Chicken Little Jane Part 33

"I guess I know three," Chicken Little had been thinking.

"I bet you don't--where?"

"Oh, Katy, ladies don't bet," interrupted Mrs. Halford reprovingly.

"I just forgot, Mumsey, but all the girls most, say it--you're so very particular."

"You'll be glad I am some day, I hope."

"Maybe, but I--I'm not just now. And anyhow Jane doesn't know where I'm going to hang my baskets."

"I do too, but I'm not going to tell."

"You don't either--you're 'fraid to tell 'cause you don't!"

Katy was crowding the truth pretty close. Chicken Little started to protest again when Gertie came to the rescue.

"You're going to hang one for Miss Burton--I heard you say so--and one for Cousin May, aren't you?"

"Maybe I am and maybe I'm not. Perhaps I haven't decided."

"You are too, Katy Halford, you said you were."

"I s'pose I ought to hang one for Miss Brown," sighed Jane. "I don't want to very bad--she's been awful cross--and Marian. I'm going to give her the prettiest one I have. I wish I could send Alice one."

"How is Alice getting on?" asked Mrs. Halford.

"All right. I guess she's learned a lot--she says she stays up till ten o'clock every night studying. Her aunt Clara gave her a pretty new dress--and a new coat. Her aunt's going to take her to the seash.o.r.e with them this summer, maybe. I wish I could go to the seash.o.r.e."

"I've been to the lakes--that's most like the seash.o.r.e, isn't it, Mother?" Katy boasted.

"A little. But you haven't told us about the baskets, Katy. Where are the other four going? I'm getting curious myself."

Katy looked up at her mother's teasing face.

"I'll tell you, Mumsey, but I sha'n't tell the girls." Katy jumped up and whispered something to her mother.

"There, there, dear, you tickle my ear and I didn't half hear."

Katy put her mouth close to her mother's ear and hurriedly mumbled six names.

"That'll do--it feels as if you were exploding firecrackers in my ear. I guess I got them all."

"I heard, too," piped Chicken Little and Gertie almost in concert.

"You didn't either!" Katy looked up indignantly.

"I did, too. You said Miss Burton and Cousin May and Marian Morton and Papa and Grace Dart and Ernest--so there!" Gertie reeled off the names almost as quickly as Katy had.

"Gertie Halford, I think that was real mean of you to tell."

"I heard them all but Ernest, anyhow," Chicken Little said quickly.

"Jane Morton, if you ever tell Ernest I'm going to hang a May basket to him, I'll never speak to you again."

"You don't need to get so mad--I wasn't going to tell, but I just guess you told on me--and----"

"And what?" demanded Katy icily.

It had been on the tip of Chicken Little's tongue to add, "and you thought you were awful smart, too," but she suddenly remembered Mrs.

Halford's presence and she didn't want to be a tattle-tale.

"Nothing," she finished lamely, and was deaf to further questioning.

The Fates favored Chicken Little and Gertie for Miss Brown suddenly decided to have a May Day hunt for wild flowers for her room instead of waiting for the usual June picnic.

They started out at nine o'clock Sat.u.r.day morning. It was an ideal spring day--not a cloud in the sky and the suns.h.i.+ne so warm that coats and jackets were shed long before they reached the woods. Some of the plum trees were out in bloom, and purple and yellow crocuses were opening in a number of the yards they pa.s.sed.

"We'll surely find a few spring beauties and yellow violets," said Miss Brown hopefully.

There was only a faint glimmer of green on twigs and brown earth as they came into the timber and, for a time, the little band searched in vain.

But Miss Brown showed them where to look in sheltered places and under protecting leaves. Johnny Carter found the first--a little bunch of spring beauties fragile and exquisite. After showing them proudly to "Teacher" he shyly slipped them into Chicken Little's basket.

They found the flowers more plentiful as they penetrated deeper into the woods. Gleeful shouts of discovery grew more and more frequent as they swarmed up and down the creek banks, over fallen logs and through the underbrush, merry and chattering as the squirrels themselves. Chicken Little counted seven blue-birds and Gertie ten, besides one brilliant cardinal that flashed by like a flame, whistling joyously.

Chicken Little's basket filled quickly for Johnny's sole interest in the flowers was apparently the pleasure of finding them, and he gave most of his spoils to her. Most, but not quite all. He had a little pasteboard box in his pocket into which he occasionally tucked a particularly choice spring beauty, carefully moistening its stem in the creek first.

Chicken Little got so many that she generously divided with Gertie when noon came, and Miss Brown called her flock together. She showed the children how to preserve the flowers by wrapping their stems in damp moss and packing them carefully in the boxes and baskets.

The ground was voted too damp for the picnic lunch so "Teacher" aided by the bigger boys searched till she found a great fallen tree, whose trunk and spreading branches accommodated her thirty chickens nicely.

The girls lined up along the trunk as near Miss Brown as possible, but the boys perched aloft, sitting astride some crotch or forked branch with their dinner pails hung conveniently on a twig nearby.

Doughnuts and sandwiches and apples went from grimy hands to eager mouths with a rapidity that astonished even Miss Brown despite her ten years of teaching. She had brought a big box of bright colored stick candy to top off with. One thoughtful boy gratefully started three cheers for Miss Brown by way of the thanks most of the children forgot.

The hearty cheering of the shrill young voices went far to repay her for the morning's trouble, and warmed her heart much more than the stiff little "I've had a nice time, Miss Brown," "Good-bye, Miss Brown,"

which the more gently-bred children conscientiously repeated at parting.

Chicken Little turned to look back at the teacher's plain face as they left her at the school-house gate.

"I don't mind hanging her a basket now--she--she didn't act mad a bit today."

She went straight over to Marian's to display her treasures.

"Oh, the lovely woodsy things! I wouldn't have believed there were so many out--how I love them!" and Marian sniffed the wild-wood fragrance hungrily.

"Oh, I do hope I'll be well enough to go hunt them soon. Bring your baskets over here, Chicken Little--Katy and Gertie too, and let me help you fill them--I'd love to."

Jane had something on her mind. She wanted to lay it before Marian but shyness overcame her whenever she opened her mouth to mention it. She hung round Marian's chair restlessly till Marian discovered that she wanted something and helped her.