Chicken Little Jane on the Big John Part 19

"I'd show him if I were you, Jane," advised Mamie the experienced.

Chicken Little needed no urging, but she was in doubt how to proceed.

"My, I wish I was awfully beautiful and grown up. I'd make him fall so many billions deep in love with me he couldn't squeak." Jane felt positively vindictive whenever she thought of Sherm's patronizing tone.

She had neglected to mention to the girls the little conversation that had preceded her remark to Sherm. She didn't consider it necessary to tell everything she knew.

Mamie t.i.ttered. "Pooh, you sound as if you had been reading Sir Walter Scott. They don't do things that way nowadays. When I was in town last winter at school I had lots of boys gone on me, and I'm not a raving, tearing beauty either."

Mamie looked as if she expected her guests to contradict her, but they were too much impressed with her conquests to do anything so rude. A little disappointed, but finding their absorbed expressions encouraging, Mamie preceded to retail her adventures. Boiled down, these were mainly a box of candy and various walks taken at recesses and noons, with an occasional escort to a party. They were sufficiently thrilling to the others, who had never been permitted even such mild forms of dissipation.

"My, wouldn't I catch it if Papa ever caught me walking with a boy!"

Katy painted the paternal wrath with a real relish. It seemed to furnish an adequate excuse for her having nothing to relate and put her on a little pinnacle of superior breeding as well. Her parents looked after her. It was only more ordinary people who permitted their daughters to run about at fifteen.

Mamie was keen enough to realize this and she promptly resented Katy's patronizing tone.

"Oh, Pa would have been mad, too, if he had known. But I was staying with my aunt. She didn't care what I did, just so I was on time to meals and didn't run around after dark."

Katy was determined to keep up her end. "We used to have wonderful times at the church oyster suppers. One night last winter Dr. Wade--you don't remember him, Chicken Little, he's only been in Centerville about a year. Well, he took me in for oysters and bought me candy and three turns at the grab bag. And he is a grown-up man--he's been a doctor for over two years."

Katy would hardly have told this story if Gertie had been there. She neglected to mention that Dr. Wade had kindly included Gertie and five other young girls in these courtesies. Or that he had remarked to Mrs.

Halford that he loved to be with children because he missed his own brothers and sisters sadly. But Gertie was not present to mar the effect of this story with further particulars. Mamie began to rack her brain for forgotten attentions worthy to be cla.s.sed with this superb generosity. Poor Chicken Little was hopelessly out-cla.s.sed. Nothing more thrilling than being singled out in games and Blackman at school had happened to her.

"Grant Stowe said you had the prettiest eyes of any girl here to-night.

I heard him tell Jennie Brown so when she asked him whether he liked blue eyes or brown best. She is the awfulest thing--always fis.h.i.+ng for compliments."

This was generous of Mamie, for Grant was the one who had pa.s.sed her by so recently. But Katy's eyes were also distanced and Mamie had been very much thrilled by hearing that Ernest might go to Annapolis. Further, he had chosen her twice that evening. She felt amiably disposed toward Ernest's sister.

When the tales of past glories were exhausted, the conversation grew intermittent, being punctuated by frequent yawns. They were just on the point of dropping off to sleep when Mamie suddenly opened her eyes and sat up in bed with a jerk.

"Music! Don't you hear it? I shouldn't wonder if some of the boys were out serenading. Oh, I do hope they'll come here."

Katy and Chicken Little listened breathlessly.

"It is!"

"Yes, and it's coming nearer."

All three hopped out of bed and crouched down by the window. The moon was setting, but there was still a faint radiance. The strains were growing more distinct.

"I bet it's Grant Stowe and his two cousins from the Prairie Hill district. They are staying all night with him and are going to the picnic to-morrow. Don't you remember that red-headed boy?"

"It sounds like a banjo and guitar," said Katy. "Oh, I do love a guitar.

It always makes me think of 'Gaily the troubadour.'" Katy gave a wriggle of delight at this romantic ending to the night's festivities. She was already planning to tell the girls at home about the wonderful serenade.

The tinkle tinkle of the thin notes grew stronger and clearer and they found that a third instrument, which had puzzled them, was a mouth organ.

"I didn't suppose anybody could really make music with a mouth organ, but it goes nicely with the others." Chicken Little, like Katy, was more excited over the serenade than the party. It seemed so delightfully young ladyfied.

The trio had one awful moment, for the music seemed to be dying away and still there was no human in sight. Suddenly it stopped altogether. They listened and waited--not a sound rewarded them.

"I think it's downright mean if they've gone by." Mamie's tone was more than injured.

The words were hardly out of her mouth when a stealthy foot-fall came directly beneath their window, and guitar, mandolin, and mouth organ burst forth into "My Bonnie," supported after the opening strains by half a dozen boyish voices.

The boys had crept in so close to the wall of the house that the girls had not discovered them. The young ladies ducked at the first sound, and hastily slipped their dresses over their night gowns so they could look out again.

"O dear," said Mamie, "I almost forgot my curl papers."

They were arrayed in time to reward the serenaders with a vigorous clapping of hands, Father and Mother Jenkins joining in from the window of their bedroom downstairs.

"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" floated up next, followed by "Over the Garden Wall," which, if not choice, had the distinction of being sung in New York, as Grant Stowe proudly informed them.

It was three o'clock past, before they finally settled down in bed once more. Faint suggestions of dawn were already apparent.

"It's not much use to go to bed, Father always gets up at six," mourned Mamie.

A brilliant idea struck Katy. "Suppose we stay up all night. Grace Dart said she did once when her father was so sick, and she said it was the most wonderful thing to see the sun rise when you hadn't been to bed at all."

This proposal met with instant favor. They clambered out of bed and lit the small oil lamp, wrapping themselves in quilts and petticoats impartially, for the air was growing chilly. The next three hours were the longest any of the three had ever known. In spite of fortune telling, and a thrilling story which Mamie read in tragic whispers, the minutes shuffled along like hours. Yawns interrupted almost every sentence and much mutual prodding and sharp reproaches were necessary to keep their heavy eyes open. They were too sleepy to care whether the sun rose in the usual sedate way or pirouetted up chasing a star. In fact, they forgot all about the expected sunrise. They wanted just two things--sleep and something to eat.

The call to breakfast was even sweeter than the serenade had been.

Father and Mother Jenkins were concerned at their jaded appearance.

"Seems like parties don't agree with you young ones none too well. I reckon we won't have them very often," Father Jenkins remarked tartly.

His own eyes smarted from loss of sleep.

"I don't believe you ought to go to the picnic this afternoon if you are feeling so played out," Mother Jenkins added. "Your Ma will think I haven't taken good care of you. It was them good-for-nothing boys a-coming that wore you plumb out."

Generous cups of strong coffee--a luxury not permitted to either Chicken Little or Katy at home--woke them up and they got through the morning nicely. Not for worlds would they have missed that picnic.

But even the coffee could not carry them through the afternoon. They were the b.u.t.ts of the entire party on account of their dullness and heavy eyes.

Ernest expressed his disgust with his sister openly. "Well, I think Mother'd better keep you at home till you're old enough not to be such a baby." Jane had been nodding in spite of herself.

"Looks to me as if you girls had stayed up all night!" exclaimed Grant Stowe.

Mamie roused enough to retort: "Well, I guess you didn't get any too much sleep yourself."

"We can keep awake if we didn't. But if it has this kind of effect on you, we'll leave you out the next time we go serenading."

It had been arranged that they should catch fish for the picnic supper.

The girls had brought a huge frying pan and the b.u.t.ter and corn meal to cook them in. As soon as the teams were cared for, the boys got out fis.h.i.+ng tackle and bait and the party broke up into small groups for the fis.h.i.+ng. Grant Stowe offered to help Chicken Little with her line. She found this courtesy on his part embarra.s.sing, for Katy and Mamie exchanged looks, and she was so utterly sleepy, that she would have preferred Ernest or Sherm so she wouldn't be expected to talk. Chicken Little had gone to school with Grant the preceding winter. He was always a leader in their school games and a great favorite.

Grant found a snug place beside a deep pool that promised catfish at the very least, and might be expected to yield a few trout. He made her comfortable on the spreading roots of an elm growing upward with difficulty from a steep bank. Grant smiled at her as he handed her the rod and tossed the baited hook into the stillest part of the pool.

"There, you ought to get a bite soon. This is one of the best places on the creek for catfish. Say, what did you girls do to yourselves that you are so used up to-day? You didn't take a five-mile walk or anything after we left, did you?"

Jane laughed. "Don't you wish you knew?"