“We might tell them we lost it,” suggested Carol desperately.
“No, we won’t!” retorted Ernest. “I’m not that kind, thank you, to spend the kids’ money and then lie about it! Nope, we’re up against it and we’ll have to take our medicine,” Ernest marched straight to the door and flung it open.
“What you boys up to?”
“Where’s our money?”
“Did you get the hat to her all right?”
The little girls stood in an accusing half-circle and fired their questions in a broadside.
Ernest put the facts as diplomatically as possible. Sherman and Carol backed him up manfully, promising to pay back with the very first money they could get their hands on.
For an instant the children were stunned. Ernest remembered the look of sorrowful amazement on his little sister’s face long after the whipping his father gave him for the offense had been forgotten. Chicken Little adored Ernest and he knew it.
She didn’t say a word. She just looked. Gertie started to cry, but Katy flared up and turned red as a little turkey cock.
“I think that’s the meanest thing I ever knew anybody to do—it’s just plain stealing, so it is! I’m going right straight to tell your mother, Ernest Morton—I hear her coming!”