Alice had been very sober ever since the wedding. The night before Chicken Little had found her crying.
“It’s nothing, dear. I’m just silly enough to be worrying because I can’t be somebody,” she told Chicken Little. “If I could only find a way to go to school two years so I could teach! I have been thinking of trying to work for my board, but Mary Miller did that and she had to work so hard she didn’t have time to study and she got sick. I don’t see how I could pay for my books and clothes either. Perhaps Uncle Joseph would lend me the money if I’d write to him—I could pay it back when I got to teaching. But I can’t bear to, after the way he treated Mother. She wrote to him when Father died asking him to help settle up Father’s affairs. He sent her $500 and said that was all he could do for her—that he couldn’t spare the time to come here—she could hire a lawyer. Mother never wrote to him again and we never heard from him afterwards. I’ve been told he still lives in Cincinnati and is very rich. Oh, dear, if I only could get that bank stock money—I wish Mr. Gasset would hurry up and do something.”
Alice poured out her troubles to the child for want of an older listener and Chicken Little sympathized acutely.
She wanted to talk it over with her father but Dr. Morton had been called away some distance into the country to see a patient and had not returned. She relieved her mind to Katy and Gertie on the way to school that morning and they were satisfyingly indignant over Alice’s troubles, but had no suggestions to offer.
“Her uncle’s an old skinflint—that’s what he is. He’s awful rich and owns a big stove factory all by himself. Father orders stoves from there. He and Mamma say it’s a shame he doesn’t do something for Alice when she’s his only brother’s child.”
The matter troubled Jane all day and she was still thinking about it when she started home from school. She was half way home before she remembered about going to the postoffice.
There was a letter from Frank and she was just starting homeward again with it clasped tight in her hand, when someone hailed her.
“Hello, Chicken Little Jane, are you postman today?”
It was Dick Harding.
“Going straight home? I’m going your way then. Here, let me carry your books.”