Chapter 5

THE BACK-YARD FURNACE

It was in a more chastened frame of mind, that Chicken Little joined the others in the back yard after her practice hour was over. She had spent so much of the hour wondering what her mother was going to do to her, that the hour had really slipped away rather quickly.

The three boys had the brick part of the furnace all done when she appeared. They were carefully fitting into place the rusty piece of stove-pipe which was the crowning glory of the structure. Katy and Gertie were seated on an old barrel turned over on its side, watching the process. They made room for Chicken Little between them.

Ernest got to his feet after the stove-pipe was snugly set with a grunt of satisfaction.

"Frank said we'd better wait for half an hour before we started a fire to let the mortar dry. The sun's pretty hot. Maybe it won't take quite so long today."

"Let's play tag while we wait," suggested Katy.

"Bet I can roll you girls off that barrel," said Sherm with mischief in his eye.

"Bet you can't."

"I'll help you, Sherm."

"No you don't, Ernest--Sherm said he could--he's got to do it alone."

Chicken Little perked up at the prospect of a tussle. "I'll sit the other way, Katy. You and Gertie brace your feet against the ground--just as hard. Move the barrel a little and I can put mine against the chopping logs; there that's fine."

Sherm was about fifteen feet away and he made a dash to stop these preparations. But the little girls were planted firmly before he could interfere.

He was a stout lad but he found the rolling process more difficult than he had imagined. The other boys hovered around eager to take a hand and offering unasked suggestions.

"Lift up one end--that'll heave them off."

"You said roll, Sherm Dart!" squealed Katy as she felt the barrel gently rising under her.

"That's right, Sherm, you did," put in Ernest who was usually fair.

Sherm disgustedly lowered the barrel, rubbing his hands together preparatory to another shove.

The little girls gloated.

"H-m-m--wasn't so easy as you thought it would be--was it?" jeered Chicken Little.

"You can't do it, Smarty," Katy shied a chip at him.

Gertie kicked her heels against the barrel in glee and said nothing.

"Before I'd let the girls get ahead of me!" Carol and Ernest joined in the chorus of derision.

"Sherm Dart beaten by the girls!"

Sherm gritted his teeth and settled down to business. He pulled--he pushed--he jerked, but the little maids succeeded in maintaining some sort of balance. He couldn't get the barrel over. Finally he had a happy thought. He also braced both feet against the chopping log and giving a sudden shove with all his strength sent the barrel over and the little girls sprawling in all directions at the same time.

There was a chorus of protests from Chicken Little and Katy, but Ernest and Carol acting as umpires declared that Sherm had kept his contract. Furthermore, the boys were eager to light the furnace, dry or not.

To Chicken Little was granted the proud privilege of touching the match to the heaped-up fuel. It took five matches to do the work and when the paper and kindling finally caught, the smoke showed a disposition to pour out the door into their faces instead of puffing decorously up the chimney.

"I don't see what ails the old thing," said Sherman, wiping his eyes and backing off as the puffs came thicker.

"Bet there's a crack some place near the top that spoils the draught." Ernest was a student and strong on reasons.

"Holy smoke! I should say so," reported Sherman, investigating. "Look at the top where the pipe goes in, you could put both hands down through the hole. Carol Brown, I thought you undertook to plaster this darned thing!"

"Well, I daubed on two bucketsful of the stuff--maybe you think it was fun to fill in all those cracks. I can't help it if you fellows left half acre spaces between the bricks so it falls through!" complained Carol, who did not love work.

"Half acre nothing, your stuff was too thin and didn't stick! Here--gimme your bucket."

Sherm stalked off disgustedly and was soon back with a gloriously messy batch of clay which he dashed painstakingly into the crack and into sundry other cracks that his keen eyes discovered.

"When you're doing a job, you might as well learn to do it right--it saves time in the long run," he lectured with an absurd imitation of his father's manner.

"Quit your preaching!" growled Carol.

"Alee samee, Sherm did the business, Carol," retorted Ernest. "Gee, it's going with a whoop!"

And the furnace certainly proved the force of Sherman's words, for the fire crackled merrily.

The children watched it, fascinated, waiting till the embers should be ready for the apples and potatoes.

Katy had a bright idea. "Say, Jane, get your dishes and I'll ask Mother if I can bring over our little table and we'll have a sure enough tea party."

"Oh, shucks, we don't want any doll parties!" said Ernest.

"'Twon't be a doll party--it'll be a people's party," protested Jane.

"Maybe Mother'd give me some spice cakes. She's making some," suggested Gertie tactfully.

Carol, who was a bit of a glutton, pricked up his ears.

"Let the kids have their duds if they want them. It won't spoil the goodies."

"Oh, well, I don't care what they have, but I'm not going to eat from their old doll things," said Sherm, who prided himself upon being above childish things.

"Nobody wants you to, you old cross patch, but you will, won't you, Carol? And I bet Ernest and Sherm'll want to when they see what we've got," and Katy bustled off with fire in her eye, resolved to produce a spread that should make the boys' mouths water.

She dispatched Chicken Little for the dishes with instructions to beg Alice for something for the feast, while she and Gertie foraged at home.

Mrs. Halford was a jolly little woman who readily entered into the child's scheme.

The boys were set to tending the roasting apples and potatoes, and the little girls spread their tiny table daintily with a big towel for a tablecloth and rosebud china about as big as a minute.

One untoward accident occurred before the spread was ready and came near wrecking the whole plan. While the girls were off after more food a plate of tempting cookies disappeared bodily from the table, plate and all, and loud and wrathful were the laments.

"You mean things--you've got to put those cookies right back!"

"You sha'n't have a single bite if you don't!"

The boys grinned sheepishly. The cookies resting joyfully in their barbarian young stomachs could not very well be restored.

"I'll tell Mother on you," put in Chicken Little as a last threat.

"Tattle-tale, much good it'll do you. Here's your old plate, and we've eaten the cookies. Trot along for the rest of your stuff--we won't take any more," said Ernest.

"Well, you boys can't have but one doughnut apiece, now." Katy tossed her head indignantly.

However Katy herself was the first to suggest dividing her second doughnut with the boys when the time came.

Ernest and Sherm had begun to treat the doll's table idea with more respect as one after another tid-bit appeared. Quince preserves settled the matter for Sherm, and Ernest's last objection to doll parties vanished when Alice appeared with a custard pie.

Alice, who had heard Chicken Little's complaint about the way the boys were behaving, found time to linger till the little party was well started to the great improvement of the lads' manners.

"It is customary, Carol, to serve the ladies first," she admonished when Carol made a dive for a coveted dainty ahead of the others.

And when the sugar mysteriously disappeared into Ernest's pocket, she picked up the pie without comment and started for the house. The sugar was immediately restored and order reigned during the rest of the meal. The boys appreciated the girls' truck the more because their own cooking had hardly been a success. The potatoes were half done and the apples tasted alarmingly of ashes. The moment the last morsel had vanished the boys cleared out for the ball field and the little girls looked longingly after them, as they surveyed the messy dishes.

"Let's leave them and go swing," suggested Katy.

Chicken Little sighed.

"Mother'd never let me use them again if I didn't clean them up and put them away."

"Well," said Katy, "I'll take my things home, but I don't think I ought to help you wash yours."

"Why, Katy Halford, you asked me to use them!"

"Never mind, Jane, I'll help you. Katy can just go off if she wants to. 'Twon't take long and I love to wipe," said peacemaker Gertie avoiding a storm.

Katy thought better of deserting and the work was soon done in their very best manner, which, however, did not include washing the inside of the very sticky sugar bowl or gathering up the remains of the impossible potatoes. But Alice saved the day by attending to these small details and Chicken Little was free to worry over the hated patchwork.

"Wisht I could stay out here in the sun for always," she sighed.

"Huh, I don't. There wouldn't be any coasting or skating or candy pulls or----"

"Well, I wisht there wasn't any sewing."

"You don't either. Where'd you get any dresses or hats, Jane Morton?" retorted practical Katy.

"Feathers might be nice," put in Gertie, who loved birds.

"Well, I shouldn't want my clothes fastened on so I couldn't get them off at night," announced Katy decidedly. "And if you were a bird you couldn't read books or play dolls."

"Well," Chicken Little replied unwilling to concede the point entirely, "snakes can slip their skins right off--my father said so--and I don't see why birds couldn't--anyway, I wish little girls didn't have to learn to sew, so there!"

"I don't mind sewing but I hate arithmetic," said Gertie.

"Pshaw, 'rithmetic's easy."

"Bet you wouldn't say so if you saw our problems for Monday!"

"Let's see them."

"Say, Jane, I'll help you with your patchwork if you'll help me with my arithmetic."

"I don't know whether Mother'd let me."

"Ask her if you can't bring it over to our house."

Chicken Little had reasons of her own for being dubious about asking further favors. She did not, however, wish to confide these reasons to her friends.

"I know she won't let me."

"Well, ask her."

Chicken Little shook her head.

"Go on, Jane," Katy insisted.

But Chicken Little was obstinate.

"Why won't you?"

"'Cause she's mad," she confessed finally.

But the Fates favored her. When she went into the house in much fear of the promised punishment, she found her mother had gone out for the afternoon leaving some new patchwork cut out for her. Alice readily gave her permission to take it over to Halford's.

Chicken Little joyfully gathered up her pieces and needle and thread, but instead of running back to the girls, she went to the window looking out into the tree tops thoughtfully. She stood there thinking for several minutes, her brown eyes sober and her forehead puckered into a firm little line. Finally she shook her head and exclaimed regretfully:

"I guess it wouldn't be fair!"

Then she walked soberly back to the girls.

"Mother's gone and Alice says I can, but--but--I guess I oughtn't to, Gertie. I promised Mother I'd do it, you see. But I'll help you with your examples."

"You could do it over at our house yourself."

"Yes, but I think Mother 'spected me to stay at home and she let me off this morning. I guess I won't."

And she was deaf to further argument.

The child squared herself sturdily as the other children climbed the back fence, then walked straight into the house, carefully washed her hands--which would greatly have astonished her mother could she have seen her--and settled herself doggedly down to the patchwork.

The stitches were pretty straggly when her mother came to examine them that evening, but they had been faithfully and painstakingly set with much pricking of awkward little fingers. Her mother conceded somewhat grudgingly that she had worked pretty well.

"I trust you realize how very naughty you have been to destroy your pretty silk pieces and your beautiful hair ribbons," she added.

Chicken Little opened her mouth to retort, but thought better of it and closed it again. Many of the hair ribbons in question had been on the ragged edge and beautiful was a little strong--but discretion was sometimes the better part. She kept her big eyes intently on her mother's face. Her fingers were picking nervously at her apron strings. Mrs. Morton felt that she was making an impression on the child and tried to live up to it.

"I want you to ask your Heavenly Father tonight to forgive you for being so naughty. I have decided to punish you by keeping you at home and not letting you play with Katy and Gertie for a week."

Chicken Little had been perfectly willing to ask God to forgive her for she felt rather mean about spoiling the hair ribbons herself, but this awful sentence of separation from the girls decidedly lessened her penitence.... She didn't think the hair ribbons were worth it. Her brown eyes flashed for an instant but she didn't say anything. Presently, supposing her mother had finished, she started to walk away.

"Jane!"

"Yes ma-am."

"Are you going to ask God to forgive you?"

The child studied a moment then replied shortly.

"No."

"What--come here!"

Chicken Little turned and looked at her mother, then came slowly back.

"Did you understand my question?"

"Yes ma-am."

"What did you mean by saying no?"

Chicken Little swallowed hard to keep up her courage.

"'Cause I ain't."

"Ain't what?"

"Ain't sorry I spoiled the hair ribbons--I don't see any use in being sorry if I've got to stay away from Katy and Gertie a whole week. I guess you wouldn't be sorry if somebody shut you up for a week--you'd be mad!" And Chicken Little, despite several valiant swallows, burst into a flood of tears.