I don’t want any old silk dresses. I hate to be dressed up, you can’t climb trees or nothing, and your mother always tells you to be a little lady. Bet I won’t be a little lady when I grow up.”

“Why, Chicken Little Jane, you’ll have to be!”

“Sha’n’t either—Mother says I’m the worst tomboy she ever saw and I’ll disgrace my family if I don’t look out. I don’t care if I do—I think it’s fun to be something different. Maybe I’ll be a circus-rider.” Jane swung her unfortunate doll about by one arm to emphasize her decision, and smiled defiantly.

Katy refused to be impressed.

“Pooh, you never saw a circus-rider—you said yesterday your mother’d never let you go to a circus. I’ve been to six, counting the one Uncle Sim took us to in the evening.”

“I don’t care, I’ve been to see the animals—and I just guess I did see circus-riders, too, in the parade!”

“Well, you’d have to dress up if you were a circus-rider ’cause they have lots of fussy skirts and spangles and things—only they aren’t very clean most always. I saw one close to once. I’d rather have a lace shawl and a beautiful watch like your mother’s,” put in Gertie.

“I don’t care, I like horses and I just hate dolls they’re so pokey,” retorted Jane recklessly, rather floored by so much wisdom. “Let’s play our children are all taking a nap and go and get Ernest and do something lively.”

Katy pricked up her ears at the mention of Ernest’s name, having no brothers herself, she considered boys extremely interesting. She promptly threw her cherished Rowena under a heap of doll clothes, and was on her feet in an instant calling, “Come on.”

Gentle little Gertie eyed her half undressed doll child ruefully.

“’Tisn’t nice to leave them this way. You girls go on and I’ll put Minnie’s nighty on and tuck her in.”

Chicken Little shoved both doll and doll clothes unceremoniously into the fence corner and was after Katy in a flash. Gertie lingered not only to tuck away her own doll but to rescue the neglected playthings of the others, and to put each doll child carefully to bed, with sundry croonings and caresses. Then she followed slowly to the house.

Katy and Jane were already having troubles of their own. Ernest, who was four years older than Jane, was deep in a book and deaf to all coaxing and persuasion on the part of his gypsy-sister and her friend. He was stretched on the floor in the embrasure of the dormer window, nursing his face in his hands, his near-sighted eyes fairly boring into the pages. He was a lanky, sober-faced boy with a trick of twisting a lock of hair as he read that resulted in its perpetually hanging down in his eyes to his great annoyance. The boy liked to be ship-shape and he made manful attempts to let it alone. He plastered it down with bay-rum till the family begged for mercy from the smell. It was even on record that he once went so far as to dab it with glue with painful consequences.

Today he was so absorbed that he had almost twisted the offending lock into a double bowknot and he heeded the children no more than flies. Finally Katy audaciously grabbed his book away, and he came to life with a growl.

“Here, drop that, infant, give me that book!”

He raised up on his elbow threateningly, but Katy, shaking her head saucily, flew out the door and down the staircase in a flutter of delicious fear.

Ernest got to his feet blusteringly.

“Mother said you kids were to keep out of my room and you can just go get that book for me or I’ll tell her when she comes home.”

He made a grab for his sister’s arm, but she eluded him skilfully and darted after Katy, chanting maliciously: “Get it yourself—get it yourself—old cross patch!”

An exciting chase followed. Ernest tearing out the front door almost knocked over Gertie who was just coming in. He quickly righted her with a smile—he was fond of little Gertie who never bothered. The momentary delay gave the girls a start and Ernest saw Katy’s flying skirts disappearing round the kitchen ell, with Chicken Little close behind her, as he turned the corner of the house.

Once at the back he found Chicken Little had sought sanctuary with Alice, the maid, who was sitting under a tree peeling peaches, but Katy had vanished.

“Which way’d she go, Alice?” Alice shook her head teasingly, at the same time glancing toward the kitchen door.

Ernest bolted in, but a swift search of the house revealed no Katy. Jane still clung to Alice clapping her hands derisively.

“Has she gone home?” he demanded.

Chicken Little shook her head.

“Am I hot or cold?”

“Hot! My, you’re just burning!”

Gertie, who had followed, stared up into the branches overhead, but Ernest, gazing after, caught no glimpse of Katy’s pink gingham or mischievous face.

“Bet you can’t find her,” jeered Jane; “boys aren’t smart as girls if they are so stuck on themselves.”

“Bet Alice hid her.”

“Bet she didn’t.”

At this moment a whistle at the side gate interrupted them. Ernest trilled in answer and a moment later Carol Brown and Sherman Dart, Ernest’s two sworn cronies, came round the corner with a whoop.

“You smarties can have the old book. Mother’ll make you give it back tonight, anyway.”

A chuckle overhead punctuated his sentence, and some fifteen feet above him, seated gracefully astride the comb of the low roof, Katy waved the book at him tantalizingly.

“Gee, how’d you get up there?”

By way of reply Katy opened the book at random and began to read:

“The third crusade which had opened so disastrously, was at last to be prosecuted with vigor. The eight days’ truce was over and Philip of France again led the assault upon the walls of Acre. King Richard slowly convalescing was borne to the scene of conflict where——”

Here the boys interrupted with cat calls, and Ernest shied a green apple which Katy successfully dodged.

“How’d you get up?”

“For me to know and you to find out.”

“Say, Alice, how’d she get up?”

“Climbed.”

“Oh, say, honest how did she?”

“The same way that Philip and Richard got into Acre.”

“Ladder?”

“Yes, the man who fixed the eave troughs this morning left a ladder here. It’s on the other side.”

By way of reply Katy opened the book and began.

The three boys made a bolt to investigate and soon swarmed up on the roof with Jane close behind.

The old white house with its big front porch and green blinds was a notable one. Built upon a terrace, it stood several feet above the tree-shaded lawns about it. A group of old apple trees crowded close up to the windows at the side and rear. Both the western and southern gables were overhung with great wistaria vines, so old the stems were like huge cables and could easily bear a man’s weight, as the children’s grown brother Frank had already discovered. He had been locked out one night, and wishing to get in without disturbing the family, had quietly gone up the vines, hand-over-hand, to his own window.

The old house boasted many gables and more dormer windows, each bedroom having one or more. The children found these little nooks cosy places to play and read, indeed only a little less fascinating