vista.”

“What’s Boona Vister?”

To herself Jacqueline said: “You most put your foot in it that time!” Aloud she told Neil airily: “Oh, it’s a place where I was once.”

“Is it like the amusement park at the Pines with the puzzle-house?” Neil asked hopefully. “I was there once.”

“Something like, I guess,” Jacqueline answered vaguely.

She was busy staring at the Gildersleeve place, as they skirted the tall hedge. The sort of place where you mustn’t step on the lawn or pick the flowers. The sort of house where there wouldn’t be enough sunshine, and you must walk softly. She thought of Cousin Penelope, who had snubbed her, and she made the sort of face she was going to practice now for Cousin Penelope’s benefit. Then she thought of Caroline, the dear little silly, and she chuckled again.

“Aw, say,” said Neil, “you got bats in your belfry?”

“I’ll say I have—not,” Jacqueline threw off, with cheerful unconcern.

Wasn’t it funny that Caroline should have put on the muslin with the yellow roses? Jacqueline hated that dress above all dresses. She had only brought it in her trunk because Aunt Edith, who had selected the dress, had made her. She hated the floppy hat, too, and those nasty old green and blue and yellow beads of Cousin Penelope’s that it always made her feel seasick just to look at. If she had claimed her rightful place that Caroline was filling, she might have had to wear those odious clothes. Hateful clothes and bossy old Cousin Penelope, against dish washing and bed making. On the whole she preferred the latter—for a time.

“Hey! Hey!” Neil suddenly broke in upon her reverie with a mighty yell.

A bronzed raggedy man in a little truck, which was creeping past them on a flat tire in a scuff of dust, heard the call and checked his clumsy vehicle.

“Come on!” Neil cried to Jacqueline.

She didn’t pause to ask any questions. She flew at his heels across the wide green sward that skirted the sidewalk, and into the dust of the road. She swarmed after him in the accommodating Peggy Janes, up into the body of the truck. Here was a heap of dusty sacks on which she dropped herself at his side.

“Gee! This is luck,” Neil panted. “It’s John Zabriski that used to work for Father. He’s got the farm the other side of ours. He’ll take us all the way home.”

Jacqueline stretched herself upon the dirty sacks. The dust was rising round them in a golden cloud as the truck rolled down Longmeadow Street. The branches of the elms met overhead, and through them, as she lay on her back, she gazed into the unfathomable cobalt of the sky. There would be creamed codfish for supper, and Johnny-cake, and dried-apple pie. She had heard Grandma and Aunt Martha planning the meal. She could scuffle in the hammock with Neil and Dickie, in the warm, star-set evening, and tomorrow she meant to walk the highest beam in the barn. No one to forbid her—no one to remind her to be a lady—no starched and stuck up Cousin Penelope to give her orders.

“Gee!” murmured Jacqueline. “This sure is the life!”