“You may go and pick a couple of quarts of cherries, Jane.” Mrs. Morton handed her the tin lard pail, searching her face once more.
It was a glorious June morning and Jane enjoyed picking cherries. Marian saw her and came too, establishing Jilly comfortably at the foot of the tree with a rubber doll and the two pups as companions. Jilly was usually a placid baby and she settled down contentedly to trimming up her doll 64with dandelions. Buz, the indolent, curled himself at her feet and was asleep inside of five minutes, but Huz looked up longingly into the tree at Jane. He seemed to be racking his doggish brain as to the best method of reaching her. He kept making little futile leaps, whining impatiently. Finally, he stood up on his hind legs, planted his fore paws against the tree trunk, and barked dolefully. Jane bent down and mischievously dropped a cherry into his open mouth. Huz choked, sputtered, and after a first rapturous crunch, hastily deposited the acid fruit upon the ground. He looked reproachfully at Chicken Little.
“There now,” said Marian, “he’ll never trust you again.” Marian raced Chicken Little with the cherry picking and the pails were filled far too soon.
“Jane,” said Marian as she started reluctantly back to the house, “if Mother Morton can spare you this morning to help me pick them, I believe I’ll get some cherries to put up–there are loads ripe this morning.”
“I’d love to, Marian, I’ll take these in and find out if she’ll let me.”
She came flying back in a jiffy with two big milk pails. “All right, Mother says I may help you till noon.”
They had a merry morning. The cherry trees lined the lane which was also a public road, and several 65neighbors going by, stopped to exchange a few words. Mr. Benton had his joke, for he discovered Jane swinging up in the topmost boughs and reaching still higher for certain unusually luscious ones that eluded her covetous fingers.
“Well, Mrs. Morton,” he said, addressing Marian and ignoring Chicken Little, “that’s the largest variety of robin I’ve ever seen in these parts. I ’low you must have brought the seed from the east with you. You wouldn’t mind if I took a shot at it, I ’spose. ’Pears like birds of that size must be mighty destructive to cherries.”
“Why Mr. Benton, we shouldn’t like to have you kill our birds; we’re attached to them. But you are mistaken, that isn’t a robin, it’s a Jane bird–they’re rare around here.”
Mr. Benton laughed and Chicken Little got even by hurling a big cluster of cherries at him. She aimed them at his lap, but they struck him full in the face to her great glee.