Now some of the children think that I have been "making up" Chicken Little, and that there is no such a being. A few weeks ago, after I had been talking to a great church full of people, there came up to me a very sweet little girl.
"Do you write stories in The Little Corporal?" she asked.
When I told her I did, she looked up, and asked, earnestly, "Well, is there any real, live Chicken Little?"
Now there may be others of the great army of The Little Corporal that want to know whether there is any "real, live Chicken Little." I tell you there is. If you could see her merry mischievous face; if you could see her when she stands up on my shoulders like a monkey; if you had heard her, yesterday, explain that God could see in the stove when all the doors were shut; if you could see how she always manages to do what you don't want her to do, and then find a good excuse for it afterward; you would think there was a live, real "Chicken Little." If you could have seen the old, funny twinkle in her eye, when I found her with the stereoscope, you would have thought she was a real, live Chicken, sure enough.
"Now, then, you've got to tell me a story," she said.
"'Got to' don't tell stories."
"Well, p'ease tell me one, then."
"Yes," said Sunbeam, peeping in, "about the Great Panjandrum himself."
"Ah! you little mink," I said, "how did you get hold of my secret?"
"Why, I knew it all the time."