“Yes, I don’t know but you’d best do it this afternoon. Burn a pretty wide strip. And we ought to run a guard on the west from that field of winter wheat to the county road. If a fire ever got in there, it might come down on the house.”
Chicken Little spoke up. “May I go, too, Frank? I love to watch you.”
“You will be in school, but you can come home that way if we are still at work. You can easily see the smoke. We won’t try it if the wind rises, and I believe it is going to.”
“Chicken Little, if you see the smoke you may tell Mr. Clay I won’t come for my recitation this afternoon. I am going to find out how this back-firing business is done.”
Sherm had begun his studies some two weeks previous and was making rapid progress, studying evenings, and going to the school a half hour before closing time to recite.
Chicken Little found this arrangement extremely pleasant, because Sherm was always there to walk home with her. They took all sorts of detours and by-paths through the woods, instead of coming along the road to the ford. They discovered unexpected stores of walnuts and acorns and wild rose hips, and scarlet bitter-sweet just 298opening its gorgeous berries after the first hard frosts.
Jane helped Sherm press autumn leaves and pack a huge box of nuts to send home. His mother wrote back that his father hadn’t showed as much interest in anything for weeks, as he did in the nuts. They seemed to carry him back to his own boyhood.
Mr. Dart seldom left his bed now, and Sherm’s mother told but little of his condition. Sherm understood her silence only too well. Chicken Little noticed that he always worked hard and late the days he heard from home. She began to watch for the letters herself, and to mount guard over the boy when he looked specially downcast, teasing him into going for a gallop or wheedling him into making taffy or playing a game of checkers. She got so she recognized Sherm’s blue devils as far off as she could see him.
Sherm did not notice this for some time or suspect she was looking after him, but one day he remarked carelessly when she thought she had been specially clever:
“Chicken Little, don’t make a mollycoddle of me. A man has to learn to take what comes his way without squealing.”