and once more the
purring began and grew louder. Uncle Joseph got fidgety. His friend
watched the lips of the other passengers to see who was hoaxing them.
'It sounds,' he remarked finally, 'as if it came from your overcoat
pocket!'--Uncle Joseph plunged his hand down into his pocket and felt
soft warm fur. The whole car shouted when he drew Poky Pry out.

"I wonder if I told Chicken Little how Poky frightened the Pullman
porter. She was sound asleep in her basket and I put it at the lower end
of the berth, carelessly leaving the cover off. The porter was making up
the next berth to mine. Suddenly I heard a wild shriek, and, parting my
curtains, saw the porter dashing down the aisle with Poky Pry clanging
distractedly to his kinky black head. She had crept out of her basket
and made her way to the berth above the one he was making, to watch him.
When he straightened up she evidently thought his wooly hair some new
variety of mouse and she made a spring for it.

"Tell Chicken Little, Kitty has kept me from being lonesome and is a
great comfort. Uncle Joseph keeps asking questions about Chicken Little.
His girls are all boys and grown up. He was so pleased with her note
thanking him for the ring. He chuckled over her skating adventure for
days. 'Starting out pretty young to straighten up the world, isn't she?'
he remarked."

"Chicken Little Jane is a very rash child, I'm afraid," Mrs. Morton said
as she laid down the letter a few moments later. "I only hope she won't
get into trouble some day on account of it."

"Don't worry, Mother, she always comes out all right."

Jane came up at noon to bring Ernest his dinner--a dinner in which a
generous quarter of the custard pie played an important part. Sherm and
Carol would come right from school she told him. Chicken Little had
established herself as head nurse out of school hours. She felt very
important and amused Ernest with her airs.

The boys were good as their word that afternoon and she met them with a
life-like imitation of her mother's manner, admonishing them not to get
Ernest excited. As a result the boys lumbered in self-conscious and
awkward. Never having paid a sick-room visit before, they were rather
overpowered by Ernest's bandaged eyes and the twilight gloom the doctor
prescribed. So much so in fact, that they nearly defeated the object of
their visit, which was to cheer Ernest up. Indeed they were so stiff and
sympathetic that Ernest gruffly requested th