By the time that Jacqueline had had her cry out, she was nearly a mile on her way to Longmeadow Street. Her eyes were smarting, and her nose was sore, and her throat felt hot like a furnace. When she came to the boundary brook between Kaplinsky’s lease and Deacon Whitcomb’s field, she was glad to stop and bathe her face and quiet the jumping pulses in her wrists with cool water. She smoothed her hair, too, with her wet fingers, and she even took off her shabby sneakers and washed her dusty feet and ankles. After all, she didn’t want to arrive at the Gildersleeve place looking worse than she had to.

Now that she was refreshed, she trudged on more slowly. She realized that she was tired out with the wild pace at which she had run, and with the scene in Aunt Martha’s dining room, which she winced to remember. Wasn’t she thankful that she really wasn’t Caroline, and that she needn’t ever go back to the Conway farm? How could she have faced them—Aunt Martha, and Neil, and Grandma? Poor Grandma, whose precious cups she had broken!

Again the tears started to Jacqueline’s eyes. She brushed them angrily away. She didn’t need to cry. Wasn’t she going to send Grandma some new cups—the thinnest cups she could buy in Boston—a dozen cups—a whole dinner set? That would make everything all right again.

By the time she came in sight of the first outlying houses of the village, she had added to the dinner set for Grandma an embroidered cap for Annie, a doll with real hair for Nellie, a belt with a silver buckle for Ralph, a camera for Dickie, and a choo-choo train for Freddie.

With great effort, as she entered the village, she finally added to the collection a big, soft, luscious rug for Aunt Martha’s car, and a magic-lantern for Neil—not one of the little dinky toys that get out of order, but the real thing.

When the people at the farm got all those gifts, she rather guessed they’d change their minds about her. Perhaps they’d be sorry then that they hadn’t been more considerate. How they would regret her—and admire her! Maybe she’d go out there once more—just once more—in her wine-colored jumper dress that she liked, and take a big box of sweets to the children. She fairly swelled out her chest, in her dusty Peggy Janes, as she pictured herself playing Lady Bountiful. But when she thought of Grandma, her chest flattened again, just like a toy balloon when you prick it and the air runs out. Oh, she did want to get that dinner set right away! Her eyes filled every time when she thought of Grandma, sitting down to supper, and drinking her tea patiently from the thick, ugly, crockery cup.

The sun had just dipped behind the western hills across the river, when Jacqueline came to a halt outside the box-hedge that enclosed the Gildersleeve place. She had thought all along that she would walk right up to the front door, and knock, and ask for Mrs. Gildersleeve, and simply say to her:

“Aunt Eunice, I am Jacqueline. Call the little girl who’s staying here, and she’ll tell you it’s just so.”

But now that the moment for action had come, she hesitated. To do it that way seemed not quite fair to Caroline. Like stealing a march on her. Really she must see Caroline, and tell her what was up, before she gave away the trick that they had played upon the Gildersleeves and the Conways.

“Not that Caroline won’t be as glad as me to have it over with,” Jacqueline tried to quiet an uneasy something within her. “She must be fed up by this time on that old piano.”

A little path, as narrow as a cat track, ran between the Gildersleeve hedge and the rose tangle that bounded the Trowbridge lawn. Jacqueline knew all about that path, and a few others. She hadn’t come into the village with that born rover, Neil, for nothing. She slipped up this path in the shadows that were cool and dark, and she quickly found the gap in the hedge for which she was looking. She wriggled through it, with some damage to the Peggy Janes (Caroline’s Peggy Janes!) and there she was in the garden, among the flowers that were already half asleep. She peered about her eagerly. If only Caroline would come that way! Then she spied the summer house, and stole to the doorway that gaped beneath the over-hanging vines, and peered in.

The summer house was empty. The tea table was folded up, and the wicker chairs set trimly in place against another day. Under one of the chairs a bit of clear orange color caught Jacqueline’s eye. She pounced upon it, and found it was a little doll-smock of orange, cross-stitched in dark blue. This must belong to Mildred, and no doubt Mildred’s careful little mother (“fussy,” Jacqueline called her) would find it missing and come to look for it. Why, things couldn’t have fallen out better for her!

Jacqueline sat down on the bench that ran round the wall inside the summer house, and waited with what patience she could scare up. She could see a bit of the house through the elms that stood round it—a gleam of white clapboards, that caught the last light of the afterglow, a green shutter, a window like an anxious eye. She wondered if that were the window of the room that should be hers.

Then she saw a little girl in a leaf brown dress come from behind a clump of shrubbery and head toward the summer house, with eyes bent upon the path, as if she looked for something. Caroline, in the name of all that was lucky! Gurgling with mischief, Jacqueline drew back and waited in the shadows that now were quite thick in the summer house. She didn’t have to wait long. Framed in the doorway, Caroline stood before her, dainty in Jacqueline’s leaf brown smock with orange stitching, and Jacqueline’s amber beads, and with a soft sparkle in her face, which came from thoughts of pleasant things that had happened and pleasant things to come.

“Boo!” cried Jacqueline.

Caroline gave a little squeak, and clutched the side of the door.

“Don’t be scared, goose!” bade Jacqueline, stepping forward. “It’s only me.”

Caroline’s pale little hands fluttered to her throat as if she wanted to push off something that choked her.

“Y-yes,” she stammered. “H-hello, Jackie.”

That was all Caroline said. She didn’t help Jacqueline one bit, though she must have known that Jacqueline hadn’t come there simply to say: “Hello!” She just clung to the side of the door and stared like somebody who expects to be hit.

“I’m not a ghost,” said Jacqueline, impatiently. “Don’t look at me like that. I just came over to say I’ve had enough of the farm, and if you don’t mind, we’ll swap back.”

Caroline nodded.

“Yes,” she agreed, in a dry little whisper. “All r-right, Jackie.” Then she slid into the seat by the door, just as if her legs had folded up under her, and she hid her face in her hands and began to cry.