A very pallid forlorn girl sat propped up in bed about noon the following day. The family, having discovered that it was nothing serious, and that she had probably brought it on by her own folly, were not sympathetic. "What in the dickens did you want to go and eat green cherries for, when there were pounds and pounds of ripe ones going to waste on the trees?" Ernest's look of utter disgust was hard to bear. Frank came over with a handful of minute green walnuts interspersed with a choice assortment of gooseberries and green plums. He handed them to her with a mocking bow. "In case you get hungry, Jane dear, I thought you might like to have a supply of your favorite food on hand." Chicken Little thanked him spunkily, but when the door closed behind him, she buried her face in the pillow and mourned over her woes. "I'll never try to be good again, so there, and I think they're all just as mean as can be." Her pillow was getting wetter and wetter and her spirits closer and closer to zero, when the door gently opened and her father came in. "Why Chicken Little, crying? This won't do. Come, tell Father what's the matter. You aren't feeling worse, are you?" Chicken Little swallowed hard and did her best to choke back the tears, but the tears having been distinctly encouraged for the past ten minutes had too good a start to be easily checked. Dr. Morton gathered her into his arms and patted and soothed her till she was able to summon a moist smile. "Hurry up and tell me now--a trouble shared is a trouble half cured, you know." But Jane was beginning to be ashamed of herself. "'Tisn't anything really, Father, only I feel so miserable and the boys have been making fun of me." "Making fun, what about?" "Oh, just because." "Because what, out with it!" "Because I ate green cherries, I suppose." "How long have you been eating green cherries, Jane?" Jane considered. "Most a week." "And don't you think you deserve to be laughed at, for doing anything so foolish?" "They didn't laugh at the monks--and they were grown-up men." "Monks? What do you mean?" "Well, I just guess they did things that made them sicker than eating green cherries, and I didn't intend to eat enough to make me sick, but I didn't seem to feel any sorrier and----" Chicken Little was stopped suddenly by the expression of her Father's face. He tried to control himself but the laugh would come. When they had finally got the atmosphere cleared a bit, he inquired, still smiling: "Well, are you sorry now you went to the Captain's?" Chicken Little smiled back. "No, I'm just sorry I grieved Mother." "Then suppose we vote this penance idea a failure and don't try it again."