PAGE 6
Chickens
by
“I’d like it!” exclaimed the boy, sitting up. “It will be regular fun.”
“No, it won’t,” said Emma McChesney; “not after the first three or four days. But it will be worth more to you than a foreign tour and a private tutor.”
She came over to him and put her hand on his shoulder. “Your room’s just next to mine,” she said. “You and I are going to sleep on this. To-morrow we’ll have a real day of it, as I promised. If you want to spend it with the fellows, say so. I’m not going to spoil this little lark that I promised you.”
“I think,” said the boy, looking up into his mother’s face, “I think that I’ll spend it with you.”
The door slammed after him.
Emma McChesney remained standing there, in the center of the room. She raised her arms and passed a hand over her forehead and across her hair until it rested on the glossy knot at the back of her head. It was the weary little gesture of a weary, heart-sick woman.
There came a ring at the ‘phone.
Emma McChesney crossed the room and picked up the receiver.
“Hello, Mary Cutting,” she said, without waiting for the voice at the other end. “What? Oh, I just knew. No, it’s all right. I’ve had some high-class little theatricals of my own, right here, with me in the roles of leading lady, ingenue, villainess, star, and heavy mother. I’ve got Mrs. Fiske looking like a First Reader Room kid that’s forgotten her Friday piece. What’s that?”
There was no sound in the room but the hollow cackle of the voice at the other end of the wire, many miles away.
Then: “Oh, that’s all right, Mary Cutting. I owe you a great big debt of gratitude, bless your pink cheeks and white hair! And, Mary,” she lowered her voice and glanced in the direction of the room next door, “I don’t know how a hard, dry sob would go through the ‘phone, so I won’t try to get it over. But, Mary, it’s been ‘sugar, butter, and molasses’ for me for the last ten minutes, and I’m dead scared to stop for fear I’ll forget it. I guess it’s ‘sugar, butter, and molasses’ for me for the rest of the night, Mary Cutting; just as hard and fast as I can say it, ‘sugar, butter, molasses.'”