Chicken Little Jane Part 16

"Alice Fletcher, Mr. Harding."

Mr. Harding suggested that he should find them seats and bring them some supper. He found an empty sofa and Chicken Little settled down cozily between them. Here she rejoiced in unlimited sandwiches and cake and ice-cream until she suddenly remembered her promise to take Katy some wedding cake and started off on a foraging expedition.

Apparently d.i.c.k Harding and Alice did not miss her. They seemed to be having a very jolly half hour together. When Alice rose on the plea of helping Mrs. Morton, d.i.c.k Harding detained her to ask if he might come to see her. He was astonished at the confusion his simple request caused. Alice's face flushed, then turned pale, and her hands trembled as she toyed with her handkerchief. It was a full minute before she replied.

"I--I am afraid you don't understand, Mr. Harding. I am Mrs. Morton's hired girl."

d.i.c.k Harding had not understood and he was very much surprised, but he was too entirely a gentleman to hurt her by revealing it.

"I should like to come, Miss Fletcher,--if it would not embarra.s.s you,"

he said warmly.

Alice seemed troubled. She looked up at him, as he stood there regarding her with friendly eyes.

"I'm afraid it would," she answered. "I should love to have you--but--it wouldn't be best--you understand."

"Yes, Miss Fletcher, I do understand, and I honor you for your frankness, but I warn you I don't intend to let our acquaintance drop.

Good-night."

Chicken Little's foraging was most successful. She secured enough wedding cake to furnish indigestion and dreams for a family of twelve, not to mention samples of other edibles, but she was horribly afraid her mother would see the bulging package in her coat pocket. It relieved her mind to catch Ernest filling his pockets, too.

"I am just taking a little something to the boys," he apologized rather shame-facedly.

Ernest freed his mind on the subject of weddings the following morning at the breakfast table.

"I shouldn't mind the wedding," he said thoughtfully between mouthfuls of buckwheat cakes and syrup, "but what a man wants a girl tagging round all the time for, I can't see."

Mrs. Morton looked horrified, and the doctor looked up from his paper long enough to e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e "What?" Chicken Little took up the cudgels: "I'd like to have Marian round every single minute. I wish she was going to live with us."

"Oh, Marian's all right, but I don't want any girl dearyin' me!" And Ernest relapsed into the buckwheats again.

CHAPTER VII

CHICKEN LITTLE JANE AND d.i.c.k HARDING PLAY PROVIDENCE

"Jane," called Mrs. Morton as the child was starting back to school one noon a few days after the wedding, "go by the postoffice on your way home and ask for the mail. There will probably be a letter from Frank or Marian on the afternoon train."

"I will, Mother." Chicken Little called back, but she came near forgetting it because she had something else on her mind. She never could keep two things on her mind at the same time successfully.

Alice had been very sober ever since the wedding. The night before Chicken Little had found her crying.

"It's nothing, dear. I'm just silly enough to be worrying because I can't be somebody," she told Chicken Little. "If I could only find a way to go to school two years so I could teach! I have been thinking of trying to work for my board, but Mary Miller did that and she had to work so hard she didn't have time to study and she got sick. I don't see how I could pay for my books and clothes either. Perhaps Uncle Joseph would lend me the money if I'd write to him--I could pay it back when I got to teaching. But I can't bear to, after the way he treated Mother.

She wrote to him when Father died asking him to help settle up Father's affairs. He sent her $500 and said that was all he could do for her--that he couldn't spare the time to come here--she could hire a lawyer. Mother never wrote to him again and we never heard from him afterwards. I've been told he still lives in Cincinnati and is very rich. Oh, dear, if I only could get that bank stock money--I wish Mr.

Ga.s.set would hurry up and do something."

Alice poured out her troubles to the child for want of an older listener and Chicken Little sympathized acutely.

She wanted to talk it over with her father but Dr. Morton had been called away some distance into the country to see a patient and had not returned. She relieved her mind to Katy and Gertie on the way to school that morning and they were satisfyingly indignant over Alice's troubles, but had no suggestions to offer.

"Her uncle's an old skinflint--that's what he is. He's awful rich and owns a big stove factory all by himself. Father orders stoves from there. He and Mamma say it's a shame he doesn't do something for Alice when she's his only brother's child."

The matter troubled Jane all day and she was still thinking about it when she started home from school. She was half way home before she remembered about going to the postoffice.

There was a letter from Frank and she was just starting homeward again with it clasped tight in her hand, when someone hailed her.

"h.e.l.lo, Chicken Little Jane, are you postman today?"

It was d.i.c.k Harding.

"Going straight home? I'm going your way then. Here, let me carry your books."

They pa.s.sed a greenhouse en route and d.i.c.k asked Jane if she thought her mother would mind her going in with him a moment.

Chicken Little adored going through the greenhouse. She often stopped outside on her way to school to look at the flowers, but children were not encouraged inside. She wondered what Mr. Harding was going to do with the heliotrope and verbena he was selecting so lavishly. He was having the flowers made into two bouquets, one big and one little. Her curiosity was soon satisfied.

"Will you do something for me, Chicken Little?" he asked, after the stems had been securely wrapped in tinfoil and the bouquets adorned with their circlets of lace paper. "Will you give this to Miss Fletcher with d.i.c.k Harding's compliments?" handing her the big one. "And will you please beg Miss Jane Morton to accept this with my best love?" d.i.c.k grinned as he presented the tiny cl.u.s.ter with an elaborate bow.

Chicken Little was in raptures but the commission to Alice recalled the latter's troubles. Childlike she unburdened herself to d.i.c.k Harding.

She found him a most sympathetic listener.

"Come over here and sit down and tell me all about Alice. I heard something the other day about Ga.s.sett and the stock certificates, but I didn't know Miss Fletcher was the heroine."

Chicken Little's account was a trifle disconnected and liberally interspersed with "Alice says" and "Father says," but d.i.c.k Harding being a lawyer had no difficulty in arriving at the facts. He was vastly interested and asked many questions.

"This uncle's name is Joseph Fletcher and he owns a factory in Cincinnati? That must be the Fletcher Iron Works."

d.i.c.k Harding pondered awhile, whistling softly to himself.

"You say Alice is too proud to write to her uncle because he didn't treat her mother right?"

"Yes, but she wants to go to school awfully--so she can be like other folks." This phrase of Alice's had made a deep impression upon Jane.

"Poor little girl--she's certainly had a rough row to hoe--and all alone in the world, too." d.i.c.k was talking to himself rather than to Chicken Little.

He turned to her again presently after another period of meditation.

"Alice certainly deserves better things of the Fates, Jane, and I've been wondering if you and I couldn't find a way to help her out. How would it do for you to write a letter to this Uncle Joseph and tell him about Alice just as you have told me. I expect it would be pretty hard work for a ten year old, but I could help you. What do you say?"

Chicken Little was overawed at the prospect of writing to a strange man, but she was very eager to help Alice.

"Could I write it with a pencil? Mother doesn't like me to use ink 'cause I most always spill it."

"A pencil is just the thing--it will be easier to erase if you get something wrong. But, Chicken Little, I guess this would better be a little secret just between you and me for the present. I'll tell your mother all about it myself some of these days. Do you think you could write the letter and have it ready by tomorrow afternoon? I'll see you after school and take it and mail it--if it's all right."