Chicken Little awoke the next morning with a bad taste in her mouth. She was ashamed to have grieved her mother by her escapade the day before, especially when Mother was undertaking all this extra trouble for her happiness. But she just couldn’t be sorry she had gone to the Captain’s! It would be something to remember all her life. She gave a skip of delight every time she thought of all the lovely things–and the Captain’s stories. No, she simply couldn’t be sorry, but she knew Mother expected her to be sorry. Of course, she might have got acquainted with him some other way, but her father wouldn’t promise ever to take her. “Little girls have too much curiosity for their own good, Humbug,” was all she had been able to get from him.

63She could see at breakfast that Mother expected an apology right away. She could feel disapproval in her good morning and in the way she kissed her. Mother seemed to have the power to make her feel mean and guilty all over. But she wasn’t sorry.

While they were doing the dishes she told her mother all about the wonderful things she had seen. Mrs. Morton listened in silence. She was waiting. Chicken Little heaved a deep sigh and did her best.

“I know it was wrong for me to go without permission, Mother, and I won’t ever do it again, and I think you’re just beautiful to ask Katy and Gertie. I’ll help every single bit I can; you see if I don’t.”

“I am glad you realize you did very wrong, little daughter, is that all you have to say to me?”

Chicken Little looked at her Mother and fidgeted. Her Mother returned her look gravely. Still she couldn’t–it would be fibbing if she did. The silence became oppressive.

“You may go and pick a couple of quarts of cherries, Jane.” Mrs. Morton handed her the tin lard pail, searching her face once more.

It was a glorious June morning and Jane enjoyed picking cherries. Marian saw her and came too, establishing Jilly comfortably at the foot of the tree with a rubber doll and the two pups as companions. Jilly was usually a placid baby and she settled down contentedly to trimming up her doll 64with dandelions. Buz, the indolent, curled himself at her feet and was asleep inside of five minutes, but Huz looked up longingly into the tree at Jane. He seemed to be racking his doggish brain as to the best method of reaching her. He kept making little futile leaps, whining impatiently. Finally, he stood up on his hind legs, planted his fore paws against the tree trunk, and barked dolefully. Jane bent down and mischievously dropped a cherry into his open mouth. Huz choked, sputtered, and after a first rapturous crunch, hastily deposited the acid fruit upon the ground. He looked reproachfully at Chicken Little.

“There now,” said Marian, “he’ll never trust you again.” Marian raced Chicken Little with the cherry picking and the pails were filled far too soon.

“Jane,” said Marian as she started reluctantly back to the house, “if Mother Morton can spare you this morning to help me pick them, I believe I’ll get some cherries to put up–there are loads ripe this morning.”

“I’d love to, Marian, I’ll take these in and find out if she’ll let me.”

She came flying back in a jiffy with two big milk pails. “All right, Mother says I may help you till noon.”

They had a merry morning. The cherry trees lined the lane which was also a public road, and several 65neighbors going by, stopped to exchange a few words. Mr. Benton had his joke, for he discovered Jane swinging up in the topmost boughs and reaching still higher for certain unusually luscious ones that eluded her covetous fingers.

“Well, Mrs. Morton,” he said, addressing Marian and ignoring Chicken Little, “that’s the largest variety of robin I’ve ever seen in these parts. I ’low you must have brought the seed from the east with you. You wouldn’t mind if I took a shot at it, I ’spose. ’Pears like birds of that size must be mighty destructive to cherries.”

“Why Mr. Benton, we shouldn’t like to have you kill our birds; we’re attached to them. But you are mistaken, that isn’t a robin, it’s a Jane bird–they’re rare around here.”

Mr. Benton laughed and Chicken Little got even by hurling a big cluster of cherries at him. She aimed them at his lap, but they struck him full in the face to her great glee.

“Well now, them Jane birds ain’t so bad.” Mr. Benton remarked eating the fruit with a relish.

The morning sped by briskly. Jilly created a diversion by getting her small self into trouble. Marian noticed that she was picking something off the tree trunk and putting it into the pocket of her little ruffled apron.

66“What’s Jilly getting there? Can you see, Chicken Little?”

Chicken Little twisted and peered until she could take a good look.

“Why–Marian, I do believe it’s ants! The silly baby–they’ll bite her!”

Marian hurried down the tree to rescue her offspring, but not before Jilly set up a wail of anguish.

“Naughty sings bite Jilly!” she moaned, as her Mother picked the small tormentors off her arms and bare legs. But Jilly was a sunny child, and as soon as the pain eased, found a smile and remarked complacently: “Ants bite Jilly, too bad, too bad!”

Jane braced herself firmly in a crotch where the red fruit was thickest and picked mechanically while she unburdened her mind of the previous day’s doings. She chattered about her adventures till Marian could have repeated every word of her conversation with the Captain off by heart, and might have given a pretty accurate inventory of his possessions, or at least the portion of them that Jane had seen.

Marian was genuinely interested and liked to hear Chicken Little tell it all, but she wondered what Mrs. Morton had thought about the junketing.

“But what did your Mother say, dear?” she asked finally.

“She didn’t like it.”

67“You didn’t suppose she would, did you?”

“N-o-o, but—”

“Yes?”

“I’d never have got to go if I’d waited for permission. And, Marian,” Chicken Little thought it was time to change the subject, “how do you make yourself be sorry, when you ought to be and aren’t?”

Marian wanted to laugh but she saw her young sister had not intended to be funny. She half guessed the situation.

“Why Jane, I hardly know, the old monks used to set themselves penances to atone for their sins.”

“Did it make them really sorry? Do you think?”

“Well, yes, I should think it must have or they would never have had the courage to persist in them. Some of their penances were terribly severe such as beating themselves with knotted ropes, but I shouldn’t advise anything of that kind for you. You might try to make up for your fault in some way. Perhaps you might give up something you like very much.”

Jane didn’t say anything more, and it was a day or two later before Marian learned the effect of her words.

The cherry trees seemed full as ever after they had gathered all Marian wanted, and in the evening 68Mrs. Morton sent Chicken Little out to gather more for her. Marian offered to help her, and they were once more aloft in the trees when Mr. Benton returned from town.

Marian began to chuckle.

“He’ll think we have been here all day, Jane. Let’s pretend we have.”

“Dear me, Mr. Benton, back so soon. How fast the day has gone by. Jane, you must be awfully hungry, I hadn’t realized it was so late!”

“Well now, time does beat everything for speed, but I ’lowed it was only our ancestors as lived in trees all the time, Mrs. Morton. But then I’ve heard they’re gettin’ a lot of new-fangled ways down east. You’re not calculatin’ to take up your residence permanent like in them cherry trees, are you? In case you don’t want the cottage any more, we might move it over to our place just by way of being neighborly.”

“Thank you, Mr. Benton, I’ll remember your kind offer if it ever gets in our way.”

It was not many days before the mail brought a grateful letter from Mrs. Halford, and ecstatic ones from the girls, in reply to Mrs. Morton’s invitation. They would arrive with Alice and Dick and Sherm–for Sherm was coming, too–on the twentieth.

“Not quite two weeks. That means we must begin 69getting ready at once, and you mustn’t think because we have a servant coming, that you won’t need to help, Jane. One girl can’t do all the work for so many.”

Chicken Little had not yet said she was sorry and her Mother was inclined to be severe with her in consequence. Mrs. Morton was rather worried, too, because she had seemed pale and listless for two or three days past. But when she asked if she were not feeling well, Chicken Little had replied carelessly:

“Why, I’m all right, Mother.”

They were hurrying to get the cherry crop cared for before the guests arrived. There would be enough to do after they came to keep them all busy without preserving, Mrs. Morton declared. One day when they were seeding cherries, Marian noticed that Jane was eating only half ripe ones.

“What on earth are you eating those green things for, child?”

“Oh, just for fun.”

“Well, it won’t be funny if you eat many of them. I don’t know anything that’ll make you sick quicker than green cherries. They’re acid enough when they’re ripe.”

In the hurry of preparing for the guests, Marian thought nothing further about it. Three nights later, Dr. Morton wakened them at midnight to 70know if they had any calomel. “The Chicken’s mighty sick,” he said. “And I gave the last I had to Mrs. Benton for Mary.”

“I haven’t any calomel, Father, but I’ve got some castor oil,” Marian announced after some rummaging.

“That will go hard with Jane, she loathes it. But she’ll have to take it down I guess. I can’t imagine what ails her, she’s vomiting and has a high fever.”

A sudden recollection struck Marian.

“Maybe she has been eating too many cherries.”

“Ripe cherries oughtn’t to hurt her and they have been plentiful so long, I shouldn’t think she would overeat.”

“But I have seen her eating them when they weren’t ripe. I believe that’s what is the matter.”

“I hope so, I have been a little afraid of scarlet fever from her symptoms.” Dr. Morton seemed relieved.

When he had gone, Marian turned to Frank. She had been recalling several things and putting them together.

“Frank Morton, I verily believe that sister of yours has been eating half-ripe cherries for a penance.”

“Penance? Penance for what?”

71“I don’t exactly know, but it has something to do with her running off to the Captain’s.”

“Well, if she’s as big a fool as all that, she deserves to have a stomach ache. Come, stop worrying.”

“But Frank, I’m afraid I’m the guilty one who suggested the idea to her. Goodness knows, I hadn’t the slightest intention of doing so.” Marian related the whole story.

“Well, Sis certainly gets queer notions into her head, but it may not be that at all. Anyhow, you can’t do anything to-night.”

A very pallid forlorn girl sat propped up in bed about noon the following day. The family, having discovered that it was nothing serious, and that she had probably brought it on by her own folly, were not sympathetic.

“What in the dickens did you want to go and eat green cherries for, when there were pounds and pounds of ripe ones going to waste on the trees?” Ernest’s look of utter disgust was hard to bear.

Frank came over with a handful of minute green walnuts interspersed with a choice assortment of gooseberries and green plums. He handed them to her with a mocking bow.

“In case you get hungry, Jane dear, I thought you might like to have a supply of your favorite food on hand.”

72Chicken Little thanked him spunkily, but when the door closed behind him, she buried her face in the pillow and mourned over her woes.

“I’ll never try to be good again, so there, and I think they’re all just as mean as can be.”

Her pillow was getting wetter and wetter and her spirits closer and closer to zero, when the door gently opened and her father came in.

“Why Chicken Little, crying? This won’t do. Come, tell Father what’s the matter. You aren’t feeling worse, are you?”

Chicken Little swallowed hard and did her best to choke back the tears, but the tears having been distinctly encouraged for the past ten minutes had too good a start to be easily checked. Dr. Morton gathered her into his arms and patted and soothed her till she was able to summon a moist smile.

“Hurry up and tell me now–a trouble shared is a trouble half cured, you know.”

But Jane was beginning to be ashamed of herself.

“’Tisn’t anything really, Father, only I feel so miserable and the boys have been making fun of me.”

“Making fun, what about?”

“Oh, just because.”

“Because what, out with it!”

“Because I ate green cherries, I suppose.”

73“How long have you been eating green cherries, Jane?”

Jane considered. “Most a week.”

“And don’t you think you deserve to be laughed at, for doing anything so foolish?”

“They didn’t laugh at the monks–and they were grown-up men.”

“Monks? What do you mean?”

“Well, I just guess they did things that made them sicker than eating green cherries, and I didn’t intend to eat enough to make me sick, but I didn’t seem to feel any sorrier and—”

Chicken Little was stopped suddenly by the expression of her Father’s face. He tried to control himself but the laugh would come.

When they had finally got the atmosphere cleared a bit, he inquired, still smiling: “Well, are you sorry now you went to the Captain’s?”

Chicken Little smiled back. “No, I’m just sorry I grieved Mother.”

“Then suppose we vote this penance idea a failure and don’t try it again.”

The next few days were so full of the bustle of preparation that Jane soon forgot she had ever been sick. Further, there was a mystery on foot. She and Ernest had not been permitted to accept the Captain’s invitation to dinner for reasons that Mrs. Morton explained with great care to that gentleman. 74But he had been invited over to dine with them. He was so reserved and silent on this occasion that both Mrs. Morton and Marian wondered at Jane’s devotion. After dinner he had a long conversation with Dr. Morton and Ernest, and no teasing on Jane’s part could extract the faintest hint from either as to what it had been about.

“It was about your going to Annapolis, I bet.”

“Nope, you’re a long way off. We didn’t say anything more than what you and Mother heard. Father’s written to the Senator. Captain Clarke got him all enthused; the Captain promised to write, too. But you’ll never guess the other, and it has something to do with you.”

She had been obliged to give it up. Ernest had at length reached an age where he could keep a secret. The exasperating part of it was that Ernest was going over to Captain Clarke’s every evening and she wasn’t asked once. Her pride was so hurt that she came near being sorry she had gone to see the Captain.

The evening before the fateful twentieth, Mrs. Morton and Jane were putting the last touches on the guest room and on Chicken Little’s own chamber, which Katy and Gertie were to share with her. The fresh fluted muslin curtains were looped back primly. The guest room had been freshly papered with a dainty floral design, in which corn flowers 75and wheat ears clustered with faint hued impossible blossoms, known only to designers. Both rooms looked fresh and cool and summery, and the windows opening out upon the garden and orchard revealed also wide stretches of the prairie beyond.

Chicken Little had re-arranged the furniture in her room at least six times in a resolute endeavor to get the best possible effect. Marian had given her a picture of some long stemmed pink roses that exactly matched the buds in her paper, and she had begged an old Japanese fan from her Mother. This was decorated with a remarkably healthy pink sunset on a gray green ground, and she tacked it up as a finishing touch above the bed lounge, which was destined to be a bone of contention among the three little girls for the remainder of the summer. At first, not one of the three was willing to be cast upon this desert island of a bed, while the other two were whispering secrets in the big walnut four-poster. But as the weather grew hotter, the advantages of sleeping alone became more obvious, and they had to settle the matter by taking turns. Chicken Little did her very best to make her room look like the Captain’s, but except for her Mother’s concession of fresh white paint, a few books on a shelf, and the foreign fan, it was hard to detect any very marked resemblance. Nevertheless, both 76Jane and her Mother gazed upon their handiwork with deep satisfaction.

“If Annie will only stay through the summer,” sighed Mrs. Morton, “she is doing so beautifully I’m afraid she is too good to last. But I mustn’t borrow trouble. If she deserts me, our guests will simply have to turn in and help, much as I should dislike to have them.”

Ernest came in to supper so excited he could scarcely eat. And Dr. Morton seemed almost as interested as Ernest. They were both provokingly mysterious during the entire meal, talking over Jane’s head in a way that was maddening.

“Does Mother know?” she demanded finally.

“Yes, Mother knows. I tell Mother when I go over to the Captain’s.”

“Come now, Ernest, that’s been harped on enough,” said Dr. Morton, then turning to Jane, “If you will hurry and get into your riding habit, you shall know the secret inside of an hour.”

It is needless to say that Chicken Little hurried. The black brilliantine skirt fairly flew over her head, the border of shot in its hem rapping her rudely as it slid to the floor with a thud.

“Oh dear, I don’t see why girls have to wear such long, silly skirts and ride sidewise. It’s so much easier to ride man fashion.”

77Chicken Little had been permitted to ride man fashion since she had been on the ranch, for safety. But this year her Mother had decided she was too big to be playing the boy any longer, and had made her a woman’s habit, in spite of the Doctor’s protests. Jane was proud of the smart basque with its long tails and glittering rows of steel buttons, but she loathed the skirt.

Hastily fastening the black velvet band with its dangling jet fringe below her stiff linen collar, she cast a parting glance at the oval mirror and skurried down the stairs, not stopping for such small matters as gloves or cap or even her beloved riding whip. Ordinarily, she would not have budged without the whip. It had been a Christmas present from Ernest and was her special pride. Her haste was in vain. After one look, her Mother sent her back for cap and gloves. “I do not wish my daughter riding around bareheaded like some half wild thing. I don’t mind on the ranch, but when you go abroad I wish you to look like a lady.”

Jane reluctantly obeyed and did not forget the whip this time. She had a fresh rebuff when she reached the road. Instead of the saddle horses she expected to see, Dr. Morton and Ernest were awaiting her in the spring wagon.

“Why, Father, I thought you said to put on my riding habit.”

78“Maybe I did. But never mind, jump in just as you are–it’s getting a little late.”

Chicken Little tried to hide her disappointment. She maintained a dignified silence until they had crossed the ford and Ernest turned the horses toward Captain Clarke’s.

“Oh, it’s at the Captain’s.”

Her Father nodded and began talking carelessly to Ernest about putting the orchard in clover another year. She saw there was no information to be had, until he was good and ready. Ernest took pity on her, however, just as they turned in the Captain’s gate.

“In exactly six minutes you will see the surprise, even if you don’t recognize it.”

Chicken Little strained her eyes half expecting to see Katy or Gertie appear miraculously from nowhere. But they drove into the door yard without seeing anything or anybody that could possibly interest her.

The Captain was evidently watching for them. He helped her down from the high wagon in his most courtly manner.

“I am consumed with curiosity to know whether you have pried the secret from that brother of yours. I infer you have from your habit.”

“Habit?” Jane glanced swiftly from her host’s 79quizzical face to her father and Ernest. They were both smiling broadly.

“Oh, it has something to do with horses–but—”

She never finished the sentence for at that moment one of the Captain’s hands appeared leading two Indian ponies, one a red and white piebald with a red blanket and side saddle; the other a black, with a blue blanket and a Mexican cowboy’s equipment.

She stared at the horses and she stared at the Captain, not daring to even hope what had come into her mind. Captain Clarke took the bridle off the piebald and held down his hand for her foot.

“Up with you, I have persuaded your Father to share his children with me to the extent of letting me add something to your pleasure and that of your guests this summer. Ernest, however, has left me his debtor in advance, for he has not only finished breaking these in to the saddle but he has tamed the worst-tempered colt on the place as well.”

Chicken Little was surprised to see Ernest flush up and stammer.

“Why I–I don’t want any pay–I was glad to help out a neighbor.”

“That’s exactly what I am going to ask you to do, my boy, to help me out by letting me feel that I can still give somebody pleasure. The ponies are part of a large herd I bought in Texas and cost 80me very little. I have argued this all out with your Father and he understands my feeling. Won’t you be as generous?”

Before Ernest could answer, Chicken Little reached up both arms and gave the speaker a hug and a kiss that were warm enough to satisfy the loneliest heart. Before she had released him, Ernest had hold of his hand and was trying to make up by the vigor of his hand shake for the embarrassing dumbness which had seized him.

Dr. Morton relieved the situation by remarking mischievously:

“Ask Ernest who’s surprised now, Chicken Little?”