Jane Ellen swayed back and forth in the porch hammock, hugging herself with fat arms. All her dolls lay spread out wretchedly on the floor beneath her, she had stripped them of every rag and they had the dejected appearance of victims ready for sacrifice to Baal. “The Choolies are mad!” she sang to herself, “The Choolies are mad!”

It had been a perfectly sensible idea to try and water the flowers on the parlor carpet with her doll's watering pot—those flowers hadn't had any water for an awful long time. But Mother had punished her in the Third Degree which was by hairbrush and Aunt Elsie had taken the watering-pot away and Rosalind and Dickie had put on such offensively virtuous expressions as soon as they heard her being punished that she was mad at them all. And not ordinarily mad—not mad just by herself—the Choolies were divinely incensed as well.

“The Choolies are mad!” she hummed again like a battle-cry “Choolies are dolls and all the Choolies are mad!”

The Choolies were only mad on rare occasions. It took something genuinely out of the ordinary to turn an inoffensive pink celluloid doll with one of its legs off into an angry Choolie. But when they were mad the family had discovered by painful experience that the only thing to do was to leave Jane Ellen quite entirely alone.

“The Choolies are mad, mad, mad!” she chanted end chanted, her plump legs swinging, her mouth set like a prophet's calling down lightnings on Babylon the splendid.

Then she stopped swinging. Somebody was coming up the path—any of the people she was mad at?—no—only Uncle Ollie. Were the Choolies mad at Uncle Ollie? She considered a moment.

“Hello, Jane Ellen, how goes it?”

The small mouth was full of rebellion.

“Um mad!”

“Oh—sorry. What about?”

Defiantly

“Um mad. And the Choolies are mad—they're mad—they're mad—”

Oliver looked at her a moment but was much too wise to smile.

“They aren't mad at you, but they're mad at Motha and Aunt Elsie and Ro and Dickie and oh—evvabody!” Jane Ellen stated graciously.

“Well, as long as they aren't mad at me—Any letters for me, Jane Ellen?” “Yash.”

Oliver found them on the desk, looked them over, once, twice. A letter from Peter Piper. Two advertisements. A letter with a French stamp. Nothing from Nancy.

He went out on the porch again to read his letters, to the accompaniment of Jane Ellen's untirable chant. “The Choolies are mad” buzzed in his ears, “The Choolies, the Choolies are mad.” For a moment he saw the Choolies; they were all women like Mrs. Ellicott but they stood up in front of him taller than the sky and one of them had hidden Nancy away in her black silk pocket—put her somewhere, where he never would see her again.

“Ollie, you look at me sternaly—don't look at me so sternaly, Ollie—the Choolies aren't mad at you—” said Jane Ellen anxiously. “Fy do you look at me so sternaly?”

He grinned his best at her. “Sorry, Jane Ellen. But my girl's chucked me and I've chucked my job—and consequently all my choolies are mad—”