Chicken Little thought she could. d.i.c.k Harding gave her as explicit directions as he dared as to what she should say and what she should not say.

"Remember," he added, "not a word of this to anybody--especially to Alice."

"I've probably got the youngster all mixed up with my fool directions, but I believe she might make an impression on the uncle, if she can only write as she talks. Bless her tender heart. Alice has one loyal friend if she is small," he said to himself, unconsciously echoing Dr. Morton's words.

Jane left Alice's flowers in the entry while she delivered the letter to her mother, but she displayed her own tiny bouquet proudly.

"See what Mr. Harding gave me!"

"Mr. Harding is very kind. Was that what made you so late?"

"Yes, we stopped at the greenhouse to get them only I didn't know he was going to get them--he just asked me did I think you would mind if I went in there with him?"

"Well, that was very nice--run along--I want to read my letter."

Chicken Little hurried away to take Alice her flowers.

"For me--really?" demanded Alice: "Who sent them?"

"He asked me would I give them to you with d.i.c.k Harding's compliments."

The telltale "he" brought a flush to Alice's face and the "d.i.c.k Harding"

deepened it. Alice buried her face in the fragrant posy to hide her embarra.s.sment.

"Did he say anything else, Jane?"

"Yes, he said a lot. He asked me how you were and how Mamma was and if we'd heard from Frank and Marian. He asked a lot about you----" Chicken Little caught herself just in time. "I think he's just beautiful--don't you, Alice? He walked most home with me and carried my books just like I was grown up."

Alice hugged her by way of reply.

"I told him how you always saved the cookies for us and how Ernest said you were a brick and he said Ernest evidently had good taste."

Alice's face took on several expressions during this recital. When the child had finished, she said gravely:

"Jane, will you do me a favor?"

Chicken Little was all attention.

"Please don't say anything to the other children about what Mr. Harding said or about his sending me the flowers--will you?"

Chicken Little readily promised though she looked disappointed. Secrets certainly had their drawbacks.

She put her own flowers in water in one of her mother's best vases, a white hand holding a snowy tulip, and stood off to admire the effect.

Then she soberly hunted up a box of tiny, vivid pink note paper, a much treasured possession, and set to work on the fateful letter. She selected the front parlor as the most secluded spot she could find, the front parlor being reserved for visitors and holidays exclusively.

Its quiet this evening was almost oppressive. Jane stared about the room seeking inspiration in vain. The old mahogany chairs upholstered in hair cloth were shinily forbidding. The globes of wax flowers and fruit that adorned two small marble-topped tables, were equally cold. The silver water set suggested ice water, and the "Death of Wesley" which monopolized one wall could hardly be considered cheering. Chicken Little shivered, and taking an ottoman, ensconced herself between the lace curtains at a west window where the late autumn sunshine was still streaming in.

She sucked the end of the lead pencil meditatively.

"Dear Mister Fletcher," she wrote, then paused for ideas. Writing to Uncle Joseph she found was a very different matter from talking to d.i.c.k Harding. She was picturing Mr. Fletcher in her mind as a cross between a minister and a tame bear. But Jane had a bulldog grit that carried her over hard places, and she finally achieved a letter.

"I guess you'll be surprised to hear from me but I want you to know bout Alice. Katy says your too stuck up is why you wont do anything for Alice. But I thought mebbe you didn't know how bad she wants to go to school. Alice says if she could go to school for two years she could teach and pay you back. She wants to go to school so she can be like other people stead of being a hired girl. Shes an awful nice hired girl.

Mother says so and shes prittiern anybody cept Marian. I love her heaps.

Alice says mebbe you would lend her the money only she wont ask you cause you weren't nice to her mother and she got awful hungry sometimes.

Please Mister Fletcher let Alice go to school cause she cries when she thinks n.o.body's looking. She thought mebbe she could get some money for the cestificuts but Mr. Ga.s.sett wont do anything.

"Respeckfully, "JANE MORTON.

"P. S. Most everybody calls me Chicken Little. P'r'aps you'd better put it on the letter.

"J. M."

It took two entire sheets of the pink note paper to hold this communication. Chicken Little opened and shut her cramped hand regarding it with mingled satisfaction and distrust. She had never written so long a letter before. She went back to the beginning and painstakingly dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's, a detail she had omitted in the first writing. She deliberated for some time over the spelling. The lines, too, ran up and down hill in an undignified manner. But Chicken Little with a regretful sigh over these deficiencies, folded the sheets and put them into the tiny envelope, copying carefully the address d.i.c.k Harding had written out for her. Then she consigned the precious missive to the depths of her Geography so she wouldn't forget it on the morrow.

It was duly delivered into d.i.c.k Harding's hands, inspected and approved.

"Bravo, Chicken Little, I couldn't have done better myself."

Jane's brown eyes had been fixed wistfully on his face while he read and she wriggled painfully when he smiled once or twice during the perusal.

"I'm 'fraid it's pretty crooked--p'raps I could change the spelling if you'd tell me. I didn't like to ask anybody 'cause they'd want to know what for."

"We won't change a single thing, Chicken Little. See, we are going to seal it right up--and pop--here goes the stamp. This letter shall be on board that seven-thirty train for Cincinnati or my name isn't d.i.c.k Harding. And if it doesn't make Mr. Joseph Fletcher do some thinking, why he is a little meaner than most men--that's all."

Affairs in the Morton family went on uneventfully for the next ten days.

Chicken Little was busy in school and Mrs. Morton much occupied with preparations for Christmas.

Ernest was full of certain Christmas schemes of his own to the decided detriment of his lessons. He had purchased a scroll saw and patterns, and was firmly resolved to present each individual member of the family with his handiwork. Some of the designs he had selected were exceedingly intricate and hard on the eyes, but he was not to be dissuaded from using them and he toiled away all his spare moments at the fancy brackets and towel rack. He had great difficulty in concealing the various pieces from the persons for whom they were intended. He got so cross about it that it soon became a family habit to cough loudly, before approaching his room on any errand whatsoever.

The little girls soon caught the Christmas fever also. Alice helped Jane with her mother's present, a book-mark on perforated cardboard done in shades of green silk, which Chicken Little regarded as a great work of art. She fussed away happily over it, tormenting Alice all the while with guesses as to what her mother was to give her. She had exploded the Santa Claus fiction two years before.

"Alice, do you s'pose she will get me that wax doll? There's a perfect dear down at Wolf's. It has blue eyes that shut--and real hair--oh, it's just as yellow. I never saw such yellow hair, but Mr. Wolf said it was really hair. Oh, do you think she'll get that for me? Alice, I wish you'd just tell her that's what I want."

A few days later she rushed in pink with excitement.

"Alice, it's gone! Do you s'pose Mother got it? Katy says she thinks Grace Dart's mother bought it for her. I'm going to ask Sherm. Maybe he'd know. Oh, I do hope Mother got it!"

Another source of excitement was the Sunday School cantata to be given Christmas eve, in which Jane and Gertie were both to have the parts of fairies and Sherm a small role. The little girls trotted obediently back and forth to rehearsals, proud to be in it, but Sherm was in open rebellion, the said rehearsals taking away most of his time with the boys. Katy scoffed openly at the fairies, not having been asked to be one herself.

"Pooh, you won't look like fairies if you do have a lot of spangled tarlatan. Fairies are just as tiny and they have weenty mites of feet!"

and Katy pointed this last remark by a withering glance at Chicken Little's feet which were beginning to be much too big for the rest of her, and were encased in stout boots with tiny copper rims on the toes which she heartily loathed. Dr. Morton had insisted upon these as being the only proper foot-gear for children in winter, and many were the jibes Jane suffered from her schoolmates because of them. Katy and Gertie wore lovely b.u.t.ton boots, shapely if not sensible.

"You don't need to talk, Katy Halford, my feet aren't much bigger than yours, and I'm going to wear my white shoes and Miss Gray said I'd look lovely, so there!"

Katy, who was swinging on the gate looking down on her small sister and Chicken Little on the sidewalk outside, took three entrancing swings before replying:

"Well, maybe, but Miss Gray don't look so awful nice herself and your hair isn't a speck curly and I never did see a fairy with straight hair."

Jane was sure she had, and Gertie said pretend fairies didn't have to be exactly like really fairies, but Jane was troubled and resolved to consult Alice immediately.