Chicken Little Jane.

by Lily Munsell Ritchie.

CHAPTER I

ALICE AND THE SIEGE OF ACRE

"Chicken Little! Chick-en Lit-tle!"

The three little girls in the fence corner looked up but no one responded.

"Chicken Little _Jane_!" The voice was a trifle more insistent.

The little girl in the blue gingham dress and white frilled pinafore looked at her small hostess reproachfully.

"Why don't you answer, Jane?"

"'Cause I'll have to go in. She'll think I don't hear if I keep still."

"Ja-ane!--I want you!" The voice was several notes higher and betrayed irritation.

"She's getting mad," said the little girl in the pink dress and white frilled pinafore--sister to the blue dress. "You'd better go--she's leaning out the window and she'll see us in a minute." Katy Halford was facing the house and her facts agreed with what Jane Morton knew of her mother's ways.

She got to her feet reluctantly.

"Yes-m, I'm coming!" she yelled in a shrill treble. "You come, too, girls," she added in a lower tone. "Maybe she won't make me stay if I have company."

"All right--let's tell her about Alice." Katy jumped up quickly.

Gertie Halford followed suit.

The two small sisters were as like as possible in dress and as unlike in disposition. They were always immaculately starched and neat with their thick brown hair parted in front and braided into smooth tight braids ending in bows the exact shade of their dresses. These bows were a constant source of envy to Jane Morton, because they never seemed to drop off or hang by three hairs as her own invariably did.

Gertie Halford was a gentle little mouse of a girl with soft hazel eyes, who loved pretty things and hated anything rough or boisterous. Her sister Katy's gray eyes, on the contrary, were shrewd and keen, as was their small owner, who could be relied upon to take care of herself and have her own way on all occasions. The sisters were nine and eleven respectively, and Chicken Little not quite ten.

Jane Morton or Chicken Little Jane, as she had been nicknamed while a toddler, because she was always teasing for the story of "Chicken Little," was usually described as all eyes. Her slim, active legs, however, were also a very important part of her anatomy. But her eyes easily held the center of the stage--big and brown and wondering, they had a way of looking at you as if you were the only person about. Her straight brown hair was swept back from her face by a round rubber comb and tied atop her head with a ribbon for further security. Despite these precautions, it usually looked as if it needed brushing. Her clothes, too, were p.r.o.ne to accidents because of her habit of roosting on picket fences or tree branches. Today, however, she was almost as spick and span as Katy and Gertie. She had just been through the painful process of cleaning up after dinner.

The children burst into Mrs. Morton's bedroom without the ceremony of knocking, too intent upon the news they had to tell, to inquire what Mrs. Morton wanted.

"Say, Mother," Chicken Little began jerkily with what breath was left from running upstairs, "Alice says she used to live in this house when she was a little girl!"

Mrs. Morton paused in adjusting the folds of black lace around her plump shoulders and stared at her small daughter in astonishment.

"Alice--in this house--a servant-girl--nonsense! Dear me, I hope she isn't untruthful; she seemed so promising."

"But she says her father used to own this house--she says they weren't always poor, and she never 'spected to have to be a hired girl. Yes, and Katy says she remembers when the Fletchers lived here and they used to have a lot of company--didn't you, Katy?" Katy nodded importantly.

"Yes, Ma-am, my mother says it's a shame Alice has to go out to work.

She says it would break her mother's heart, only she's dead and doesn't know it."

"And her father's dead, too," broke in Gertie, anxious to add her quota, "but she's got an uncle and aunt that ain't dead--they live a long way off in Cincinnati, but they're so stuck up they won't do anything for Alice."

"Well, never mind now, I'll investigate this some other time," Mrs.

Morton replied absently, still fussing with her lace. Tiny beads of perspiration were standing out on her flushed face--she kept dabbing them away with her handkerchief.

It was a hot day for late September and Mrs. Morton found tight corsets and a close-fitting silk dress trials to Christian fort.i.tude. But she was a resolute, dignified lady who knew her duty to her church and to society and did it, regardless of her own comfort or her family's.

"But, Mother, aren't you sorry for Alice?"

"My dear, I didn't call you in to talk about Alice. I want you to play quietly with your dolls this afternoon like little ladies. Remember to keep your dress clean, Chicken Little, you have to wear it again tomorrow afternoon. I don't want to come home and find it all stained and torn off the belt as I did yesterday. And don't forget to be polite to your guests. Kiss me good-by now, and run along."

The children, a little disappointed over the meager effect of their sensation, obediently filed out.

They collected the dolls and ensconced themselves under a spreading maple in the fence corner to play house, but dolls somehow seemed tame.

"I thought she'd be more s'prised," ventured Katy after a few moments, as the trio watched Mrs. Morton sweep down the front walk to the gate, the shimmering folds of her gray silk dragging behind her.

"My, I wish I had such a grand dress," said Gertie, changing the subject.

"Your mother's got a lot of dresses, hasn't she?"

"Yes, heaps, but I don't want any old silk dresses. I hate to be dressed up, you can't climb trees or nothing, and your mother always tells you to be a little lady. Bet I won't be a little lady when I grow up."

"Why, Chicken Little _Jane_, you'll have to be!"

"Sha'n't either--Mother says I'm the worst tomboy she ever saw and I'll disgrace my family if I don't look out. I don't care if I do--I think it's fun to be something different. Maybe I'll be a circus-rider." Jane swung her unfortunate doll about by one arm to emphasize her decision, and smiled defiantly.

Katy refused to be impressed.

"Pooh, you never saw a circus-rider--you said yesterday your mother'd never let you go to a circus. I've been to six, counting the one Uncle Sim took us to in the evening."

"I don't care, I've been to see the animals--and I just guess I did see circus-riders, too, in the parade!"

"Well, you'd have to dress up if you were a circus-rider 'cause they have lots of fussy skirts and spangles and things--only they aren't very clean most always. I saw one close to once. I'd rather have a lace shawl and a beautiful watch like your mother's," put in Gertie.

"I don't care, I like horses and I just hate dolls they're so pokey,"

retorted Jane recklessly, rather floored by so much wisdom. "Let's play our children are all taking a nap and go and get Ernest and do something lively."

Katy p.r.i.c.ked up her ears at the mention of Ernest's name, having no brothers herself, she considered boys extremely interesting. She promptly threw her cherished Rowena under a heap of doll clothes, and was on her feet in an instant calling, "Come on."

Gentle little Gertie eyed her half undressed doll child ruefully.

"'Tisn't nice to leave them this way. You girls go on and I'll put Minnie's nighty on and tuck her in."

Chicken Little shoved both doll and doll clothes unceremoniously into the fence corner and was after Katy in a flash. Gertie lingered not only to tuck away her own doll but to rescue the neglected playthings of the others, and to put each doll child carefully to bed, with sundry croonings and caresses. Then she followed slowly to the house.

Katy and Jane were already having troubles of their own. Ernest, who was four years older than Jane, was deep in a book and deaf to all coaxing and persuasion on the part of his gypsy-sister and her friend. He was stretched on the floor in the embrasure of the dormer window, nursing his face in his hands, his near-sighted eyes fairly boring into the pages. He was a lanky, sober-faced boy with a trick of twisting a lock of hair as he read that resulted in its perpetually hanging down in his eyes to his great annoyance. The boy liked to be ship-shape and he made manful attempts to let it alone. He plastered it down with bay-rum till the family begged for mercy from the smell. It was even on record that he once went so far as to dab it with glue with painful consequences.