What do you suppose Prince Edward would have done, if Tom Canty hadn’t wished to be Tom Canty any more? Suppose that Tom, instead of being a well-mannered little English boy, willing to keep his proper station, had cried out at the mere thought of going back to the foulness and cruelty of Offal Court, and insisted, not unnaturally, perhaps, that he preferred to be comfortable in a palace?

Jacqueline had never thought of this possibility, when she read “The Prince and the Pauper,” nor when she tried to translate the story into modern terms. But she faced it now in deep dismay, as she looked at Caroline, sobbing her heart out, there in the dusk of the summer house.

For a moment Jacqueline shifted her weight from one foot to the other, and hardly knew what to do. But she was not in the habit of being turned from a purpose, once her mind was made up, and her mind was very much made up to sleep that night at the Gildersleeve place. So down she sat beside the weeping Caroline, and laid a hard little sunburnt hand upon her shoulder.

“Don’t be a baby, Carol,” she said, quite fiercely, because she didn’t want to let herself pity Caroline. “You know you said you’d change, the minute I wanted to.”

Caroline nodded the little dark head that was bowed desolately upon her hands.

“Well, then!” said Jacqueline, in an injured tone. “What are you crying about?”

(What, indeed?)

Caroline lifted her face and smeared her eyes with her hands.

“When—when shall we—change?” she faltered.

“Now,” said Jacqueline bluntly.

Then Jacqueline remembered something that all her life she had wanted to forget—the look in the eyes of Aunt Edie’s little lap dog, when she had struck him. Of course Jacqueline had been just a tiny thing—only four years old. It was right after her father died. And she had been jealous of the wee dog, because he had sat on Aunt Edie’s knee sometimes when she wanted that place herself. So one day when she found him alone and he turned to her for a caress, she had slapped him—hard. She gave him sugar afterward, and the cushions from her best doll-buggy, and velvet-soft caresses, and tears of penitence. But she had never forgotten the look in his eyes when she struck him, and she saw that look now in the tear-drenched eyes that Caroline turned upon her.

“Oh, Jackie! No! Not now!”

“Well, I’ll be dished,” said Jacqueline. The words don’t do justice to the disgust in her tone. There was no doubt that she did hate a quitter!

But Caroline was past heeding even Jacqueline’s scorn.

“Oh, Jackie!” she pleaded, and suddenly she caught Jacqueline’s hands and clung to them. “Can’t you wait just a little longer—only till to-morrow night? I won’t ask anything more, Jackie—I won’t even ask God for anything more—and I’ll give up the piano—and your lovely clothes—I haven’t hurt ’em, I’ve been awful careful—and I won’t cry one little bit, even if there are cows at the farm—and I’ve been so happy here—I didn’t know things could be so lovely—I didn’t know people could be so happy—oh, it will be like a beautiful dream, all the rest of my life—only let me have to-morrow, Jackie—please, please let me have to-morrow!”

“Ouch!” said Jacqueline. “Stop digging your finger nails into my hands!”

Caroline didn’t seem to hear her. She clung like a limpet.

“Only wait till to-morrow!” she sobbed.

“Now you needn’t think,” snapped Jacqueline, “that I’m going to hoof it three miles back to that nasty old farm, and sleep in that hot, stuffy room. What’s the dif. anyway between to-night and to-morrow, I should like to know?”

“But it’s my party,” wailed Caroline. “To-morrow is my party.”

Jacqueline snorted. Don’t blame her too much! She had had a birthday party every year of her life, and a Hallowe’en party, and an Easter-egg rolling, and a Washington’s Birthday party, besides always a group of children to eat ice-cream and see the fireworks at Buena Vista on the Fourth.

“What’s a party?” she said, with contempt that was quite sincere. No party, she felt, could give Caroline sufficient pleasure to counterbalance the discomfort she herself must suffer, if she had to go back to the farm now—with her tail between her legs, as she put it!—and face Aunt Martha.

“There are seven girls coming,” Caroline panted out the details between her sobs. “I almost know Eleanor Trowbridge next door—we smile at each other always—and the table is to be out here in the garden—and the ice-cream is coming from Boston on the train. Oh, Jackie, shapes of ice-cream like flowers—the sort you see sometimes in windows—red roses and green leaves and everything—I picked ’em out myself! And there are little cakes, like frogs and white m-mice—with almonds for ears! And we’re going to have a peanut-hunt—and prizes—such scrumptious prizes—silver bangles, and the cunningest little bottles of perfume, and dear little carved Italian boxes with pictures in the covers. Oh, Jackie, it’s like ten Christmases all come together—and I—I never had a party before in all my life.”

She let go of Jacqueline then. She had to use her hands to hide her face.

Jacqueline sat quite still. She was very angry with Caroline for being such a baby. She was too angry to speak to her. At least she supposed that was the reason she kept silent.

“Muzzy and I used to plan how I’d have a party,” Caroline quavered in the dusk that was now thickening fast in the summer house. “It’s the next best fun to having things. I almost had a party once. But the Stetson twins’ father lost his money and they didn’t pay Muzzy for the music lessons—weeks and weeks of lessons—so she couldn’t afford a party—and I said I didn’t care, but oh! I did. And now I was going to have a party—like in a book—and I’ll never have another chance the longest day I live. Oh, Jackie—Jackie! Couldn’t you——”

She didn’t finish the sentence. She just let it trail off hopelessly into the dusk.

Jacqueline felt a queer tingling in her palms, and a hot smarting behind her eyes. She was mad—mad at Caroline—mad at herself—mad at something in herself that was going to make her do what Caroline wanted, and hate herself afterward for doing it.

“Like taking candy off a kid!” That was her new Uncle Jimmie’s phrase for something that was too contemptible for a regular fellow to do. That was what it would be to take Caroline’s party away from her. Let her have her old party! But drat Caroline—and double-drat Prince Edward, whose silly story had let her in for this! Trouble! He didn’t know the name of trouble!

Jacqueline drew a deep breath, which was rather like a sniffle.

“Aw shucks!” she said disgustedly. “Cut out the sob-stuff, Carol. One day is as good as another, far as I’m concerned. You can have your party.”

Caroline, all moist and crumpled, fell upon her in the dusk.

“Oh, Jackie! You mean it—really? You are the dearest——”

“Oh, dumb-bells!” scoffed Jacqueline. “Stop bawling now. You’ll look like a squashed egg. I tell you, it’s all right, and you can have your party. So long, now! I’ve got to beat it home.”

She rose, and with a lofty air, patterned on what she thought Uncle Jimmie would do in similar circumstances, she strode toward the gap in the hedge. Honestly she tried to whistle as she went. But just as she reached the gap, Caroline came pattering out of the dusk and clutched her.

“Now don’t go and begin all over again!” Jacqueline scolded.

“Please, Jackie!” Caroline’s teeth fairly chattered. “I shan’t let you—it isn’t fair—it’s your party really—it’s you Cousin Penelope meant it for—and I—I didn’t tell you all about it. I was afraid you couldn’t give it up—if I told you everything. There’ll be little satin boxes of candy on the table, one for each of us—and darling little dolls, with baskets of nuts—one apiece—to keep—and birds that hold the place-cards—and oh, Jackie, a pie full of presents! You pull a string, each of you, and then——”

“Oh, g’on!” said Jacqueline. “A Jack Horner Pie. I’m fed up on ’em—had ’em since I was knee-high to a hopper toad.”

“Oh!” gasped Caroline, softly, incredulously.

All in a minute, a self-revealing minute such as she had seldom known, there flooded over Jacqueline the realization of all that she had had and taken for granted—all that this other little girl had never known, and valued all the more. She was not angry with Caroline any longer. She felt that she was sorrier for her than she had ever been for anybody, and then suddenly she knew that she loved Caroline, poor, little, sobbing Caroline, whom she had it in her power to lift into a heaven of happiness.

“Don’t go and eat too much at your old party,” Jacqueline bade gruffly. “Now don’t hang on to me like that. I gotta go. And I guess I won’t come back for quite a while.”

“But to-morrow——” Caroline hesitated. A hope that she was ashamed of trembled in her voice.

“I was fooling when I said we’d swap,” snapped Jacqueline. “I’m not coming to-morrow. I’m not coming near this mean old place till I have to. You hear me? I like it at the farm. I’m going to stay there till Aunt Edie comes, if she doesn’t come till next Christmas. And you can just stay here till you’re dead sick of it—the old piano—and starched people—and prunes and prisms and——”

“Oh, oh! Do you mean that?” Caroline’s cry was sheer rapture. “But I couldn’t let——”

Perhaps her honest protest would have moved Jacqueline to recall the promise she had so rashly made. But just at that moment a clear, imperious voice called: “Jacqueline!” and when both little girls pivoted at that name, they saw a figure, in soft white summer clothes, come into the dusky garden. It was Cousin Penelope, and by the way in which she headed straight down the path toward the spot where they stood, they knew that she had spied them.