"With Mamie Jenkins. The Jenkins family are hardly as refined as I could wish for your a.s.sociates; still they are good religious people, if they are plain, and Katy and Gertie might enjoy going to a country party."

"A party? O Mother, please let us go."

"I don't mind so much your coming to the party, but they want to have you stay overnight and attend a picnic some of the young people are getting up for the next afternoon."

Katy was as eager as Jane for the festivity and Mrs. Morton was at length persuaded to pocket her scruples and permit the girls to accept Mamie's invitation. Ernest and Sherm were also delighted at the prospect of a frolic. They were to take the girls over and leave them for the night, returning the next afternoon for the picnic, which was to start from the Jenkin's farm.

But when the day of the party arrived, Gertie backed out, begging to be left at home with Mrs. Morton. The thought of meeting so many strangers frightened her.

"I doubt if she would enjoy it. She would be the youngest one there--most of them will be from fourteen to twenty. The neighbors live so far apart, they have to combine different ages in order to find guests enough for a party."

At first, Chicken Little would not hear to Gertie's remaining behind, but finding that she would really be happier at home, stopped urging her. Jane and Katy were soon joyfully planning what they should wear.

They were to go in their party frocks, each taking another dress along for the morning and the picnic. Jane was to wear Alice's gift. Katy had a dainty ruffled muslin with cherry-colored sash and hair ribbons.

"I was afraid I wasn't going to have a single chance to wear it here,"

she remarked navely.

The boys were busy shining their shoes, and performing certain mysteries of shaving with very little perceptible change in their appearance.

Ernest felt that he could not possibly go without a new necktie, but as no one was going to town before the event, he had to content himself with borrowing one from Frank.

It took the combined efforts of Marian and Gertie and Mrs. Morton to get the revellers dressed to their satisfaction. Gertie waited on the two girls as patiently as any maid. Marian was in great demand by the boys to coax in refractory cuff b.u.t.tons and give a "tony" twist to the ties.

"Is tony the very latest, Ernest?"

"That's what Sherm says. Just make the bow a little more perky, can't you, Marian? I don't want to look like a country Jake."

"Ernest, you are just the boy to go to Annapolis; you are so fussy about your clothes."

"Golly, I hope I do get to go. Father hasn't heard from the Senator yet, but he may be away from home."

Sherm was struggling with his tie, getting red and hot in the process.

He had just tied it nearly to his satisfaction, when he carelessly gave it a jerk and had it all to do over again.

"Caesar's Ghost!" he exclaimed vengefully, "what do they make these things so pesky slippery for?"

Marian laughed and Sherm colored in embarra.s.sment over his outburst.

"Please excuse me, but this is the fifth time I've tied the critter."

"Let me try." Marian turned him to the light and had the bow nicely exact in no time.

The girls found their source of woe in their hair. Katy, having learned that most of the young people would be older than themselves, decided to put her hair up, and look grown up, too. Mrs. Morton was horrified and made Katy take it down. Katy, though rebellious, dared not oppose her hostess openly. She contented herself with taking a handful of hair pins along and putting it up after she reached Mamie's. To be sure the heavy braids piled upon her small head looked rather queer, especially with her short skirts, which she could not contrive to lengthen. But Katy made up for this defect by an unwonted dignity, and actually persuaded a majority of the people she met that she was sixteen at the very least.

Country folk gather early and they found the fun well started when they arrived. The Jenkins family had come to the neighborhood about a year before from Iowa.

The farmhouse was new and rather more pretentious than most on the creek. Lace curtains with robust patterns draped the windows in fresh-starched folds. A green and red ingrain carpet covered the floor, while the entire Jenkins family--there were four olive branches--done in crayon by a local photographer, adorned the walls. It would be more truthful to say, adorned three walls. The fourth was sacred to a real oil painting in an unlimited gilt frame, which had come as a prize for extra subscriptions to the St. Louis _Globe-Democrat_. Mrs. Jenkins regarded this treasure almost with reverence. "I do think it is real uplifting to have a work of art in the house, don't you, Mrs. Brown?"

she had been heard to remark to a neighbor who failed to notice this gem. The family bible and a red plush photograph alb.u.m rested on the marble-topped table, usually placed in the exact center of the room.

To-night, it was pushed back against the wall to make more room for the games.

Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins were rigid Methodists and would not tolerate any such worldly amus.e.m.e.nt as dancing. Kissing games were subst.i.tuted, and if, as the Jenkins believed, these were more elevating, they were certainly coa.r.s.er and rougher than the dancing would have been.

Mamie had attended the Garland High School for one year and had acquired different ideas. She would have much preferred the dancing, but her parents were firm. Mamie deemed herself a full-fledged young lady at fifteen. Her highest ambitions were to have "style" and plenty of beaux.

Ernest and Sherm had to find a place to tie the horses. They lingered also a moment at the pump to wash the leathery smell of the harness from their hands--a fastidious touch that would have subjected them to much guying if the other boys had seen them.

So Chicken Little led Katy into the crowded room, unsupported. There was no hall or entry and they were plunged directly into the thick of the party. Many of the country lads and la.s.ses were her mates at the district school and greeted her cordially, eyeing Katy, however, with frankly curious stares. Mrs. Jenkins relieved her embarra.s.sment by taking them upstairs to remove their wraps. She introduced herself to Katy before Jane could get out the little speech of presentation her mother had urged her not to forget, since Katy, being a stranger, should be made to feel at home as quickly as possible. Chicken Little hated introducing people and had been dreading the ordeal, but kindly Mrs.

Jenkins took Katy by the hand and presented her to the whole roomful at one fell swoop.

"This is Miss Katy Halford, young folks, and I want you all to introduce yourselves and see that she has a good time or she'll think you are a lot of green country jays who haven't any manners."

"King William was King James's son" was in full swing. The young folks made places for the two girls in the ring and promptly drew in Ernest and Sherm as soon as they entered. The lilting tune was sung l.u.s.tily while the supposed victim in the center, a handsome lad of sixteen with bold, black eyes and dark curls, surveyed the girls, big and little, with an evident enjoyment of his privileges.

Several of the older boys interrupted their singing to give him advice.

"Take the city girl, Grant, buck up and show your manners." "Bet you knew who you'd choose before you left home." "Don't let on that you don't know which girl you want--Mamie's biting her lips already to wash off that kiss."

The boy returned or ignored this badinage as he saw fit.

Mamie, however, was indignantly protesting that he needn't try to kiss her. Grant looked in her direction and smiled as the fateful instant arrived. Indeed, he started toward her, then mischievously whirled around and seizing Chicken Little, who was whispering to Katy that Grant was Mamie's beau, kissed her with a resounding smack.

Chicken Little was taken so unawares that she had time neither to blush nor to protest or struggle, as was considered etiquette on such occasions. She didn't even try to rub it off, as was also customary. She just looked at him with such a funny mixture of surprise and dismay that everybody roared, including Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins and some of the older neighbors who had come in to see the fun.

"Here, Chicken Little, you need practice," and "Chicken Little acts as if she didn't know what kisses were. You'll have to have a rehearsal beforehand next time, Grant!" "Why, Grant? What's the matter with the rest of us?" These comments were open and noisy.

Ernest took all this coa.r.s.e bantering at his young sister's expense good-naturedly. He knew no offence was intended. He had been present at a number of these rural frolics. But Sherm, town-bred and unaccustomed to this form of amus.e.m.e.nt, was distinctly displeased both at the kiss and the talk. He got Chicken Little off to one side as soon as he could.

"Say, Chicken Little, don't let the boys kiss you."

Chicken Little looked concerned. "I don't like them to, Sherm, but I can't help it if I play--and they'd think I was awfully stuck up and rude if I refused."

"Does your mother know they have this sort of games?"

Chicken Little made a little grimace. "Don't go and be grown-up and horrid, Sherm. Everybody does it here. They'll stop this pretty soon and play clap in and clap out or forfeits."

Her big brown eyes were lifted so innocently and sweetly that Sherm couldn't say any more, but he felt a curious desire to fight every time a big boy so much as stared at Jane.

"She's such a kid!" he explained the feeling to himself, "and Ernest isn't looking after her at all."

Katy entered into the romping heart and soul. Katy was playing young lady. Her pink cheeks and laughing eyes and little flirtatious ways were very popular with the boys--so popular that Mamie was vexed because many of her mates seemed to have eyes only for the city girl, as she called her behind her back.

Mamie eased her mind by treating her special friends haughtily. She got even with the recreant Grant by choosing Ernest the very first time in Post Office. She even put some of the girls up to boycotting the boys who were hanging round Katy, for one entire game, persuading them to choose Ernest and Sherm alternately till the others were jealously wrathful without being quite sure whether it was accident or conspiracy.

Considering his scruples about kissing, Sherm submitted most meekly. He had the grace to color when Chicken Little remarked carelessly: "It wasn't so bad as you thought it would be, was it, Sherm?"

"Oh, it's different with boys," he retorted loftily. "Little girls like you don't understand."

"Little girls! I suppose you think yourself a man grown. You needn't feel so big because you're most seventeen. I heard d.i.c.k say a boy of seventeen wasn't really any older than a girl of fifteen, because girls grow up quicker. So there, you're not much more than a year older than I am!"

Sherm's "little girl" rankled not only that evening but for weeks afterwards. She told Katy and Mamie in strict confidence after they had gone upstairs that night.