While Caroline Was Growing

Caroline Was Growing, by Josephine Daskam Bacon

Project Gutenberg's While Caroline Was Growing, by Josephine Daskam Bacon This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: While Caroline Was Growing
Author: Josephine Daskam Bacon
Release Date: November 19, 2006 [EBook #19869]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHILE CAROLINE WAS GROWING ***

Produced by Jacqueline Jeremy, Stephen Hope, Fox in the Stars and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

WHILE CAROLINE WAS GROWING

BOOKS ABOUT CHILDREN BY JOSEPHINE DASKAM BACON
THE MADNESS OF PHILIP MEMOIRS OF A BABY BIOGRAPHY OF A BOY THE IMP AND THE ANGEL SISTER'S VOCATION TEN TO SEVENTEEN
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK �� BOSTON �� CHICAGO �� SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED LONDON �� BOMBAY �� CALCUTTA �� MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO

WHILE CAROLINE WAS GROWING
BY
JOSEPHINE DASKAM BACON
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1911
* * * * *
All rights reserved

Copyright, 1906, by P. F. Collier & Son Copyright, 1907, by the S. S. McClure Co. Copyright, 1909, by the S. S. McClure Co., Benjamin B. Hampton, P. F. Collier & Son, and by the Phelps Publishing Company
* * * * *
Copyright, 1911, by The Macmillan Company
* * * * *
Set up and Electrotyped. Published March, 1911
Norwood Press: Berwick & Smith Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

To S. B. long Caroline's admirer, from J. D. B.

CONTENTS
PAGE
I. AN IDYL OF THE ROAD 1
II. A LITTLE VICTORY FOR THE GENERAL 38
III. THE PRIZE 77
IV. WHERE THIEVES BREAK IN 113
V. A PILLAR OF SOCIETY 158
VI. HIS FATHER'S HOUSE 202
VII. THE PRETENDERS 235
VIII. A WATCH IN THE NIGHT 269
IX. THE ENDS OF THE EARTH 297

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
With a great sweep of her arm, she brushed aside a porti��re and disappeared. 66
"Sh! sh!" he whispered excitedly, "not a vordt! Not a vordt! Mein Gott! but it is marvellous." 74
"What are you doing here, little girl?" he demanded sternly. 118
Caroline danced, bowing and posturing in a bewitched abandon, around the tinkling, glistening fountain. 274
Across the court was a lighted room with a long French window, and in the center of this window there sat in a high, carved chair a very old woman. 282
Caroline was not a hundred yards away, sheltering under a heavy arbor vit?, flat on her stomach. 299

WHILE CAROLINE WAS GROWING
* * * * *
I
AN IDYL OF THE ROAD
Caroline rocked herself back and forth from her waist, defying the uncompromisingly straight chair which inclosed her portly little person.
"Bounded 'n th' north by Mass'joosetts; bounded 'n th' north by Mass'joosetts; bounded 'n th' north by Mass'joosetts," she intoned in a monotonous chant. But her eyes were not upon the map; like those of the gentleman in the poem, they were with her heart, and that was far away.
Out of the window the spring was coming on, in waves of tree-bloom and bright grass; the birds bickered sweetly in the sun-patches; everything was reaching on tiptoe for the delicious thrill of May--and she was bounding Connecticut! It was idiotic. What was a knowledge of the uninteresting limits of her native State compared to that soft fresh wind on her cheek, that indescribable odor of brown earth?
Two fat birds descended with a twitter into a crystal rain-pool, and bathed, with splashes of spray; Caroline's feet itched in her ribbed stockings. A soiled and freckled boy, bare from the knees, whistled by the window, jangling a can of bait, his pole balanced prettily on one ragged shoulder. As he reached the puddle, a pure inconsequence of good feeling seized him, and he splashed deliberately in it, grinning around him. Caroline mechanically bent and unbuttoned the top button of her stout boots. He caught her eye.
"Where you going?" she called through the glass.
"Oh, I d'no--anywheres, I guess!" he answered invitingly. "Want to come?"
"I can't. I have to go to school," she said shortly.
"And so ought he--you ought to be ashamed of yourself, calling through the window to that Simms boy!" cried a disgusted voice. Caroline twitched her shoulder spitefully.
"A great girl like you, too! Why, he's no better than a common tramp, that boy," proceeded the voice. "Look at his clothes!"
"Nobody wears good clothes to go fishing," Caroline grumbled. "I wish he had mine!"
"Fishing! He never wears them anywhere. He hasn't got them to wear. And he'd be glad enough to get yours, I can tell you."
"He wouldn't do any such thing! He told me Saturday he'd rather be a dog than a girl; he'd get more use of his legs!"
There was a scandalized silence. Caroline waited grimly.
"What are you doing?" said the voice at last. "Studying my jography," she replied.
"Well, mind you do, then."
"I can't, if everybody talks to me all the