Chicken Little long remembered the day of the doll party. It would seem that Pete did also, for he never attempted to follow Chicken Little outside the yard again.
One hot day soon after the party Dr. Morton handed his wife a letter from Alice.
Mrs. Morton glanced through it while Olga cleared the table for the dessert.
“Poor Alice—she is worried because Mr. Harding can’t find either letters or papers to prove her claim to the bank stock. It does seem strange that all the letters from Mr. Gassett to her father should have completely disappeared.”
“Well,” said Dr. Morton drily, “if you want to know my opinion, I believe that Gassett got hold of them some way and destroyed them.”
“It doesn’t seem possible he would do anything so dishonest though I don’t like the man—he was so very rude the day he came here. Alice wonders if it could be possible there are any of her father’s papers hidden away under the roof. You remember almost all of the closets run off under the roof. It is a wonder we don’t have rats with them all open that way.”
“It would be an unpleasant task to explore. I suppose there’s twenty years of dust and cobwebs stored up in those nooks and crannies. There are places where the roof slopes to form the gables where a man could hardly crawl through. I suppose I might hire some boy to go through and see if he can find anything.”