SHERM HEARS BAD NEWS
“Sherm, don’t you just love this room?” Chicken Little gazed about Captain Clarke’s big library with a real affection. “I don’t know why it is, but this room makes me feel the same way a sunset, or the prairie when it’s all in bloom, does. I can’t just tell you, but it makes me so satisfied with everything ... as if the world was so beautiful it couldn’t possibly be very bad.”
“I know–it’s the harmony, like in music. The colors all seem to go together ... everything seems to belong. I like that, too, but it doesn’t mean just that, to me. I see the Captain every time I step in here. It’s a part of him–almost as if he had worked his own bigness and the kind of things he loves, into furniture and books and–fixings.”
“Yes, there’s so much room to breathe here–I 356s’pose being at sea so much, he had to have that. And he picked up most of these things on his voyages–he must have wanted them pretty bad or he wouldn’t have carried them half around the world with him.”
The young people had come over to the Captain’s for supper. School had closed the day before, and Chicken Little was the proud possessor of an elaborate autograph album, won as a spelling prize. Captain Clarke had attended the closing exercises at her request. He had invited them over to celebrate, this evening. He declared he had never learned to spell himself and he wanted the honor of entertaining some one who knew how.
Chicken Little had brought the album along for the Captain’s signature. “And write something, too, won’t you? Something specially for me,” she had begged winningly.
“Have they all written something–specially for you, Chicken Little? I should like to read them.”
“I haven’t asked very many people yet, just Mr. Clay and Grant Stowe and Mamie Jenkins’ little sister–Mamie’s in town you know. I asked Sherm, but he hasn’t thought up anything.”
The Captain glanced at Sherm and smiled whimsically. “Now, if I were as young as Sherm, I shouldn’t have to think up things–the trouble would be to restrain my eloquence.”