“I don’t want to be a little lady!” she said sullenly. “Mrs. Halford likes to have Katy and Gertie play with the boys ’cause they haven’t got any brothers and she thinks it’s good for them—so there!”
“Why Jane!”
“I don’t care—I don’t see why boys should have all the fun! You let Ernest do most everything he wants to—and you won’t let me do hardly anything—and I don’t think it’s a bit fair—and I just hate this old patchwork!” Chicken Little flung herself down on the floor in a tempest of wrath.
Mrs. Morton’s usually placid face became severe.
“Get up this minute and come here!”
Chicken Little reluctantly obeyed.
“Child, do you want to be a perfect little know-nothing? I am grieved and pained that my only little daughter has such ideas. I can’t see where you get them. Katy and Gertie both sew very nicely for their ages and——”
“Yes,” interrupted the child between sobs, “but their mother lets them learn on rainy days and in the summer when it’s too hot to play out doors. She doesn’t keep them in all morning on Saturday!”
“You have all afternoon to play.”
“But we can’t roast apples—the boys are going to the ball game—and they’re building the furnace right now and I want to see them. Katy and Gertie are up on the alley fence calling me. Oh! Mother, can’t I go? Please, please, Mother!”