Jaquelina shook out the cedar-scented folds of the dress and spread it out on the bed to look at. It was a fine, soft India muslin, trimmed with a good deal of fine, pretty lace and bows of satin ribbon—all of which had turned very yellow in the years while it lay folded in the cedar chest.
It was made in a quaint, pretty style, too; but Jaquelina looked at it doubtfully. She did not know enough of dry goods to know that the garment was made of the finest materials, and was costly as well as pretty.
She thought of Violet's crisp, fresh costumes, and the limp India muslin suffered in her guileless mind by the contrast. She actually brought out her Sunday calico, with its fine pink dots and two frills on the skirt, and laid it beside the India muslin, anxiously comparing them.
"The calico is the fresher-looking, certainly," she said, turning her pretty head sidewise in bird-like fashion, and eyeing the dresses thoughtfully, "but I am quite sure, from the way Violet looked, she would not like for me to wear that. Mamma's dress is very pretty, if only it were not so limp. I should not dare try to starch it, though. I might make it look worse."
Then she took a little box from the chest and opened it. It contained her dead mother's little store of jewelry.
There were two or three simple rings, a thin gold chain with a locket that held her father's and mother's pictures.
She fastened the chain around her neck and slipped one of the rings—the prettiest one—on her finger.
"I will wear these to the lawn-party," she said to herself. "The ring is very nice—it has such a pretty, shining stone!"
It was a pretty ring, as she said, but Jaquelina, brought up so ignorantly in the lonely farm-house, did not know that the shining little stone was a real diamond.
Charlie Meredith and his hard wife did not know it either. They all thought it was a bright, pretty bit of glass.
There was a motto cut deeply inside the ring over which Jaquelina had often puzzled.
Sometimes she thought she would ask Violet Earle, who had been to boarding-school, to translate it for her, then she desisted from shame at her own ignorance.
It was in her mother's native tongue, but no one had taught the artist's orphan child a line of French.
The question of the party-dress being settled, Jaquelina put away the India muslin and the jewelry, and sat down by the window, leaning her curly head on her slim, brown hand, while she gazed out into the moon-lighted night with her dark, dreamy eyes.
Everything was very still and peaceful. The full moon sailed on in calm majesty through the purple sky, the distant hills were clearly outlined in the brightness, and nearer home a faint, white mist curled over the brook, and the perfume of the lilacs and the roses in the garden below were borne sweetly on the wandering breeze.
Yet after all there was something weird and mysterious in the blended brightness and shadows of the moon-lighted landscape, and the sensitive mind of Jaquelina felt it so.
She shuddered, and her thoughts flew to the outlaw band said to be lurking in the neighborhood and riding off with all the finest horses of the farmers.
She thought of the pursuing party. Her mind pictured vividly the conflict that would ensue when the robbers and their pursuers met, and the capture of the daring chief whom rumor represented as brave and handsome as a demi-god.
"Whoever captures the chief will have two hundred dollars for a reward," the girl said to herself, wistfully. "Ah, if I only had two hundred dollars I would go to boarding-school one whole year! I would study so hard all the time that I would learn as much in twelve months as any other girl would in twenty-four! Then I would not stay at the farm any more. I would go away and earn my own living by teaching, or perhaps I might paint pretty little pictures like papa did, and sell them to rich people who have nothing to do but to be happy."
Two crystal drops welled up into the dark eyes and splashed down upon her cheeks.
She brushed them off impatiently.
"Crying, am I, like a great baby?" she said sharply, to herself. "What good will that do? Will crying get me two hundred dollars and send me to school, and deliver me from the jurisdiction of Aunt Meredith and her cross baby? Oh! that I might be a man for a few hours! I would sally forth and capture the robber-chief, and win the reward!"
Her thoughts having turned in this direction, Jaquelina forgot the lawn-party for awhile, and remained lost in thought, wishing over and over that she might capture the outlaw chief and claim the coveted reward that appeared so large in her longing eyes.
At last, wearied by the duties of the day, the tired head drooped upon the window-sill, the long, black lashes lay upon the warm, pink cheeks—Jaquelina slept and dreamed she had captured the dreaded outlaw chief, and bound him securely with a garland of roses.
Laughing at her ludicrous dream, the young girl woke—someone was shaking her roughly by the arm.
"Lina Meredith, for shame," said her aunt, towering above her, angular and slim, in a striped calico night-dress. "Sleeping in the window at midnight, and the lamp a-burnin' bright, too! Willful waste makes woful want! But I'll not scold you this time. I'm glad you're up and dressed; you must fetch the doctor from town."
Jaquelina rose, stretching her cramped limbs and yawning drearily, only half awake. Mrs. Meredith grabbed a wet towel and deliberately mopped her face with it.
"There, now! I've got you awake," she said, triumphantly. "Did you hear what I said, Lina? You'll have to saddle Black Bess and fetch the doctor from town. Baby's got the cramp—dreadful bad, too!"
Jaquelina, broad awake now, stared in dismay at Mrs. Meredith.
"Why, aunt," she cried, "how can I go for the doctor at midnight? The town is at least a mile and a half from here."
"Only a mile through the woods," answered Mrs. Meredith, quickly.
The young girl shivered.
"Come, come, I never knew you afraid of anything," Mrs. Meredith began quickly; "surely you'll do this much for me, Lina—if not for me, for your poor little cousin Dollie, a-wheezin' her life away, and none to bring a doctor."
But Jaquelina hesitated.
"Aunt Meredith," she said, "the road through the woods is very dark and lonely, and, you may see for yourself, the moon is going down, and then those dreadful outlaws may be lurking in the woods. Is Dollie so very bad? Perhaps she would do until daylight."
"Come," said Mrs. Meredith, pulling the girl by the sleeve, "you shall see."
Jaquelina followed her down stairs to the room where the fat baby lay upon the bed wheezing terribly, while now and then a hoarse, whistling cough echoed painfully through the room.
Jaquelina's heart, always tender to pain, was touched by the sight of the infant's suffering.
"Oh, Lina, will you let the darling die?" cried the frightened mother, whose hard heart could soften, at least, to her own child's suffering. "Surely you'll bring the doctor to little Dollie?"
"Can't I go over to Brown's and send Sambo?" asked the girl, still shrinking from the thought of the lonely midnight ride.
"No, no," wailed the mother, clasping the sick child frantically in her arms, "I'll not trust that negro! I'll trust no one but you, Lina, to go and come in a hurry; I can depend on you to do your best. Oh, for God's sake, Lina, do go for the doctor; no one will hurt you—there's not a sign of danger. Your uncle and them other men have captured the outlaws long before this time of night. Oh, Dollie! Dollie! my darling—I do believe she's dying now!"
Jaquelina waited for no more urging. She ran out of the house with the cry of the frightened, helpless mother still ringing in her ears, and made her way to the stable.
Her uncle had ridden one of the horses. Black Bess, the remaining one,