Chicken Little Jane on the Big John Part 53

"Well, she's coming on at Christmas time for a visit in Centerville, and she's going to take you on to visit Ernest."

"Sherm, truly?"

"That's what she said."

Chicken Little gave an ecstatic hop. "Sherm," she exclaimed presently, a new idea striking her, "I can go to that hop with Carol!"

"Carol?" Sherm sat up a little straighter. "What do you mean?"

"Don't you remember that letter I got from Carol? You don't remember a single thing about it, do you? He wrote to ask me if I wouldn't come on some time and go to a Navy hop with him. He said he was asking me in time so I couldn't promise anybody else."

"It strikes me Carol is getting mighty fresh."

Chicken Little stole a surprised glance at Sherm.

"I don't see anything fresh about that--I think it nice of him to remember me so long. My, I used to think Carol was the most wonderful thing. I hung a May basket to him the last spring we were in Centerville."

"You did? Why, I thought I got yours. Who hung mine?"

"Gertie. I guess she won't mind if I tell--it's been so long."

Sherm whistled. After a little he inquired rather sheepishly:

"Say, Chicken Little, you don't like Carol best now, do you?"

Chicken Little looked up hastily. She was disgusted to feel her face growing hot. "Why, Sherm--I haven't seen Carol for four years. I don't know what I should think of him now." Then, seeing the hurt look in Sherm's eyes, she added: "I guess I'd have to like him pretty awfully well, if I did."

Captain Clarke was gone two weeks and he had added only two facts to those they had been able to piece together. He had accidentally run across an old friend. This friend had supposed him dead all these years, and could scarcely believe his own eyes when he saw him. From him, he learned that his wife had also believed him dead before she would consent to leave New York. This friend told him he had suspected that her money was running low and had offered to help her, but she refused.

He thought, after hearing the Captain's story, that she must have had barely enough left to take her home, and that this explained why she was walking to the wharf instead of taking a hack, the day she was run down.

Sherm stayed on with the Morton's until the following week when he set out with his new-found father to visit his adopted family. Youth recovers readily from its sorrows. It was almost the old Sherm who raised his cap to Chicken Little as the train got under steam and slid away from the long wooden platform.

"O dear!" she exclaimed, "seems to me I haven't done anything this whole year but see somebody off. I think it ought to be my turn pretty soon."

"Have a little patience, Humbug," said her father, "your turn is almost here. It is hard for me to realize how fast my baby is growing up."

Chicken Little liked the sound of those words--"growing up." There was something magical about them. They lingered in her mind for days.

One hot Sunday afternoon late in June, she arrayed herself in an old blue lawn dress of Marian's that trailed a full inch on the floor at every step. She coiled her hair high on her head and tucked in a rose coquettishly above her ear. Highly gratified with the result of her efforts, she swept downstairs in a most dignified manner to astonish the family. Unfortunately the family--Father and Mother, and both pups, were taking a siesta. She went over to the cottage; a profound silence reigned there also. She rambled around restlessly for a few moments, then, taking "Ivanhoe" and a pocketful of cookies, went out into the orchard. It was hot even there. The air seemed heavy and the birds contented themselves with lazy chirpings. She swung herself up into her favorite tree and began to munch and read.

But she did not read long. The charm of the green world around her was greater than the pictured world of the book. Chicken Little fell to making pictures of her own--dream pictures that changed quickly into other dream pictures, as real dreams sometimes do. As she stared down the leafy arcades between the rows of apple trees, she saw an immense ball room hung in red, white, and blue bunting and filled with astonis.h.i.+ngly handsome young men in blue uniforms. Ernest was there. And a tall, curly-headed Adonis, who looked both like, and unlike, the good-natured, plump Carol of Old Centerville days, was close beside her.

But when the supposed Carol spoke, it was certainly Sherm's voice she heard, and it was Sherm's odd, crooked smile that curved the dream mids.h.i.+pman's lips. Chicken Little recognized the absurdity of this herself and laughed happily. A bird on a bough nearby took this for a challenge, and burst into an ecstasy of trills.

"Pshaw," she whispered to herself, "I wonder what it would really be like." She kept on wondering. She felt as if she and the orchard were wrapped about with a great cloud, like a veil, and that beyond this, all the wonderful things that must surely happen when she grew up, were hidden. The twilight was falling before she stretched her cramped limbs and slid down the rough tree trunk. She picked up her neglected book, which had fallen to the ground unnoticed, and said aloud, with a little mocking curtsey:

"Your pardon, Sir Walter, but I made a romance of my own that was--nicer."

Then she tucked the slighted author under her arm and flew to the house before the pursuing shadows. Chicken Little was growing up.

THE END