"Well," said Mr. Clyde, laughing, "I may as well make the best of it; but I can't help wondering whether the wholesale grocers in town have been asked to place orders with Mount Hunger, or the Washington Market dealers for prospective chickens! There 's your office-bell; I won't keep you longer, but if this 'special case' of yours should develop any new symptoms, just let me know."
"I 'll keep you informed," rejoined the Doctor. "Better run up there pretty soon, Johnny," he called after him.
"I think it's high time, Dick. Good-bye."
At that very moment, a symptom of another sort was developing in Z---- Hall, Number 9, at Harvard.
Jack Sherrill and his chum were discussing the last evening's Club theatricals. "I saw that pretty Maude Seaton in the third or fourth row, Jack; did she come on for that,--which, of course, means you?"
"Wish I might think so," said Jack, half in earnest, half in jest, pulling slowly at his corn-cob pipe.
"By Omar Khayyam, Jack! you don't mean to say you 're hit, at last!"
"Hit,--yes; but it's only a flesh-wound at present,--nothing dangerous about it."
"She 's got the style, though, and the pull. I know a half-dozen of the fellows got dropped on to-night's cotillion."
"Kept it for me," said Jack, quietly.
"No, really, though--" and his chum fell to thinking rather seriously for him.
Just then came the morning's mail,--notes, letters, special delivery stamps, all the social accessories a popular Harvard man knows so well.
Jack looked over his carelessly,--invitations to dinner, to theatre parties, "private views," golf parties, etc. He pushed them aside, showing little interest. He, like his Cousin Hazel, was used to it.
The morning's mail was an old story, for Sherrill was worth a fortune in his own right, as several hundred mothers and daughters in New York and Boston and Philadelphia knew full well.
Moreover, if he had not had a penny in prospect, Jack Sherrill would have attracted by his own manly qualities and his exceptionally good looks. His riches, to which he had been born, had not as yet wholly spoiled him, but they cheated him of that ambition that makes the best of young manhood, and Life was out of tune at times--how and why, he did not know, and there was no one to tell him.
He had rather hoped for a note from Maude Seaton, thanking him, in her own charming way, for the flowers he had sent her on her arrival from New York the day before. True, she had worn some in her corsage, but, for all Jack knew, they might have been another man's; for Maude Seaton was never known to have less than four or five strings to her bow. It was just this uncertainty about her that attracted Jack.
"Hello! Here 's a letter for you by mistake in my pile," said his chum.
"Why, this is from my little Cousin Hazel, who is rusticating just now somewhere in the Green Mountains." Jack opened it hastily and read,--
MOUNT HUNGER, MILL SETTLEMENT, BARTON'S RIVER, VERMONT, May 19, 1896.
DEAREST COUSIN JACK,--It is perfectly lovely up here, and I 've been inishiated into a Secret Society like your Dicky Club, and one of the by-laws is to help others all we can and wherever we can and as long as ever we can, and so I 've thought of that nice little spread you gave last year after the foot-ball game, and how nice the table looked and what good things you had, but I don't remember any strawberry jam or preserves, do you?
We 're hatching four hundred chickens to help others,--I mean we have set 40 sitting hens on 520 eggs, not all the 40 on the five hundred and twenty at once, you know; but, I mean, each one of the 40 hens are sitting on 13 eggs apiece, and March says we must expect to lose 120 eggs--I mean, chickens,--as the hens are very careless and sit sideways--I 've seen them myself--and so an extra egg is apt to get chilly, and the chickens can't stand any chilliness, March says. But Chi, that's my new friend, says some eggs have a double yolk, and maybe, there 'll be some twins to make up for the loss.
Anyway, we want 400 chickens to sell about Thanksgiving time, and, of course, we can't get any money till that time. So now I 've got back to your spread again and the preserves, and while we 're waiting for the chickens, we are going to make preserves--_dee_-licious ones! I mean we are going to pick them and Rose is going to preserve them. We 've decided to ask $1 and a quarter a quart for them; Rose--that's Rose Blossom--says it is dear, but if you could see my Rose-pose, as Chi calls her, you 'd think it cheap just to eat them if she made them. She 's perfectly lovely--prettier than any of the New York girls, and when she kneads bread and does up the dishes, she sings like a bird, something about love. I'll write it down for you, sometime. _I 'm_ in love with her.
Please ask your college friends if they don't want some jam and wild strawberry preserves. If they do, March says they had better order soon, as I've written to New York to see about some other orders.
Yours devotedly, HAZEL.
P.S. I 've sent you a sample of the strawberry preserve in a homeepahtic pellet bottle, to taste; Rose says it is n't fair to ask people to buy without their knowing what they buy. I saw that Miss Seaton just before I came away; she came to call on me and brought some flowers. She said I looked like you--which was an awful whopper because I had my head shaved, as you know; I asked her if she had heard from you, and she said she had. She is n't half as lovely as Rose-pose. H.C.
IX
THE PRIZE CHICKEN
There was wild excitement, as well as consternation, in the farmhouse on the Mountain.
On the next day but one after Hazel had sent her letters, Chi had brought up from the Mill Settlement a telegram which had come on the stage from Barton's. It was addressed to, "Hazel Clyde, Mill Settlement, Barton's River, Vermont," and ran thus:--
CAMBRIDGE, May 20, 1 P.M.
Hope to get in our order ahead of New York time. Seventeen dozen of each kind. Letter follows.
JACK.
"Seventeen dozen!" screamed Rose, on hearing the telegram.
"Seventeen dozen of _each kind_!" cried Budd.
"Oh, quick, March, do see what it comes to!" said Hazel.
Then such an arithmetical hubbub broke loose as had never been heard before on the Mountain.
"Seventeen times twelve," said Rose,--"let me see; seven times two are fourteen, one to carry--do keep still, March!" But March went on with:--
"Twelve times four are forty-eight--seventeen times forty-eight, hm--seven times eight are fifty-six, five to carry--Shut up, Budd; I can't hear myself think." But Budd gave no heed, and continued his computation.
"Four times seventeen are--four times seven are twenty-eight, two to carry; four times one are four and two are--I say, you 've put me all out!" shouted Budd, and, putting his fingers in his ears, he retired to a corner. Rose continued to mumble with her eyes shut to concentrate her mind upon her problem, threatening Cherry impatiently when she interrupted with her peculiar solution, which she had just thought out:--
"If one quart cost one dollar and twenty-five cents, twelve quarts will cost twelve times one dollar and twenty-five cents, which is, er--twelve times one are twelve; twelve times twenty-five! Oh, gracious, that's awful! What's twelve times twenty-five, March?"
"Shut up," growled March; "you 've put me all off the track."
"Me, too," said Rose, in an aggrieved tone.
Mrs. Blossom had been listening from the bedroom, and now came in, suppressing her desire to smile at the reddened and perplexed faces.
"Here 's a pencil, March, suppose you figure it out on paper."
A sigh of relief was audible throughout the room, as March sat down to work out the result. "Eight hundred and sixteen quarts at one dollar twenty-five a quart," said March to himself; then, with a bound that shook the long-room, he shouted, "One thousand and twenty dollars!" and therewith broke forth into singing:--
"Glory, glory, halleluia!
Glory, glory, halleluia!
Glory, glory, halleluia, For the N.B.B.O.O.!"