Chicken Little tried to stop her, but Katy was half way down the staircase before she reached the head. A moment later they heard her shrill little voice and the grieved tones of Mrs. Morton in response.
Presently Mrs. Morton came puffing up the stairs. The boys fidgetted uneasily. Ernest began twisting his scalp lock again and Carol hitched up his suspenders to keep up his courage. He alone was guiltless of taking the money, but it did not occur to him to desert his companions in distress. As for Sherm, his face got so red by the time Mrs. Morton’s step sounded outside the door, that his freckles looked like the brown seeds on a strawberry.
Mrs. Morton entered majestic and angry; her black lace shawl slipping from her shoulders unnoticed in her haste.
“Boys, what is this I hear?” The inquiry that followed was long remembered by all concerned. Chicken Little did not utter one word till her mother declared it her painful duty to tell their father. Then she plucked her mother’s dress and whispered: “Please don’t, Mother, I’ll pay it back for him out of my share from the store, he’s awful ’shamed.”
Mrs. Morton smiled at the troubled little face.
“No,” she said firmly, “these boys have done very wrong, and Ernest, at least, must be punished.”
The next morning at Sunday School Carol asked Sherman rather shame-facedly: “Get a licking?”
“Yep, did you?”
“Nope, but I can’t play on the nine for a week.”
They both fell upon Ernest as he slid soberly into his seat a moment later.