ts to
send home. His mother wrote back that his father hadn't showed as much
interest in anything for weeks, as he did in the nuts. They seemed to
carry him back to his own boyhood.

Mr. Dart seldom left his bed now, and Sherm's mother told but little of
his condition. Sherm understood her silence only too well. Chicken
Little noticed that he always worked hard and late the days he heard
from home. She began to watch for the letters herself, and to mount
guard over the boy when he looked specially downcast, teasing him into
going for a gallop or wheedling him into making taffy or playing a game
of checkers. She got so she recognized Sherm's blue devils as far off as
she could see him.

Sherm did not notice this for some time or suspect she was looking after
him, but one day he remarked carelessly when she thought she had been
specially clever:

"Chicken Little, don't make a mollycoddle of me. A man has to learn to
take what comes his way without squealing."

"Yes, Sherm, but if you get thorns in your hand, it's better to try to
pull them out than to go on pushing them in deeper, isn't it? I know
when I was a kid, it always helped a lot to have Mother kiss it better."

"How'd you get so wise, Chicken Little?" The lad smiled his wry smile.

"Don't make fun of me, please, Sherm."

"Make fun of you? Lady Jane, I've been taking off my hat to you for a
week. How in the dickens you girls find out exactly what's going on
inside a chap beats my time. It's mighty good of you to put up with my
glooming and try to cheer me along. Maybe I don't look grateful, but I
am." Sherm was eager to make this acknowledgment, but found it more
trying than he had anticipated. He revenged himself by starting in to
tease.

"Say, I wish you'd try your hand at this splinter--I can't budge the
critter."

Jane flew for a needle, unsuspecting. The splinter didn't look serious,
but she painstakingly dug it out.

"Is that all right?" she demanded, looking up to encounter a wicked
glint in Sherm's gray eyes.

"Hm-n, aren't you going to put any medicine on it?"

"Medicine?"

"Well, you know you said it helped." Sherm was grinning impishly.

"Sherman Dart, I think you're too mean for words!" She was about to turn
away affronted when she had an inspiration.

"Mother," she called, "O Mother!"

Mrs. Morton had been placidly sewing in the sitting room while the young
people were studying their lessons by the dining-room table. She came to