Jane Ellen swayed back and forth in the porch hammock, hugging herself
with fat arms. All her dolls lay spread out wretchedly on the floor
beneath her, she had stripped them of every rag and they had the
dejected appearance of victims ready for sacrifice to Baal. “The
Choolies are mad!” she sang to herself, “The Choolies are mad!”
It had been a perfectly sensible idea to try and water the flowers on
the parlor carpet with her doll's watering pot--those flowers hadn't
had any water for an awful long time. But Mother had punished her in
the Third Degree which was by hairbrush and Aunt Elsie had taken the
watering-pot away and Rosalind and Dickie had put on such offensively
virtuous expressions as soon as they heard her being punished that
she was mad at them all. And not ordinarily mad--not mad just by
herself--the Choolies were divinely incensed as well.
“The Choolies are mad!” she hummed again like a battle-cry “Choolies are
dolls and all the Choolies are mad!”
The Choolies were only mad on rare occasions. It took something
genuinely out of the ordinary to turn an inoffensive pink celluloid doll
with one of its legs off into an angry Choolie. But when they were mad
the family had discovered by painful experience that the only thing to
do was to leave Jane Ellen quite entirely alone.
“The Choolies are mad, mad, mad!” she chanted end chanted, her plump
legs swinging, her mouth set like a prophet's calling down lightnings on
Babylon the splendid.
Then she stopped swinging. Somebody was coming up the path--any of the
people she was mad at?--no--only Uncle Ollie. Were the Choolies mad at
Uncle Ollie? She considered a moment.
“Hello, Jane Ellen, how goes it?”
The small mouth was full of rebellion.
“Um mad!”
“Oh--sorry. What about?”