Jacqueline fairly ran up the steps to the porch of The Chimnies. She was laughing in queer little gasps which were very much like sobs. Oh, but this was too good to believe! Right in the nick of time, when she had to have help, and didn’t know where on earth to find it!

Rat-tat-tat, the knocker clanged gayly under her hand. There were some bad minutes of explanation ahead, perhaps, but like a session at the dentist’s, they would be over some time and she would run back with the money to that hateful shop, where after to-day she would never set foot again. She would thrust the money into Miss Crevey’s claws and get back the beads. She would say something polite, but oh! so cutting to Miss Crevey, and——

The door opened before her into the dim hall with its white paint, and gilt-framed mirrors, and its staircase curving upward into cool distance. On the threshold stood Sallie (only Jacqueline didn’t know it was Sallie!) in a blue gingham dress, with her sleeves tucked up.

“Well, what is it?” asked Sallie brusquely. She didn’t waste her company voice and manners on a little girl in Peggy Janes and trodden sneakers, with an armful of packages done up in brown paper.

“I want to see Car—I mean Jacqueline,” the real Jacqueline corrected herself just in time. “The little girl that lives here.”

“She ain’t here now,” Sallie answered, with a carelessness that seemed to poor Jacqueline downright brutal. “She’s off to the beach.”

“But you’re here!” Jacqueline cried despairingly.

“Nobody said I wasn’t,” retorted Sallie. “Me and Hannah Means got here to-day, to open up the house, but the folks won’t be here till last of this week or maybe first of next.”

She started to shut the door, but she wasn’t able to. For Jacqueline, at this last cruel blow, simply slumped down on the threshold and let go the tears that she had held back so long.

“Oh, dumb it!” she wailed. You remember Jacqueline usually cried more for anger than for sorrow. “What’ll I do? Oh, sniveling opossums, what’ll I do now?”

“Well, you can’t sit there crying,” said Sallie.

“I can! I am!” howled Jacqueline.

“What’s the matter?” boomed a deep voice from the hall behind them, and Hannah Means, the tried and trusty cook at The Chimnies, bore down upon them, with her head done up in a dust cloth. “What young one’s that, Sallie? And whatever ails her?”

Jacqueline wept regardless. Sallie started to shake her, but changed her mind and patted her shoulder instead.

“Have you lost something?” asked Sallie.

“Have you got a stomach ache?” questioned Hannah, in the same breath.

“No, no!” sobbed Jacqueline.

“Did you get a licking?” pursued Sallie.

“Are you hungry?” Hannah demanded.

“No,” said Jacqueline, cross and ashamed of herself. “I’m all right.”

Sallie looked at her sharply.

“You’re one of the Conway children, ain’t you?” she asked.

Jacqueline nodded.

“Guess she got tuckered out walkin’ up from the Meadows,” Hannah suggested.

The two women exchanged glances.

“You better sit and rest a spell here on the porch,” Sallie bade Jacqueline, as she rose from beside her.

“Come into the kitchen,” Hannah bettered the invitation. “The grocery-boy’s just been here with the things, and I can let you have a tumbler of milk.”

Shyness descended upon Jacqueline. She scrambled to her feet, with a “No, thank you!” on the tip of her tongue. But she never uttered it. For once on her feet, she realized that she felt “all gone.” Her knees were wobbly and there was a fluttering in her wrists. Rest and a drink of milk sounded good.

As the guest of Hannah and Sallie, she passed through the doorway of her great-aunt’s house, and presently was seated in a rocker by the open window of the big kitchen, with its enameled sink and many cupboards. She slowly sipped the milk that Hannah had poured for her into a thick glass. She didn’t want to hurry. How should she ever drag herself the hot miles home through the Meadows, burdened with the weight of cares that Miss Crevey’s threat had laid upon her?

Other people had their troubles, too, she realized, as she listened to Hannah’s grumbling.

“In one ear and out the other,” Hannah muttered, as she unpacked the basket of groceries that stood on the kitchen table. “Ain’t no use tellin’ folks nothin’ nowadays! I said saleratus, and they’ve went and sent me salt, and there ain’t no bacon, and they’ve forgot the molasses.”

“Where’s my cleaning powder?” sang out Sallie, from the butler’s pantry.

“Ain’t I tellin’ you?” cried Hannah. “They’ve went and left out half the things.”

Sallie bustled out from the pantry and did a little inspecting on her own account.

“No scouring soap—no cleaning powder—and no scrubbing brush, like I ordered and you heard me,” she said crossly. “Well, I can’t do nothing without ’em. I’ll phone and give ’em a piece of my mind, and tell ’em they can just hustle those things over—save ’em trouble if they’d done it in the first place.”

“Lot o’ good ’twill do you to phone the store,” scoffed Hannah. “They won’t send nothin’ over till to-morrow. They’re independent as hogs on ice.

“Then here’s a whole afternoon wasted,” snapped Sallie. “Goodness knows, I won’t walk up to the store and fetch them things in this heat.”

Jacqueline grabbed at opportunity with both hands.

“I don’t mind the heat,” she cried. “I’ll run up to the store and get your soap and things.”

“Well, I’ll say that’s real nice of you,” conceded Sallie.

“That is,” stammered Jacqueline, “if you want to pay me ten cents for going.”

She turned as red as fire as she said the words. She had never felt so awful in her life, and after drinking the milk that these women had been kind enough to give her. But she thought of Grandma, without her cup! and Caroline, without her beads! What was her own pride or even decency by comparison? She just had to get some money.

“Well, of all the nerve!” Hannah broke the silence that seemed to Jacqueline to have lasted an hour. “I’ll pay you ten cents to go—and you can pay me ten cents for the milk you’ve drunk.”

Jacqueline quailed. Grown-up people somehow always had one at a disadvantage.

“I’m going home now,” she quavered. “Good-by.”

“Hold on!” bade Sallie. “I’d rather pay a dime than walk to the store and back, and I can’t let this afternoon go wasted, when to-morrow like as not will be a scorcher. You scoot up to the store and fetch my things, and if you’re back in twenty minutes you shall have your ten cents.”

“I’ll run!” promised Jacqueline. She was all smiles again, and at her smile Hannah melted.

“Don’t let her run her legs off,” she boomed. “And she can get me the saleratus while she’s about it.”

In the well-worn Peggy Janes, Jacqueline went sprinting back up the street. Hope was in her heart. Ten cents wasn’t much, perhaps, but every little bit added to every little bit you’ve got—and she had until to-morrow night to make up the five dollars!

Promptly on the tick of ten minutes to three, she pattered once more into the kitchen of The Chimnies. In the basket that she tugged were scouring soap and cleaning powder, a new yellow scrubbing brush, a package of saleratus, a paper of bacon, and even a can of molasses.

“Well,” Sallie admitted, as she rocked in comfort, “I’ll say it’s worth ten cents.”

Jacqueline blushed and pocketed the dime.

“Crazy to earn money, ain’t ye?” said Hannah, as she unpacked the basket. “What’s it for? Circus coming to town?”

“I—I guess so.” Jacqueline answered vaguely.

Sallie gathered up her soap and cleaning powder but not with great enthusiasm.

“I’m killed with a crick in my back that takes me whenever I stoop,” she complained, and turned to Jacqueline. “Look here, sister, d’ye know how to scrub out a bathtub?”

Jacqueline laughed.

“I’ll say I do!” she answered.

“There’s two bathrooms upstairs,” Sallie told her. “I’ll give you another dime if you’ll go over ’em real good for me.”

Jacqueline stated her position, calmly and unashamed.

“That’s not enough. The Japs get fifty cents an hour for cleaning, and I guess I’m as good as any Jap.”

“What’s Japs got to do with it?” asked Hannah. She, you’ll note, was not a Californian.

“Fifty cents an hour,” gasped Sallie. “Fifty cents! Good-night!”

Jacqueline decided that this was a time for compromise.

“Well,” she admitted, “I’m not as big as a Jap, so maybe I ought to come down on my price to you. I’ll work for twenty-five cents an hour, not a cent less, and I’m an awful good worker.”

“You won’t work for me,” said Sallie, with decision. “What do you take me for? John D. Rockerfeller?”

Jacqueline hesitated. She was torn between pride and dire need.

“I’d get both bathrooms done in an hour,” she suggested. “I’m pretty spry.”

“Ah, now, let her!” Hannah struck in unexpectedly. “If you break your back over them tubs, you’ll be groaning all night and spoiling my rest.”

“Well, if you’re sure you can do ’em in an hour,” Sallie hesitated.

“Surest thing I do!” cried Jacqueline, all smiles. “Let me get at ’em right away.”

Eagerly she capered at Sallie’s heels up the back stairs. Above was a long hall with doors at either side, just the sort of hall that Jacqueline had expected to find in Aunt Eunice’s house. Sallie pushed open one of the doors, and led the way into a room that was all cool gray and leaf-green with here and there, in hangings and in wall-paper, a flash of canary yellow.

“This is the little girl’s room you was askin’ for,” said Sallie. “Don’t you touch nothin’ now. Here’s the bathroom, and t’other one is cross the hall.”

“All right,” Jacqueline answered stiffly. She didn’t at all like the insinuation that she would touch things. “Give me the cleaning rags, and I’ll go to it.”

For a moment Sallie lingered, until she was sure that Jacqueline was attacking the nickel and enamel in a professional manner. Then with a parting hint that Jacqueline would have to work fast, if she expected to finish in an hour, she went away downstairs, and Jacqueline was left in possession of the second story.

She had no time to feel lonely in those empty rooms. She was too busy to think. She scrubbed and she polished, while the perspiration ran down her face, and her fingers grew stiff and gritty from the soap and the coarse powder that she used. When she rose at last, and looked down at the shining tub and the clean tiling of the floor, she felt some sympathy with poor Sallie. She too, had a “crick in her back.”

Through the open door into the bedroom she glimpsed the green and gold of the chintz curtains, the dressing-table, with its lady pin-cushion and its dainty china boxes, the comfortable, low rocker beside the well-filled bookshelves. So that was Caroline’s room—the room that rightfully was hers!

Smiling somewhat ruefully, Jacqueline tiptoed across the threshold and, planted on the oyster white rug, stood gazing about her. This might all have been hers—this soon would be hers. She would sleep in that cozy, soft bed, with no fretful children to disturb her. She would rise in the morning and dress. Her clothes would hang, no doubt, behind that door, which was all one mirror.

She bowed to the reflection in the mirror—the sunburnt, rough-haired, little brown girl in Peggy Janes and venerable sneakers. Then she opened the door and peeped into the closet. Why, here were some of her dresses, of net, and organdie, and gingham, her riding clothes, her boots. She chuckled to herself. What faces Hannah and Sallie would wear, if she should put on her clothes—her own clothes!—and go down the stairs, and appear before them. Well, very soon she would!

But before that day came—oh, what might not happen! All her troubles thronged back upon her, and to think that she must suffer so much, for what always before in her life she had thought a little sum of money! If only she had now one of the five-dollar bills that she had often wasted! If she could open her little vanity bag, and find in it some money—her own money!

Fascinated with the thought, she stepped into the closet, and looked to see if one of her little bags were perhaps hanging from the hooks. Of course not! She might have known that fussy little Caroline would put them carefully into a drawer, as she herself had always been told to do. She came out of the closet, and softly closed the door, and hurried to the bureau. Without scruple—for weren’t these things all her own, and the room meant for her?—she opened the drawers and hastily peeped in. She found only one of her bags, the gray one with beads, and it was quite empty.

Disappointed, she closed the drawer, and with a sigh turned away. Once more she saw her reflection in the mirror of the dressing-table, and hesitatingly she drew near. She hadn’t been able half to see herself in the wavering looking glass at the farm. My, but she had put on a great coat of tan this summer!

From the reflection in the mirror, her eyes dropped to the pretties on the dressing-table. Little boxes and toys of Dresden china—delicate, dainty things. She touched them lightly—as Sallie had told her not to do. Sallie, indeed! She guessed she had the right. She lifted the cover of the little trinket box that she was fingering, and there, coiled in its white depths, a chain of gold beads—her own gold beads—twinkled up at her.