Chicken Little Jane on the Big John Part 52

When the express package arrived, Sherm took it straight to Jane.

"You open it," he said.

Chicken Little took his knife and cut the string and folded back the paper wrappings carefully. It seemed some way as if she were meeting Sherm's mother.

The quaint little old-fas.h.i.+oned garments were musty and faded. A frock of blue merino braided in an elaborate pattern in black lay on top.

There was a cape to match, and a little cloth cap. Beside these lay a funny pair of leather boots with red tops--almost like a man's--only, oh, so tiny!

Chicken Little hardly knew whether to laugh or cry at these.

"Oh, Sherm, did you ever wear them? How you must have strutted! I can fairly see you."

Sherm smiled and took them up tenderly. Did he, too, feel as if there were another presence haunting these relics of his childhood?

The tiny yellowed undergarments came next, all made by hand with minute even st.i.tches. A pair of blue and white striped knitted stockings was folded with these, and last, at the bottom, a little pasteboard box appeared, containing a ring, a brooch, and a flat oval locket on a fine gold chain.

Sherm examined the ring first. Inside was inscribed William-Juanita. May 1860.

The brooch contained a lock of dark hair under a gla.s.s; the whole set in a twisted rim of gold. The locket held miniatures of a white-haired man and woman with foreign-looking faces. Both Sherm and Chicken Little looked these over in silence. Presently Sherm sighed, then laid the trinkets all back in Chicken Little's lap.

"I don't see anything there that could help much," he said hopelessly.

Chicken Little slowly folded up the little garments and laid them neatly back in their wrapping. Her brow was puckered into a frown.

"I am trying to think where I have heard that name Juanita--some place lately. I don't remember ever to have known anybody by that name. It's Spanish, isn't it?"

"I guess so, but what you're thinking of is the song, 'Juanita.'"

"Oh, I expect it is. Sherm, do you mind if I take these things over and show them to Captain Clarke? He said he would like to see them when they came."

"No, take them along. If you'll wait till I get the feeding done, I'll go with you."

"All right, let's take Calico and Caliph."

Sherm lingered out on the veranda while Chicken Little displayed the contents of the package to the Captain. He examined each little article of clothing for some identifying mark.

"There doesn't seem to be anything to help on those," he said, disappointed. "Let's have a look at the jewelry."

Chicken Little unwrapped the ring from its layers of tissue paper, and handed it to him. Captain Clarke took it, regarded the flat golden circle intently for an instant, then turned it to read the inscription.

A pained cry broke from his lips. Chicken Little glanced hastily up to find him holding the ring in shaking fingers, staring off into vacancy.

"Juanita!" he whispered, "Juanita!"

Chicken Little touched his hands in distress.

"Captain--Captain Clarke, what is it?"

He looked down at her with a start. "I--it is----Excuse me a moment, Chicken Little."

He walked into his bedroom with the ring still in his hand and closed the door.

Chicken Little waited and waited, not knowing whether she ought to go and tell Sherm what she suspected. It seemed too strange to be possible.

And if it were true, surely Captain Clarke would want to tell him himself. Perhaps she oughtn't to be there. She rose softly and slipped out to Wing in the kitchen. After a time she heard Sherm get up from his seat on the veranda step and go into the library. Immediately after, the bedroom door opened and she heard the murmur of voices. She left a message with Wing and running quietly out to Calico, untied him, and rode home in the twilight.

"You needn't ever say again, Ernest Morton," she wrote to her brother the next evening, "that E. P. Roe's stories are too goody-goody and fishy to be interesting. He can't hold a candle to what's happened to the Captain and Sherm. I have to go round pinching myself to believe it is really so. I am almost afraid I will wake up and find it isn't, still. Do you remember the picture of the Captain's little boy that looked like Sherm? Well, it was Sherm. I can hear you say: 'What in the d.i.c.kens?' So, I'll put you out of suspense right away. The Captain's boy was not dead, only lost, and he is Sherm or Sherm is he, whichever way is right--I'm sure I don't know. You see the Captain went off on a long voyage and got s.h.i.+pwrecked and was gone ages and ages. And Juanita's father and mother were way off in California--they used to be Spanish.

That's what made them so foreign-looking in the locket picture. Well, n.o.body knows exactly what happened. When the Captain got back to New York and hunted up the boarding house where she had lived, they said she had left six months before to go to her parents in California. Captain Clarke wrote to California and found that her father was dead and her mother hadn't heard from Juanita for months, and didn't know anything about her coming home. Wasn't it dreadful? He paid detectives to hunt her up, but they never found the slightest clue. The Captain thought she'd gone off and left him on purpose--that's what made him such a woman-hater--and so sad all the time. You wouldn't know him now. He looks like Merry Christmas all the year round. You should see him gaze at Sherm. Marian says it makes her want to cry, and Mother says it is the most wonderful manifestation of Providence she has ever known. It seems to me Providence would show more sense not to muddle things up so in the first place. Sherm is as pleased as can be to find he really is somebody, and he's awfully fond of the Captain, but you see he'd got so used to loving the Darts as his own folks that he can't get unused to it all of a sudden. He choked all up when he tried to call Captain Clarke 'Father,' and the Captain told him not to. There's heaps more to tell, but Mother has been calling me for the past three minutes."

"No wonder Sherm feels dazed," said Dr. Morton two evenings later, watching the boy, who was making a vain pretense of playing checkers with Chicken Little.

He was so heedless that she swept his men off the board at each move, to Chicken Little's disgust. Sherm usually beat her when he gave his mind to the game. Presently, she picked up the board and dumped the checkers off into her lap.

"A penny for your thoughts, Sherm."

"I was just wondering if Captain--Father--would find out anything more in New York."

"How long will he be gone?"

"I guess that depends on whether he gets track of anything new. After he comes back we're going to Chicago to see--Mother."

"Oh, I am so glad. It will make you feel a lot better to have a good visit with them all."

"Yes, and he told me I might buy back the old home for her if she wants it--if I'd only known last week, she needn't have sold the place. And the Captain--Father--says he will give me some money to put out at interest so she'll have enough to live on comfortably. He says he owes her and Father a debt he can never repay for bringing me up."

Chicken Little was thoughtful. "Sherm, he seems to have plenty of money, maybe you can go to college and to the Beaux Arts, too."

"He said I could have all the education I wanted."

"Will you go to college next year?"

"Yep."

"O dear, it will be awful here unless Mother lets me go to Centerville."

"Don't fret, she is going to."

"How do you know?"

"She told Marian so last night."

Chicken Little got to her feet and shot two feet into the air with a whoop of joy. "Goody! Goody!! Goody!!!"

"Save a little breath, Jane. I know something better than that. Promise you won't tell--your mother would skin me if she knew I were giving away her cherished plans."

"Don't be afraid, she just wants me to act surprised, and I can do it a lot better if I know about it before hand."