The Project Gutenberg EBook of Janice Day, by Helen Beecher Long
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Title: Janice Day
Author: Helen Beecher Long
Illustrator: Walter S. Rogers
Release Date: May 10, 2010 [EBook #32312]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JANICE DAY ***
Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Josephine Paolucci
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[Illustration: The quick eye of Janice Day caught sight of this row of
nondescripts. (See page 15.)]
JANICE DAY
BY
HELEN BEECHER LONG
ILLUSTRATED BY
WALTER S. ROGERS
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS :-: NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY
SULLY AND KLEINTEICH
All rights reserved
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A NEW-FASHIONED GIRL 1
II. POKETOWN 10
III. "IT JEST RATTLES" 22
IV. FIRST IMPRESSIONS 32
V. 'RILL SCATTERGOOD AND HER SCHOOL 43
VI. AN AFTERNOON OF ADVENTURE 56
VII. THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LOST THE ECHO 64
VIII. A BIT OF ROMANCE 73
IX. TEA, AND A TALK WITH DADDY 84
X. BEGINNING WITH A BEDSTEAD 96
XI. A RAINY DAY 109
XII. ON THE ROAD WITH WALKY DEXTER 122
XIII. NELSON HALEY 131
XIV. A TIME OF TRIAL 139
XV. NEW BEGINNINGS 149
XVI. "SHOWING" THE ELDER 159
XVII. CHRISTMAS NEWS 173
XVIII. "THE FLY-BY-NIGHT" 184
XIX. CHRISTMAS, AFTER ALL! 197
XX. THE TROUBLE WITH NELSON HALEY 210
XXI. A STIR OF NEW LIFE IN POKETOWN 217
XXII. AT THE SUGAR CAMP 226
XXIII. "DO YOU MEAN THAT?" 235
XXIV. THE SCHOOL DEDICATION 241
XXV. THROUGH THE SECOND WINTER 253
XXVI. JUST HOW IT ALL BEGAN 262
XXVII. POKETOWN IN A NEW DRESS 271
XXVIII. NO ODOR OF GASOLINE! 280
XXIX. JANICE DAY'S FIRST LOVE LETTER 290
XXX. WHAT THE ECHO MIGHT HAVE HEARD 302
ILLUSTRATIONS
The quick eye of Janice Day caught sight
of this row of nondescripts. (See page 15.) _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
The old violin wailed out the tune haltingly 72
God's world _did_ look bigger and greater from
The Overlook. (See page 155.) 154
She just _had_ to raise her eyes and look into his
earnest ones. (See page 307.) 306
JANICE DAY
CHAPTER I
A NEW-FASHIONED GIRL
"Well! this is certainly a relief from the stuffy old cars," said Janice
Day, as she reached the upper deck of the lake steamer, dropped her
suitcase, and drew in her first full breath of the pure air.
"What a beautiful lake!" she went on. "And how big! Why--I had no idea!
I wonder how far Poketown is from here?"
The ancient sidewheel steamer was small and there were few passengers on
the upper deck, forward. Janice secured a campstool and sat down near
the rail to look off over the water.
The officious man in the blue cap on the dock had shouted "All aboard!"
the moment the passengers left the cars of the little narrow-gauge
railroad, on which the girl had been riding for more than two hours; but
it was some minutes before the wheezy old steamer got under way.
Janice was interested in everything she saw--even in the clumsy warping
off of the _Constance Colfax_, when her hawsers were finally released.
"Goodness me!" thought the girl, chuckling, "what a ridiculous old tub
it is! How different everything East here is from Greensboro. There!
we're really off!"
The water hissed and splashed, as the wheels of the steamer began to
turn rheumatically. The walking-beam heaved up and down with many a
painful creak.
"Why! _that_ place is real pretty--when you look at it from the lake,"
murmured Janice, looking back at the little landing. "I wonder if
Poketown will be like it?"
She looked about her, half tempted to ask a question of somebody. There
was but a single passenger near her--a little, old lady in an
old-fashioned black mantilla with jet trimming, and wearing black lace
half-mitts and a little bonnet that had been so long out of date that it
was almost in the mode again.
She was seated with her back against the cabin house, and when the
steamer rolled a little the ball of knitting-cotton, which she had taken
out of her deep, bead-bespangled bag, bounced out of her lap and rolled
across the deck almost to the feet of Janice.
Up the girl jumped and secured the runaway ball, winding the cotton as
she approached the old lady, who peered up at her, her head on one side
and her eyes sparkling, like an inquisitive bird.
"Thank ye, child," she said, briskly. "I ain't as spry as I use ter be,
an' ye done me a favor. I guess I don't know ye, do I?"
"I don't believe you do, Ma'am," agreed Janice, smiling, and although
she could not be called "pretty" in the sense in which the term is
usually written, when Janice smiled her determined, and rather
intellectual face became very attractive.
"You don't belong in these parts?" pursued the old lady.
"Oh, no, Ma'am. I come from Greensboro," and the girl named the middle
western state in which her home was situated.
"Do tell! You come a long distance, don't ye?" exclaimed her
fellow-passenger. "You're one of these new-fashioned gals that travel
alone, an' all that sort o' thing, ain't ye? I reckon your folks has got
plenty of confidence in ye."
Janice laughed again, and drew her campstool to the old lady's side.
"I was never fifty miles away from home before," she confessed, "and I
never was away from my father over night until I started East two days
ago."
"Then ye ain't got no mother, child?"
"Mother died when I was a very little girl. Father has been everything
to me--just everything!" and for a moment the bright, young face
clouded and the hazel eyes swam in unshed tears. But she turned quickly
so that her new acquaintance might not see them.
"Where are you goin', my dear?" asked the old lady, more softly.
"To Poketown. And oh! I _do_ hope it will be a nice, lively place, for
maybe I'll have to remain there a long time--months and months!"
"For the land's sake!" exclaimed the old lady, nodding her head briskly
over the knitting needles. "So be I goin' to Poketown."
"Are you, really?" ejaculated Janice Day, clasping her hands eagerly,
and turning to her new acquaintance. "Isn't that nice! Then you can tell
me just what Poketown is like. I've got to stay there with my uncle
while father is in Mexico----"
"Who's your uncle, child?" demanded the old lady, quickly. "And who's
your father?"
Janice naturally answered the last question first, for her heart was
full of her father and her separation from him. "Mr. Broxton Day is my
father, and he used to live in Poketown. But he came away from there a
long, long time ago."
"Yes? I knowed there was Days in Poketown; but I ain't been there myself
for goin' on twelve year. I lived there a year, or so, arter my man
died, with my darter. She's teached the Poketown school for twenty
year."
"Oh!" cried Janice. "Then you can't really tell me what Poketown is
like--now?"
"Why, it's quite a town, I b'lieve," said the old lady. "'Rill writes me
thet the _ho_-tel's jest been painted, and there's a new blacksmith shop
built. You goin' to school there--What did you say your name was?"
"Janice Day. I don't know whether I shall go to school while I am in
Poketown, or not. If there are a whole lot of nice girls--and a few nice
boys--who go to your daughter's school, I shall certainly want to go,
too," continued Janice, smiling again at the little old lady.
"Wal, 'Rill Scattergood's teached long enough, _I_ tell her," declared
the other. "I'm goin' to Poketown now more'n half to git her to give up
at the end o' this term. With what she's laid by, and what I've got
left, we could live mighty comfertable together. Who's your uncle,
child?" pursued Mrs. Scattergood, who had not lost sight of her main
inquiry.
"Mr. Jason Day. He's my father's half brother."
"Ya-as. I didn't know them Days very well when I lived there. How long
did you say you was goin' to stay in Poketown?"
"I don't know, Ma'am," said Janice, sadly. "Father didn't know how long
he'd be in Mexico----"
"Good Land o' Goshen!" ejaculated Mrs. Scattergood, suddenly, "ain't
that where there's fightin' goin' on right now?"
"Yes'm. That's why he couldn't take me with him," confessed Janice,
eager to talk with a sympathetic listener. "You see, I guess 'most all
the money we've got is invested in some mine down there. The fighting
came near the mine, and the superintendent ran away and left
everything."
"Goodness! why wouldn't he?" exclaimed the old lady, knitting faster
than ever in her excitement.
"But then that made it so my father had to go down there and 'tend to
things," explained Janice.
"What! right in the middle of the war? Good Land o' Goshen!"
"There wasn't anybody else _to_ go," said Janice, sadly. "The
stockholders might lose all they put into it. And our money, too. Why!
we had to rent our house furnished. That's why I am coming East to Uncle
Jason's while father is away."
"Too bad! too bad!" returned the old lady, shaking her head.
"But you see," Janice hastened to say, with pride, "my father is that
kind of a man. The other folks expected him to take hold of the business
and straighten it out. He--he's always doing such things, you know."
"I see," agreed Mrs. Scattergood. "He's one o' these 'up an' comin' sort
o' men. And you're his darter!" and she cackled a little, shrill laugh.
"I kin see _that_. You're one o' these new-fashioned gals, all right."
"I hope I'm like Daddy," said Janice, quietly. "Everybody loves
Daddy--everybody depends on him to go ahead and _do_ things. I hope
Uncle Jason will be like him."
With the light breeze fluttering the little crinkles of hair between her
hat and her brow, and an expression of bright expectancy upon her face,
Janice was worth looking at a second time. So Mrs. Scattergood thought,
as she glanced up now and again from her knitting.
"Poketown--Poketown," the girl murmured to herself, trying to spy out
the land ahead as the _Constance Colfax_ floundered on. "Oh! I hope
Daddy's remembrance of it is all wrong now. I hope it will belie its
name."
"What's that, child?" put in the sharp voice of her neighbor.
"Why--why--if it _is_ poky I know I shall just die of homesickness for
Greensboro," confessed Janice. "How could the early settlers of these
'New Hampshire Grants' ever _dare_ give such a homely name to a
village?"
"Pshaw!" ejaculated Mrs. Scattergood. "What's a name? Prob'bly some man
named Poke settled there fust. Or pokeberries grew mighty common there.
People weren't so fanciful about names in them days. Why! my son-in-law
lives right now in a place in York State called 'Skunk's Hollow' and
the city folks that's movin' in there is tryin' to git the post office
to change the name to 'Posy Bloom.' No 'countin' for tastes in names. My
poor mother called _me_ Mahala Ann--an' me too leetle to fight back. But
I made up my mind when I was a mighty leetle gal that if ever I had a
baby I'd call it sumthin' pretty. An' I done the right thing by all my
children.
"Now here's 'Rill," pursued Mrs. Scattergood, waxing communicative. "Her
full name's Amarilla--Amarilla Scattergood. Don't you think that's purty
yourself, now?"
Janice politely agreed. But she quickly swung the conversation back to
Poketown.
"I suppose, if mills had been built there, or the summer boarders had
discovered Poketown, its name would have been changed, too. And you
haven't been up there for twelve years?"
"No, child. But that ain't long. Ain't much happens in twelve years back
East here."
Janice sighed again; but suddenly she jumped from her stool excitedly,
crying: "Oh! what place is _that_?"
She pointed far ahead. Around a rocky headland the view of a pleasant
cove had just opened. The green and blue-ribbed hills rose behind the
cove; the water lay sparkling in it. There was a vividly white church
with a heaven-pointing spire right among the big green trees.
A brown ribbon of main thoroughfare wound up from the wharf, but was
soon lost under the shade of the great trees that interlaced their
branches above it--branches which were now lush with the late spring
growth of leaves. Here and there a cottage, or larger dwelling,
appeared, most of them originally white like the church, but many shabby
from the action of wind and weather.
Over all, the warm sun spread a mantle. In the distance this bright
mantle softened the rigid lines of the old-fashioned houses, and of the
ledges and buttresses of the hills themselves.
Old Mrs. Scattergood stood up, too, looking through her steel-bowed
glasses.
"I declare for't!" she said, "that's Poketown itself! That's the spire
of the Union Church you see. We'll git there in an hour."
Janice did not sit down again just then, nor did she reply. She rested
both trimly-gloved hands on the rail and gazed upon the scene.
"Why, it's beautiful!" she breathed at last "And _that_ is Poketown!"
CHAPTER II
POKETOWN
Some ancient dwellings have the dignity of "homestead" resting upon them
like a benediction; others are aureoled by the name of "manor." The
original Day in Poketown had built a shingled, gable-ended cottage upon
the side-hill which had now, for numberless years, been called "the old
Day house"--nothing more.
"Jason! You Jase! I'd give a cent if you'd mend this pump," complained
Mrs. Almira Day. "Go git me a pail of water from Mis' Dickerson's and
ask how's her rhoumatism this mawnin'. Come on, now! I can't wash the
breakfas' dishes till I hev some water."
The grizzled, lanky man who had been sitting comfortably on a bench in
the sun, sucking on a corncob pipe and gazing off across the lake, never
even turned his head as he asked:
"Where's Marty?"
"The goodness only knows! Ye know he ain't never here when ye want him."
"Why didn't ye tell him about the water at breakfas' time?"
"Would _that_ have done any good?" demanded Mrs. Day, with some scorn.
"Ye know Marty's got too big to take orders from his marm. He don't do
nothin' but hang about Josiah Pringle's harness shop all day."
"I told him to hoe them 'taters," said Mr. Day, thoughtfully.
"Well, he don't seem ter take orders from his dad, neither. Don't know
what that boy's comin' to," and a whine crept into Mrs. Day's voice. "He
can't git along with 'Rill Scattergood, so he won't go to school. His
fingers is gettin' all stained yaller from suthin'--d'you 'xpect it's
them cigarettes, Jase?"
Her husband was rising slowly to his feet. "Gimme the pail," he grunted,
without replying to her last question. "I'll git the water for ye this
onc't. But that's Marty's job an' he's got to l'arn it, too!"
"Here, Jase! take two pails," urged Mrs. Day. "An' I wish you _would_
git Pringle to cut ye a new pump-leather."
But Mr. Day ignored the second pail. "I don't feel right peart to-day,"
he said, shambling off down the path. "And there's a deal of heft to a
pail of water--uphill, too. An' by-me-by I got ter go down to the dock,
I s'pose, when the boat comes in, to meet Broxton's gal. I 'xpect
_she'll_ be a great nuisance, 'Mira."
"I'll stand her bein' some nuisance if you give me the twenty dollars a
month your brother wrote that he'd send for her board and keep," snapped
Mrs. Day. "You understand, Jase. That money's comin' to _me_, or I don't
scrub and slave for no relation of yourn. Remember that!"
Jason shuffled on as though he had not heard her. That was the most
exasperating trait of this lazy man--so his wife thought; he was too
lazy to quarrel.
He went out at the gate, which hung by one hinge to the gatepost, into
the untidy back lane upon which one end of his rocky little farm
abutted. Had he glanced back at the premises he would have seen a
weed-grown, untidy yard surrounding the old house, with decrepit stables
and other outbuildings in the rear, a garden which was almost a jungle
now, although in the earlier spring it had given much promise of a
summer harvest of vegetables. Poorly tilled fields behind the front
premises terraced up the timber-capped hill.
Jason Day always "calkerlated ter farm it" each year, and he started in
good season, too. The soil was rich and most of his small fields were
warm and early; but somehow his plans always fell through before the
season was far advanced. So neither the farm nor the immediate premises
of the old Day house were attractive.
The house itself looked like a withered and gnarly apple left hanging
upon the tree from the year before. In its forlorn nakedness it actually
cried out for a coat of paint. Each individual shingle was curled and
cracked. Only the superior workmanship of a former time kept the Day
roof tight and defended the family from storms.
Some hours later the _Constance Colfax_ came into view around a distant
point in the lake shore. Mr. Day had camped upon the identical bench
again and was still sucking at the stem of his corncob pipe.
"Wal," he groaned, "I 'xpect I've got to go down to meet that gal of
Broxton's. And the sun's mighty hot this mawnin'."
"You wouldn't feel it so, if ye hadn't been too 'tarnal lazy to change
yer seat," sniffed his wife. "Now, you mind, Jase! That board money
comes to me, or you can take Broxton's gal to the _ho_-tel."
Mr. Day shambled out of the front gate without making reply.
"Drat the man!" muttered his wife. "If I could jes' git a rise out o'
him onc't----"
It was not far to the dock. Indeed, Poketown was so compactly built on
the steep hillside that there was scarcely a house within its borders
from which a boy could not have tossed a pebble into the waters of the
cove. Jason strolled along in the shade, passing the time of day with
such neighbors as were equally disengaged, and spreading the news of his
niece's expected arrival.
As he passed along the lane which later debouched upon the main
thoroughfare of Poketown, it was evident to the most casual glance that
the old Day house was not the only dwelling far along in a state of
decay. Poketown was full of such.
On the street leading directly to the dock there were several
well-cared-for estates--some of them wedged in between blocks of
two-story frame buildings, the first floors of which were occupied by
stores of various kinds. The post office had a building to itself. The
Lake View Inn was not unattractive, its side piazza overlooking the cove
and the lake spread beyond.
But the rutty, dusty road showed that it had been rutty and muddy in the
earlier spring. The flagstones of the sidewalks were broken, and the
walks themselves ill kept. The gutters were overgrown with grass and
weeds. Before the shops the undefended tree trunks were gnawed into
grotesque patterns by the farmers' hungry beasts. Hardware was at a
premium in Poketown, for a dozen gates along the line were hung with
leather hinges, and bits of rope had taken the places of the original
latches.
From the water, however, even on closer view, the hillside village made
a pretty picture. Near the wharf it was not so romantic, as Janice Day
realized, when the coughing, wheezy steamboat came close in.
There were decrepit boats drawn up on the narrow beach; there were
several decaying shacks bordering on the dock itself; and along the
stringpiece of the wharf roosted a row of "humans" that were the
opposite of ornamental. The quick eye of Janice Day caught sight of this
row of nondescripts.
"Goodness me, Mrs. Scattergood!" she exclaimed, turning to the old lady
who had been in receipt of her confidences. "Is the almshouse near
Poketown?"
"There's a poorfarm, child; but there ain't nobody on it but a few old
folks an' some orphans. We ain't poor here--not pauper poor. But,
goodness me! you mean them men a-settin' there? Why, they ain't
poor--no, no, child. I don't suppose there's a man there that don't own
his own house. There's Mel Parraday, who owns the _ho_-tel; and Lem
Pinney that owns stock in this very steamboat comp'ny; and Walkworthy
Dexter--Walky's done expressin' and stage-drivin' since before my 'Rill
come here to Poketown to teach."
"But--but they look so ragged and unshaven," gasped Janice.
"Pshaw! they ain't proud, I reckon," cackled the old lady, gathering up
her knitting and dropping it into the beaded bag, which she shut with a
snap.
"But isn't there anybody proud _of_ them?" queried Janice. "Haven't they
mothers--or wives--or sisters?"
The old lady stared at her. Then she made a sudden clicking in her
throat that might have been a chuckle. "I declare for't, child!" she
ejaculated. "I dunno as many of us in these parts _air_ proud of our men
folks."
Just then the steamboat's bow bumped the wharf. The jar scarcely seemed
to awaken the languid line of Poketownites ranged along the other side.
The only busy person in sight was the employee of the steamboat company
who caught the loop of the hawser thrown him, and dropped it over a
pile. The rest of the men just raised their heads and stared, chewing
reflectively on either tobacco or straws, until the plank was dropped
and the deckhands began trundling the freight and baggage ashore.
There were two or three commercial drummers beside Mrs. Scattergood and
Janice, who disembarked on this dock. Mrs. Scattergood bade the girl
from the West a brisk good-bye and went directly up the dock, evidently
expecting nobody to meet her at this time of day. A lanky man, with
grizzled brows and untrimmed beard, got up slowly from the stringpiece
of the wharf and slouched forward to meet Janice Day.
"I reckon you be Broxton's gal, eh?" he queried, his eyes twinkling not
unkindly. "Ye sort er favor him--an' he favored his mother in more ways
than one. You're Janice Day?"
"Oh, yes indeed! And you're my Uncle Jason?" cried the girl, impulsively
seizing Mr. Day's hand. There was nothing about this man that at all
reminded Janice of her father; yet the thought of their really being so
closely related to each other was comforting. "I'm so glad to see you,"
she continued. "I hope you'll like me, Uncle Jason--and I hope Aunt
Almira will like me. And there is a cousin, too, isn't there--a boy?
Dear me! I've been looking forward to meeting you all ever since I left
Greensboro, and been wondering what sort of people you would be."
"Wal," drawled Uncle Jason, rather staggered by the way Janice "ran on,"
"we reckon on makin' ye comferble. Looks like we'd have ye with us some
spell, too. Broxton writ me that he didn't know how long he'd be
gone--down there in Mexico."
"No. Poor Daddy couldn't tell. The business must be 'tended to, I
s'pose----"
"Right crazy of him to go there," grunted Uncle Jason. "May git shot any
minute. Ain't _no_ money wuth that, I don't believe."
This rather tactless speech made the girl suddenly look grave; but it
did not quench her vivacity. She was staring about the dock, interested
in everything she saw, when Uncle Jason drawled:
"I s'pose ye got a trunk, Janice?"
"Oh, yes. Here is the check," and she began to skirmish in her purse.
"Wal! there ain't no hurry. Marty'll come down by-me-by with the
wheelbarrer and git it for ye."
"But my goodness!" exclaimed the girl from Greensboro. "I haven't
anything fit to put on in this bag; everything got rumpled so aboard the
train. I'll want to change just as soon as I get to the house, Uncle."
"Wal!" Uncle Jason was staggered. He had given up thinking quickly years
before. This was an emergency that floored him.
"Why! isn't that the expressman there? And can't he take my trunk right
up to the house?" continued the girl.
"Ya-as; that's Walky Dexter," admitted Mr. Day.
A stout, red-faced man was backing a raw-boned nag in front of a farm
wagon, down upon the wharf and toward a little heap of baggage that had
been run ashore from the lower deck of the _Constance Colfax_. Janice,
still lugging her suitcase, shot up the dock toward the expressman,
leaving Jason, slack-jawed and well-nigh breathless.
"Jefers-pelters! What a flyaway critter she is!" the man muttered. "I
don't see whatever we're a-goin' to do with _her_."
Meanwhile Janice got Mr. Dexter's attention immediately. "There's my
trunk right there, Mr. Dexter," she cried. "And here's the check. You
see it--the brown trunk with the brass corners?"
"I see it, Miss. All right. I'll git it up to Jason's some time this
arternoon."
"Oh, Mr. Dexter!" she cried, shaking her head at him, but smiling, too.
"That will not do at all! I want to unpack it at once. I need some of
the things in it, for I've been traveling two days. Can't you take it on
your first load?"
"Wa-al--I might," confessed Dexter, looking her over with a quizzical
smile. "But us'ally the Days ain't in no hurry."
"Then this is one Day who _is_ in a hurry," she said, briefly. "What is
your charge for delivering the trunk, sir?"
"Oh--'bout a quarter, Miss. And gimme that suitcase, too. 'Twon't cost
ye no more, and I'll git 'em there before Jason and you reach the house.
Poketown is a purty slow old place, Miss," the man added, with a wink
and a chuckle, "but I kin see the _days_ are going to move faster, now
you have arove in town. Don't you fear; your trunk'll be there--'nless
Josephus, here, busts a leg!"
Quite stunned, Uncle Jason had not moved from his tracks. "Now we're all
right, sir," said the girl, cheerily, taking his arm and by her very
touch seeming to galvanize a little life into his scarecrow figure.
"Shall we go home?"
"Eh? Wal! Ef ye say so, Janice," replied Mr. Day, weakly.
They started up the main street of Poketown, Janice accommodating her
step to that of her uncle. Mr. Day was not one given to idle chatter;
but the girl did not notice his silence in her interest in all she saw.
It was a beautiful, shady way, with the hill not too steep for comfort.
And some of the dwellings set in the midst of their terraced old lawns,
were so beautiful! It was the beauty of age, however; there did not seem
to be a single _new_ thing in Poketown.
Even the scant display of goods in the shop windows had lain there until
they were dust-covered, sun-burned, and flyspecked. The signs over the
store doors were tarnished.
They came to the lane that led up the hill away from High Street, and on
which Uncle Jason said he lived. An almost illegible sign at the corner
announced it to be "Hillside Avenue." There were not two fences abutting
upon the lane that were set in line, while the sidewalks were narrow or
broad, according to the taste of the several owners of property along
the way.
The beautiful old trees were everywhere, however; only some of them
needed trimming badly, and many overhung the roofs, their dripping
branches having rotted the shingles and given life to great patches of
green moss. There was a sogginess to the grass-grown yards that seemed
unhealthful. There were several, picturesque, old wells, with massive
sweeps and oaken buckets--quaint breeders of typhoid germs--which showed
that the physicians of Poketown had not properly educated their patients
to modern sanitary ideas.
Altogether the village in which her father had been born and bred was a
dead-and-alive, do-nothing place, and its beauty, for Janice Day, faded
before she was halfway up the hill to her uncle's house.
CHAPTER III
"IT JEST RATTLES"
Almira Day was a good-hearted woman. It was not in her to treat her
husband's niece otherwise than kindly, despite her threat to the
contrary when Jason left the old Day house to meet Janice at the
steamboat dock.
She stood smiling in the doorway--a large, pink, lymphatic woman, as
shapeless as a half-filled meal-sack with a string tied around its
middle, quite as untidy as her husband in dress, but with clean skin and
a wholesome look.
Her calico dress was faded and, in places, strained to the
bursting-point, showing that it was "store-bought" and had never been
fitted to Mrs. Day's bulbous figure. She wore a pair of men's slippers
very much down at the heel, and pink stockings with a gaping hole in the
seam at the back of one, which Janice very plainly saw as her aunt
preceded her upstairs to the room the visitor was to occupy.
"I hope ye won't mind how things look," drawled Aunt 'Mira. "We ain't
as up-an'-comin' as some, I do suppose. But nothin' ain't gone well with
Jason late years, an' he's got some mis'ry that he can't git rid of,
so's he can't work stiddy. Look out for this nex' ter the top step. The
tread's broke an' I been expectin' ter be throwed from top to bottom of
these stairs for weeks."
"Can't Uncle Jason fix it?" asked Janice, stepping over the broken
tread.
"Wal, he ain't exactly got 'round to it yet," confessed her aunt.
"There! I do hope you like your room, Niece Janice. There's a pretty
outlook from the winder."
True enough, the window overlooked the hillside and the lake. Only, had
the panes been washed one could have viewed the landscape and the water
so much better!
The room itself was the shabbiest bedchamber Janice Day had ever seen.
The carpet on the floor had, generations before, been one of those
flowery axminsters that country people used to buy for their "poller."
Then they would pull all the shades down and shut the room tightly, for
otherwise the pink roses faded completely out of the design.
This old carpet had long since been through _that_ stage of existence,
however, and was now worn to the warp in spots, its design being visible
only because of the ingrained grime which years of trampling had brought
to it.
The paper on the walls was faded and stained. Empty places where
pictures had hung for years, showed in contrast to the more faded barren
districts. A framed copy of the Declaration of Independence ornamented
the space above the mantel. Hanging above the bed's head were those two
famous chromos of "Good-Morning" and "Good-Night." A moth-eaten worsted
motto and cross, "The Rock of Ages," hung above the little bureau glass.
There was, too, a torn and faded slipper for matches, and a tall glass
lamp that, for some reason, reminded Janice of a skeleton. She could
never look at that lamp thereafter without expecting the oil tank to
become a grinning skull with a tall fool's cap (the chimney) on it, and
its thin body to sprout bony arms and legs.
The furniture was decrepit and ill matched. Janice could have overlooked
the shaky chair, the toppling bureau, and the scratched washstand; but
the bed with only three legs, and a soap-box under the fourth corner,
_did_ bring a question to the guest's lips:
"Where is the other leg, Aunty?"
"Now, I declare for't!" exclaimed Mrs. Day. "That _is_ too bad! The
leg's up on the closet shelf here. Jase was calkerlatin' to put it on
again, but he ain't never got 'round to it. But the box'll hold yer. It
only rattles," she added, as Janice tried the security of the bedstead.
That expression, "it only rattles," the girl from Greensboro was
destined to hear unnumbered times in her uncle's home. It was typical of
the old Day house and its inmates. Unless a repair absolutely _must_ be
made, Uncle Jason would not take a tool in his hand.
As for her Cousin Martin ("Marty" everybody called the gangling,
grinning, idle ne'er-do-well of fourteen), Janice was inclined to be
utterly hopeless about him from the start. If he was a specimen of the
Poketown boys, she told herself, she had no desire to meet any of them.
"What do you do with yourself all day long, Marty, if you don't go to
school?" she asked her cousin, at the dinner table.
"Oh, I hang around--like everybody else. Ain't nothin' doin' in
Poketown."
"I should think it would be more fun to go to school."
"Not ter 'Rill Scattergood," rejoined the boy, in haste. "That old maid
dunno enough to teach a cow."
Janice might have thought a cow much more difficult to teach than a boy;
only she looked again into Marty's face, which plainly advertised the
vacancy of his mind, and thought better of the speech that had risen to
her lips.
"Marty won't go to school no more," her aunt complained, whiningly.
"'Rill Scattergood ain't got no way with him. Th' committee's been
talkin' about gittin' another teacher for years; but 'Rill's sorter
_sot_ there, she's had the place so long."
"There's more than a month of school yet--before the summer
vacation--isn't there?" queried Janice.
"Oh, yes," sighed Mrs. Day.
"I'd love to go and get acquainted with the girls," the guest said,
brightly. "Wouldn't you go with me some afternoon and introduce me to
the teacher, Marty?"
"_Me?_ Ter 'Rill Scattergood? Naw!" declared the amazed Marty. "I sh'd
say not!"
"Why, Marty!" exclaimed his mother. "That ain't perlite."
"Who said 'twas?" returned her hopeful son, shortly. "I ain't tryin' ter
be perlite ter no _girl_. And I ain't goin' ter 'Rill Scattergood's
school--never, no more!"
"Young man," commanded his father, angrily, "you hold that tongue o'
yourn. And you be perlite to your cousin, or I'll dance the dust out o'
your jacket with a hick'ry sprout, big as ye be."
Janice hastened to change the subject and tune the conversation to a
more pleasant key.
"It is so pretty all over this hillside," she said. "Around Greensboro
the country is flat. I think the hills are much more beautiful. And the
lake is just _dear_."
"Ya-as," sighed her aunt. "Artis' folks come here an' paint this lake. I
reckon it's purty; but ye sort er git used ter it after a while."
It was evidently hard for Aunt 'Mira to enthuse over anything. Marty
volunteered:
"We got a waterfall on our place. Folks call it the Shower Bath. Guess a
girl would think 'twas pretty."
"Oh! I'd love to see that," declared Janice, quickly.
"I'll show it to you after dinner," said Marty, of a sudden surprisingly
friendly.
"You'll hoe them 'taters after dinner," cried his father, sharply.
"That's what _you'll_ do."
"Huh!" growled the sullen youth. "Yer said I was to be perlite, an' when
I start in ter be, you spring them old pertaters on a feller. Huh!"
"Aw, now, Jason," interposed his mother. "Can't Marty show his cousin
over the farm and hoe the 'taters afterward?"
"No, he can't!" denied Master Marty, quickly. "I ain't goin' ter work
double for nobody. Now, that's flat!"
"Oh, we can go to the Shower Bath some other time," suggested Janice,
apprehensive of starting another family squabble. "I don't know as I'd
be able to hoe potatoes; but maybe there are other things I can do in
the garden. I always had a big flower garden at home."
"Huh!" grunted Marty. "Flowers are only a nuisance."
"I s'pose you could weed some," sighed Aunt 'Mira. "It hurts me so to
stoop."
"She'd better pick 'tater bugs," said Marty, grinning. "They've begun to
come, I reckon. Hard-shells, anyway."
Janice could not resist shivering at this suggestion. She did not love
insects any better than do most girls. But she took Marty's suggestion
in good part.
"You wait," she said. "Maybe I can do that, too. I'll weed a little,
anyway. Have you a large farm, Uncle Jason?"
"It's big enough, Janice," grumbled Jason. "Does seem as though--most
years--it's too big for us to manage. If Marty, here, warn't so
triflin'----"
"I don't see no medals on _you_ for workin' hard," whispered the boy,
loud enough for Janice to hear.
"This was a right good farm, onc't," said Aunt 'Mira. "B'fore Jason got
his mis'ry we use ter have good crops. That's when we was fust married."
"But that's what broke my health all down," interposed Uncle Jason.
"Don't pay a man to work so hard when he's young. He has ter suffer for
it in the end."
"Huh!" grunted Marty. "If it wasn't good for _you_ to work so hard when
you was young, what about _me_?"
"You git along out o' here an' start on them 'taters!" commanded Mr.
Day, angrily.
Marty slid out, muttering under his breath. Janice jumped up from the
table, saying cheerfully: "I'll help you with the dishes, Aunty. Let's
clear off."
Her uncle had risen and was feeling for his corncob pipe on the ledge
above the door. Mrs. Day looked a bit startled when she saw Janice begin
briskly to collect the soiled dishes.
"I dunno, Janice," she hesitated. "I gin'rally feel right po'ly after
dinner, and I'm use ter takin' forty winks."
Janice did not wonder that her aunt felt "right po'ly." She had eaten
more pork, potatoes, spring cabbage and fresh bread than would have
served a hearty man.
"Let's get rid of the dishes first, Aunty," said Janice, cheerfully "You
can get your nap afterward."
"Wa-al," agreed Mrs. Day, slowly rising. "I dunno's there's water enough
to more'n give 'em a lick and a promise. Marty! Oh, you Marty! Come, go
for a pail of water, will ye? That's a good boy."
"Now, ye know well enough," snarled Jason's voice just outside the
door, "that that boy ain't in earshot now."
"Oh, _I_ can get a pail of water from the pump, Aunty," said Janice,
briskly starting for the porch.
"But that pump ain't goin'," declared Mrs. Day. "An' no knowin' when
'twill be goin'. We have ter lug all our water from Dickerson's."
"Oh, gimme the bucket!" snapped Uncle Jason, putting his great, hairy
hand inside the door and snatching the water-pail from the shelf.
"Wimmen-folks is allus a-clatterin' about suthin'!"
Janice had never imagined people just like these relatives of hers. She
was both ashamed and amused,--ashamed of their ill-breeding and amused
by their useless bickering.
"Wa-al," said her aunt, yawning and lowering herself upon the kitchen
couch, the springs of which squeaked complainingly under her weight,
"Wa-al, 'tain't scurcely wuth doin' the dishes _now_. Jason'll stop and
gab 'ith some one. It takes him ferever an' a day ter git a pail o'
water. You go on about your play, Niece Janice. I'll git 'em done erlone
somehow, by-me-by."
Mrs. Day closed her eyes while she was still speaking. She was evidently
glad to relax into her old custom again.
Janice took down her aunt's sunbonnet from the nail by the side door and
went out. Amusement had given place in the girl's mind to something
like actual shrinking from these relatives and their ways. The porch
boards gave under even her weight. Some of them were broken. The steps
were decrepit, too. The pump handle was tied down, she found, when she
put a tentative hand upon it.
"'It jest rattles,'" quoted Janice; but no laugh followed the sigh which
was likewise her involuntary comment upon the situation.
CHAPTER IV
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
There was a long, well-shaded yard behind the house, bordered on the
upper hand by the palings of the garden fence. Had this fence not been
so overgrown by vines, wandering hens could have gone in and out of the
garden at pleasure.
Robins were whisking in and out of the tops of the trees, quarreling
over the first of the cherry crop. Janice heard Marty's hoe and she
opened the garden gate. About half of this good-sized patch was given
over to the "'tater" crop; the remainder of the garden seemed--to the
casual glance--merely a wilderness of weeds. There may have been rows of
vegetable seeds planted there in the beginning; but now it was a perfect
mat of green things that have no commercial value--to say the least.
Marty was about halfway down the first row of potatoes. He was cleaning
the row pretty well, and the weeds were wilting in the sun; but the rows
were as crooked as a snake's path.
"Hullo!" said the boy, willing to stop and lean on the hoe handle.
"Don't you want to help?"
"I don't believe I could hoe, Marty," said Janice, doubtfully.
"If you'd been a boy cousin, I wouldn't have minded," grunted Marty. "He
and me could have had some fun."
"Don't you think _I_ can be any fun?" demanded Janice, rather amused by
the frankness of the youth.
"Never saw a gal that was," responded Marty. "Always in the way. Marm
says I got to be perlite to 'em----"
"And is that such a cross?"
"Don't know anything about no cross," growled Marty; "but a boy cousin
that I could lick would ha' been a whole lot more to my mind."
"Oh, Marty! we're not going to quarrel."
"I dunno whether we are or not," returned the pessimistic youth. "Wait
till there's only one piece o' pie left at dinner some day. You'll have
ter have it. Marm'll say so. But if you was a boy--an' I could lick
ye--ye wouldn't dare take it. D'ye see?"
"I'm not so awfully fond of pie," admitted Janice. "And I wouldn't let a
piece stand in the way of our being good friends."
"Oh, well; we'll see," said Marty, grudgingly. "But ye can't hoe, ye
say?"
"I don't believe so. I'd cut off more potato plants than weeds, maybe.
Can't you cultivate your potatoes with a horse cultivator? I see the
farmers doing that around Greensboro. It's lots quicker."
"Oh, we got a horse-hoe," said Marty, without interest. "But it got
broke an' Dad ain't fixed it yet. B'sides, ye couldn't use it 'twixt
these rows. They're too crooked. But then--as the feller said--there's
more plants in a crooked row."
"What's all that?" demanded Janice, waving a hand toward the other half
of the garden.
"Weeds--mostly. Right there's carrots. Marm always _will_ plant carrots
ev'ry spring; but they git lost so easy in the weeds."
"_I_ know carrots," cried Janice, brightly. "Let me weed 'em," and she
dropped on her knees at the beginning of the rows.
"Help yourself!" returned Marty, plying the hoe. "But it looks to me as
though them carrots had just about fainted."
It looked so to Janice, too, when she managed to find the tender little
plants which, coming up thickly enough in the row, now looked as livid
as though grown in a cellar. The rank weeds were keeping all the sun and
air from them.
"I can find them, just the same," she confided to Marty, when he came
back up the next row. "And I'd better thin them, too, as I go along,
hadn't I?"
"Help yourself," repeated the boy. "But pickin' 'tater bugs wouldn't be
as bad as _that_, to my mind."
"'Every one to his fancy,
And me to my Nancy.'
as the old woman said when she kissed her cow," quoted Janice, laughing.
"You can have the bugs, Marty."
"Somebody'll have to git 'em pretty soon, or the bugs'll have the
'taters," declared her cousin. "Say! you'd ought to have somethin'
besides your fingers ter scratch around them plants."
"Yes, and a pair of old gloves, Marty," agreed Janice, ruefully.
"Huh! Ain't that a girl all over? Allus have ter be waited on. I wisht
you'd been a boy cousin--I jest _do_! Then we'd git these 'taters done
'fore night."
"And how about getting the carrots weeded, Marty?" she returned,
laughing at him.
Marty grunted. But when he finished the second row he threw down his hoe
and disappeared through the garden gate. Janice wondered if he had
deserted her--and the potatoes--for the afternoon; but by and by he
returned, bringing a little three-fingered hand-weeder, and tossed on
the ground beside her a pair of old kid gloves--evidently his mother's.
"Oh, thank you, Marty!" cried Janice. "I don't mind working, but I hated
to tear my fingers all to pieces."
"Huh!" grunted Marty. "Ain't that jest like a girl?"
Grudgingly, however, as his interest in Janice was shown, the girl
appreciated the fact that Marty was warming toward her. Intermittently,
as he plodded up and down the potato rows, they conversed and became
better acquainted.
"Daddy has a friend who owns a farm outside of Greensboro, and I loved
to go out there," Janice ventured. "I always said I'd love to live on a
farm."
"Huh!" came Marty's usual explosive grunt. "You'll git mighty tired of
livin' on _this_ one--I bet you!"
"Why should I? You've got horses, and cows, and chickens, and--and all
that--haven't you?"
"Well, we've got a pair of nags that you can plow with. But they ain't
fit for driving. Jim Courteval, who lives up the road a piece, now
_he's_ got some hossflesh wuth owning. But our old crowbaits ain't
nothing."
"Don't you love to take care of them--and brush them--and all that?"
cried the girl, eagerly.
"Not much I don't! I reckon if old Sam and Lightfoot felt a currycomb
once more they'd have a fit. And you ought to see our cow! Gee! Dad
tried to trade her the other day for a stack of fodder, and the man
wouldn't have her. He'll have ter trade her off 'sight unseen' if he
ever gits rid of her. Ye see, we never _do_ raise feed enough, an' she
certainly come through the winter in bad shape; an' our paster fence is
down in places so we can't let her get the grass."
"Why, the poor creature!" murmured Janice. "Why don't you mend the
fence, Marty, so the cow can feed in the pasture?"
"Me? Huh! I guess not," snarled Marty, starting down the potato row
again. "Let the old man do it."
It was not long after this that Marty got tired of hoeing and threw down
the implement altogether, to seek the shadow of the cherry tree in the
fence corner.
"Why don't ye quit?" he asked Janice. "You're getting all hot and mucky.
And for what? Them things will only have ter be weeded again."
Janice laughed. "I'll keep them clean as far as I can go. I won't let a
lot of old weeds beat _me_."
"Huh! what's the odds?"
"Why, Marty!" she cried. "Don't you like to see 'a good task well
done?'"
"Ya-as,--by somebody else," grinned that young hopeful. "Come on an' sit
down, Janice."
"Haven't got time," laughed his cousin.
"Pshaw! 'Time was made for slaves'--that's what Walky Dexter says. Say!
let's go up to see the Shower Bath."
"How about the potatoes?"
"Shucks! I've done a good stint, ain't I? Dad can't expect me to work
all the time. An' I bet he ain't doin' a livin' thing himself but
settin' down talkin' somewhere."
Janice, though shaking her head silently, thought this was more than
likely to be true. And Marty would not leave her in peace; so she was
willing to desert the carrot patch. But she had cleaned up quite a piece
of the bed and was proud of it.
Marty sauntered along by her side as they passed through the barnyard
and paddock. It was plain that what Marty had said about currying the
horses was quite true. The beasts' winter coats still clung to them in
rags. And the poor cow!
A couple of lean shoats squealed in a pen.
"What makes them so noisy, Marty?" asked his cousin.
"I guess they're thirsty. Always squealin' about sumthin'--hogs is. More
nuisance than they're worth."
"But--I s'pose if _you_ wanted water, you'd squeal?" suggested Janice.
"Huh! smart, ain't ye?" growled Marty. "I'd go down ter Dickerson's an'
git a drink. So'll them shoats if Dad don't mend that pen pretty soon."
It was no use to suggest that Marty might make the needed repairs; so
Janice made no further comment. The trail of shiftlessness was over
everything. Fences were down, doors flapped on single hinges, roofs were
caved in, heaps of rubbish lay in corners, here and there broken and
rusted farm implements stood where they had last been used. Neglect and
Decay had marked the Day farm for their own.
The fields were plowed for corn and partly worked up with the harrow.
But nothing further had been done for several days past, and already the
weeds were sprouting.
Most of the fences were of stone; but the pasture fence was of three
strands of wire, and with a hammer and staples a good deal might have
been done for it in a few brisk hours.
"Aw, what's the use?" demanded Marty. "It'd only be down again in a
little while."
"But the poor cow----"
"Shucks! She's gone dry long ago. An' I'm glad of it, for Dad made me
milk her."
The climb through the pasture and the woodlot above it, however, was
pleasant, and when Janice heard the falling water she was delighted.
This was so different from the prairie country to which she was used
that she must needs express her appreciation of its loveliness again and
again.
"Oh, yes," grunted Marty. "But these rocky old farms are mighty hard to
work. I bet I picked up a million dornicks out o' that upper cornfield
las' month. An' ye plow jest as many out o' the ground ev'ry year. Mebbe
the scenery's pretty upon these here hills; but ye can't _eat_ scenery,
and the crops are mighty poor."
Over the lip of a smoothly-worn ledge the water sprayed into a granite
basin. The dimpling pool might have been knee-deep, and was as cold as
ice.
"It's like that the hottest day in August," said Marty. "But it's lots
more fun to go swimmin' in the lake."
It was late afternoon when they came down the hillside to the old Day
house once more. Mr. Day was puttering around the stables.
"Ye didn't finish them 'taters, Marty," he complained.
"Oh, I'll do 'em to-morrer," said the boy. "It most broke my back
a'ready. And did ye see all the carrots we got weeded?"
"Uh-huh," observed his father. "Lots _you_ had to do with weedin' the
carrots, Marty," he added, sarcastically.
When Janice went into the house the dinner dishes were still piled in
the sink; yet Aunt 'Mira was already getting supper. She was still
shuffling around the kitchen in her list slippers and the old calico
dress.
"I declare for't!" she complained. "Seems ter me I never find time to
clean myself up for an afternoon like other women folks does. There's
allus so much ter do in this house. Does seem the beatenes'! An' there
ain't nobody nowheres likes nice clo'es better than I do, Niece Janice.
I use ter dress pretty nifty, if I do say it. But that was a long time
ago, a long time ago.
"No. Never mind 'em now. I'll wash the hull kit an' bilin' of 'em up
after supper. No use in takin' two bites to a cherry," she added,
referring to the dishes in the sink.
Janice climbed the stairs to her room, carefully stepping over the
broken tread. There was water in her pitcher, and she made her simple
toilet, putting on a fresh frock. Then she sat down in the rocker by the
window. Every time she swung to and fro the loose rocker clicked and
rattled.
The red light that heralded the departure of the sun behind the wooded
hills across the lake seemed to make the room and its mismated
furnishings uglier than before. The girl turned her back upon it with
almost a sob, and gazed out upon the terraced hillside and the lake, the
latter already darkening. The shadows on the farther shore were heavy,
but here and there a point of sudden light showed a farmhouse.
A belated bird, winging its way homeward, called shrilly. The breeze
sobbed in the nearby treetops, and then died suddenly.
Such a lonely, homesick feeling possessed Janice Day as she had never
imagined before! She was away off here in the East, while Daddy's train
was still flying westward with him, down towards that war-ruffled
Mexico. And she was obliged to stay here--in this ugly old house--with
these shiftless people----
"Oh, dear Daddy! I wish you could be here right now," the girl half
sobbed. "I wish you could see this place--and the folks here! I know
what _you'd_ say, Daddy; I know just what you'd say about it all!"
CHAPTER V.
'RILL SCATTERGOOD AND HER SCHOOL.
With the elasticity of Youth, however, Janice opened her eyes the
following morning on a new world. Certainly the outlook from her window
was glorious; therefore her faith in life itself--and in Poketown and
her relatives--was renewed as she gazed out upon the beautiful picture
fresh-painted by the fingers of Dawn.
All out-of-doors beckoned Janice. She hurriedly made her toilet, crept
down the squeaking stairs, and softly let herself out, for nobody else
was astir about the old Day house.
The promise of the morning from the window was kept in full. Janice
could not walk sedately--she fairly skipped. Out of the sagging gate and
up the winding lane she went, her feet twinkling over the dew-wet sod, a
song on her lips, her eyes as bright as the stars which Dawn had
smothered when she tiptoed over the eastern hills.
And then at a corner of a cross-lane above her uncle's house, Janice
came upon the only other person in Poketown astir as early as
herself--Walkworthy Dexter, who led Josephus, the heavy harness clanking
about the horse's ribs.
"Ah-ha! I see there's a new _day_," chuckled Mr. Dexter, his pale blue
eyes twinkling. "And how do you find your Uncle Jase? Not what you'd
call a fidgety man, eh? He ain't never stirred up about nothing, Jase
Day ain't. What d'ye think?"
Janice didn't know just what _to_ think--or, to say, either.
"Find Jase jest a mite leisurely, don't ye?" pursued the gossipy Dexter.
"I bet a cooky he ain't much like the folks where you come from?"
"I couldn't give an opinion so soon," said Janice, shyly, not sure that
she liked this fat man any more for the scorn in which he held his
neighbors.
"There speaks the true Day--slow but sure," laughed Dexter, and went his
way without further comment, leading the bony Josephus.
But the morning was quite spoiled for Janice. She wondered if her
uncle's townsfolks all held Walkworthy Dexter's opinion of the Day
family? It hurt her pride to be classed with people who were so
shiftless that they were a byword in the community.
She went back to the house when she saw the smoke curling out of the
chimney below her. Aunt 'Mira was shuffling around the kitchen in slow
preparation for the morning meal. Mr. Day was pounding on the stairs
with a stick of stove-wood, in an endeavor to awaken Marty.
"That boy sleeps like the dead," he complained. "Marty! Marty!" he
shouted up the stairs, "your marm is waitin' for you to git her a pail
of water."
Then he started for the stable to feed the stock, without waiting to see
if his young hopeful was coming down, or not.
"I declare for't!" Aunt 'Mira sighed; "I'm allus bein' put back for
water. I _do_ wish Jason would mend that pump."
Janice took the empty pail quietly and departed for the neighbor's
premises. It was an old-fashioned sweep-and-bucket well at the
Dickerson's, but Janice managed it. The pail of water was heavy,
however, and she had to change hands several times on her way up the
hill. Marty came yawning to the door just as his cousin appeared.
He grinned. "You kin git up an' do that ev'ry morning, if ye want to,
Janice," he said. "I won't be jealous if ye do."
"Ye'd oughter be ashamed, Marty," whined his mother, from the kitchen,
"seein' a gal do yer work for ye."
"Who made it my work any more'n it's Dad's work?" growled Marty. "And
she didn't have ter do it if she didn't want to."
Janice did her best to keep to a cheerful tone. "I didn't mind going,
Aunty," she said. "And we'll get breakfast so much quicker. I'm hungry."
She endeavored to be cheerful and chatty at the breakfast table. But the
very air her relatives breathed seemed to feed their spleen. Mr. Day
insisted upon Marty's finishing the hoeing of the potatoes, and it took
almost a pitched battle to get the boy started.
Mrs. Day was inclined, after all, to "take sides" with her son against
his father, so the smoke of battle was not entirely dissipated when
Marty had flung himself out of the house to attack the weeds.
"Ef you'd do a few things yourself when they'd oughter be done, p'r'aps
the boy'd take example of ye," said Mrs. Day, bitterly.
Her husband reached for his pipe--that never-failing comforter--and made
no reply.
"Ev'rythin' about the house is goin' to rack an' ruin," pursued the
lady, slopping a little water into the dishpan. "No woman never had to
put up with all _I_ hafter put up with--not even Job's wife! There! all
the water's gone ag'in. I do wish you'd mend that pump, Jason."
But Jason had departed, and only a faint smell of tobacco smoke trailed
him across the yard.
Janice tried to help her aunt--and that was not difficult. Almira Day
was no rigid disciplinarian when it came to housekeeping. By her own
confession she frequently satisfied her housewifely conscience by giving
things "a lick and a promise." And anybody who would help her could make
beds and "rid up" as best pleased themselves. Aunt 'Mira was no
housekeeping tyrant--by no means! Consequently she did not interfere
with anything her niece did about the house.
The upstairs work was done and the sitting room brushed and set to
rights much earlier than was the Day custom. When Janice had done this
she came back to the kitchen, to find her aunt sitting in a creaky
rocker in the middle of the unswept floor and with the dishes only half
washed, deep in a cheap weekly story paper.
"Why! how smart you be, child! All done? Wa-al, ye see, I gotter wait
for Jason, or Marty, to git me a pail o' water. They ain't neither of
'em been down to the house yit--an' I might's well rest now as any
time."
It was this way all day long. Aunt Almira was never properly through her
work. Things were always "in a clutter." She did not find time from
morning till night (to hear her tell it) to "clean herself up like other
wimmen."
Janice helped in the garden again; but Marty was grumpy, and as soon as
the last row of potatoes was hoed he disappeared until supper time.
Uncle Jason was marking a field for corn planting. A harness strap broke
and he was an hour fixing it, while old Lightfoot dragged the rickety
marker into the fence corner and patiently cropped the weeds. Later a
neighbor leaned on the fence, and Uncle Jason gossiped for another hour.
The girl saw that none of the neighboring housewives came to call on
Aunt 'Mira. In the afternoon she saw several of them exchanging calls up
and down the lane; but they were in fresh print dresses and carried
their needlework, or the like, in their hands, while Aunt 'Mira was
still "down at the heel" and in her faded calico.
Janice was getting very lonely and homesick. Every hour made the
separation from her father seem harder to bear. And she had scarcely
spoken to a soul save the Days and Walky Dexter since her arrival in
Poketown. Friday noon came, and at dinner Janice desperately broached
the subject of 'Rill Scattergood's school again.
"I'd love to visit it," she said. "Maybe I'd get acquainted with some of
the girls. I might even attend for the remainder of the term."
"Huh!" scoffed Marty. "That old maid can't teach ye nothin'."
"But it would be something to _do_," exclaimed Janice, with vigor.
"My goodness me, child!" drawled Aunt Almira. "Can't you be content to
jest let things go along easy?"
"Yer must want sumthin' ter do mighty bad, ter want ter go ter 'Rill
Scattergood's school," was again Marty's scornful comment.
"Just the same I'm going," declared Janice. "It's not far, is it?"
"Right up at the edge of town," said her uncle. "They built it there
ter git the young'uns out o' the way. Hard on some of 'em in bad
weather, it's sech a long walk. Some o' these here flighty folks has
been talkin' up a new buildin' an' a new teacher; but taxes is high
enough as they be, _I_ tell 'em!"
"'Rill Scattergood ain't no sort er teacher," said Mrs. Day. "She didn't
have no sort er control over Marty."
"Huh!" grunted that young man, "she couldn't teach nothin' ter
nobody--that ol' maid."
"But 'most of the girls and boys of Poketown go to school to her, don't
they?" asked Janice.
"Them whose folks can't send 'em to the Middleboro Academy," admitted
her aunt.
"Then I'm going up to get acquainted after dinner," announced Janice.
"I--I had so many friends in Greensboro--so many, many girls at
school--and some of the boys were real nice--and the teachers--and other
folks. Oh, dear! I expect it's Daddy I miss most of all, and if I don't
pretty soon find something to _do_--something to take a real interest
in--I'll never be able to stand having him 'way down there in Mexico and
me up here, not knowing what's happening to him!"
The girl's voice broke and the tears stood in her eyes. Her earnestness
made even Marty silent for the moment. Aunt Almira leaned over and
patted her hand.
"You go on to the school, if ye think ye got to. I'd go with ye an'
introduce ye ter 'Rill Scattergood if I didn't have so much to do. It
does seem as though I allus was behindhand with my work."
A little later, when Janice, in her neat summer frock and beribboned
shade-hat, passed down Hillside Avenue, she was conscious of a good many
people staring at her--more now than when she had come up the hill with
her uncle several days before.
Here and there some attempts had been made to grow flowers in the yards,
or to keep neat borders and rake the walks. But for the most part
Hillside Avenue displayed a forlorn nakedness to the eye that made
Janice more than ever homesick for Greensboro.
The schoolbell had ceased ringing before she turned into High Street and
began to ascend the hill again, so there were no young folks in sight.
Higher up the main street of Poketown there were few stores, but the
dwellings were no more attractive. Nobody seemed to take any pride in
this naturally beautiful old town.
Janice realized that she was a mark for all idle eyes. Strangers were
not plentiful in Poketown.
She came at length in sight of the school. It was set in the middle of a
square, ugly, unfenced yard, without a tree before it or a blooming bush
or vine against its dull red walls. The sun beat upon it hotly, and it
did seem as though the builders must have intended to make school as
hateful as possible to the girls and boys who attended.
The windows and doors were open, and a hum came from within like that of
a swarming hive of bees. Janice went quietly to the nearest door,
mounted the steps, and looked in.
She had by chance come to the girls' entrance. The scholars' backs were
toward her and Janice could look her fill without being observed.
There was a small class reciting before the teacher's desk--droning away
in a sleepy fashion. The older scholars, sitting in the rear of the
room, were mainly busy about their own private affairs; few seemed to be
conning their lessons.
Several girls were busily braiding the plaits of the girls in front of
them. Two, with very red faces and sparkling eyes, were undeniably
quarreling, and whispering bitter denunciations of each other, to the
amusement of their immediate neighbors. One girl had a bag of candy
which she was circulating among her particular friends. Another had
raised the covers of her geography like a screen, and was busily engaged
in writing a letter behind it, on robin's-egg-blue paper.
At the far end of the room the teacher, Miss Scattergood, sat at her
flat-topped desk. "That old maid," as Marty had called her, was not at
all the sort of a person--in appearance, at least--that Janice expected
her to be. Somehow, a spinster lady who had taught school--and such a
school as Poketown's--for twenty years, should have fitted the
well-known specifications of the old-time "New England schoolmarm." But
Amarilla Scattergood did not.
She was a little, light-haired, pink-cheeked lady, with more than a few
claims to personal attractiveness yet left. She had her mother's
birdlike tilt to her head when she spoke, her eyes were still bright,
and her complexion good.
These facts were visible to Janice even from the doorway.
When she knocked lightly upon the door-frame, Miss Scattergood looked up
and saw her. A little hush fell upon the school, too, and Janice was
aware that both girls and boys were turning about in their seats to look
at her.
"Come in," said Miss Scattergood. "Scholars, attention! Eyes forward!"
She might as well have spoken to the wind that breathed at the open
window and fluttered the papers upon her desk. The older scholars paid
the little school-mistress no attention whatsoever.
Janice felt some little confusion in passing down the aisle, knowing
herself to be the center of all eyes. Miss Scattergood dismissed the
class before her briefly, and offered Janice a chair on the platform.
"I guess you're Jason Day's niece," said the teacher, pleasantly,
taking her visitor's hand. "Mother was telling me about you."
"Yes, Miss Scattergood," Janice replied. "I am Janice Day, and when you
have time I'd love to have you examine me and see where I belong in your
school."
"You--you are too far advanced for our school," said the little teacher,
with some hesitation and a flush that was almost painful. "Especially if
you came from a place where the schools are graded as in the city."
"Greensboro has good schools," Janice said. "I was in my junior year at
high."
"Oh, dear me!" Miss Scattergood cried, hastily. "We don't have any such
system here, of course. The committee doesn't demand it of me. I have to
teach the little folks as well as the big. We go as far as our books
go--that is all."
She placed several text-books before Janice. It was plain that she was
not a little afraid of her visitor, for Janice was much different from
the staring, "pig-tailed" misses occupying the back seats of the
Poketown school.
Janice was hungry for young companionship, and she liked little Miss
Scattergood, despite the uncontradicted fact that "she didn't have no
way with her."
While she conned the text-books the school-mistress had placed before
her, Janice watched proceedings with interest. She had never even heard
of an ungraded country school before, much less seen one. The older
pupils, both girls and boys, seemed to be a law unto themselves; Miss
Scattergood had little control over them.
The teacher called another class of younger scholars. This class
practically took all of her attention and she did not observe the four
boys who carried on a warfare with "snappers" and "spitballs" in the
back seats; of the predatory campaign of the lanky, white-haired youth
who slid from seat to seat of the smaller boys, capturing tops, marbles,
and other small possessions dear to childish hearts, threatening by
gesture and writhing lips a "slaughter of the innocents" if one of them
dared "tell teacher."
Few of the older boys were studying, and none of the bigger girls. The
latter were too much interested in Janice. Looking them over, there was
not one of these Poketown girls to whom Janice felt herself attracted.
Some of them giggled as they caught her eye; others whispered together
with the visitor as the evident subject of their secret observations;
and one girl, seeing that Janice was looking at her, actually stuck out
her tongue--a pink flag of scorn and defiance!
Janice believed that in English, history and mathematics she might
improve by reciting with Miss Scattergood's classes, and she told the
little teacher so.
"You'll be welcome, I'm sure," said the school-mistress, nervously. "Are
you coming Monday? That's nice," and she shook hands with her as the
visitor arose.
Janice passed down the girls' aisle again, trying to pick out at least
one of the occupants of the old-fashioned benches who would look as
though she might be chummy and nice; but there was not one.
"Dear me--dear me!" murmured Janice, when she was outside and stood a
moment to look back at the ugly, red schoolhouse. "It--'it jest
rattles'--_that's_ what it does; like everything about Uncle Jason's,
and like everything about the whole town. That school swings on one
hinge like the gates on Hillside Avenue.
"Oh, dear me! Poketown is just dreadful--it's dreadful!"
CHAPTER VI
AN AFTERNOON OF ADVENTURE
The late spring air, however, was delicious. The trees rustled
pleasantly. The bees hummed and the birds twittered, and altogether
there were a hundred things to charm Janice into extending her walk.
Down at the foot of a side street a bit of water gleamed like a huge
turquoise. There seemed to be no dwellings at the foot of this street,
and Janice, with the whole afternoon before her, felt the tingle of
exploration in her blood.
Just off High Street was another store. It was in a low-roofed building
shouldering upon the highway, with a two-story cottage attachment at the
back. Two huge trees overshadowed the place and lent a deep, cool shade
to the shaky porch; but the trees made the store appear very gloomy
within.
Of all the shops Janice had observed in Poketown it seemed that this
little store was the most neglected and woeful looking. Its two show
windows were a lacework of dust and flyspecks. In the upper corners were
ragged spider webs; and in one web lay a gorged spider, too well fed to
pounce on the blue-bottle fly buzzing in the toils within easy pouncing
distance! Only glimpses of a higgledy-piggledy of assorted wares were to
be caught behind the panes. Across the front of the building was a faded
sign reading:
HOPEWELL DRUGG
GROCERIES AND DRY GOODS
Nothing about the shop itself would have held Janice Day's attention
even for a moment; but from within (the front door stood ajar) came the
wailing notes of a violin, the uncertain bow of the performer seeking
out the notes of "Silver Threads Among the Gold."
Yet, with all its uncertainty, the fiddler's touch groped for the beauty
and pathos of the chords:
"Darling, I am growing old,
Silver threads among the gold."
Janice heard the haunting sweetness of the tune all the way down the
shaded lane and she wondered who the player might be.
There was a deep, grass-grown ditch on one side--evidently an open drain
to carry the overflow of water from High Street. As the drain deepened
toward the bottom of the hill, posts had been set and rails laid on top
of them to defend vehicles from pitching into the ditch in the dark. But
many of the rails had now rotted and fallen to the sod, or the nails had
rusted and drawn out, leaving the barrier "jest rattling."
From a side road there suddenly trotted a piebald pony, drawing a low,
basket phaeton, in which sat two prim, little, old ladies, a fat one and
a lean one. Despite the difference in their avoirdupois the two old
ladies showed themselves to be what they were--sisters.
The thin one was driving the piebald pony. "Gidap, Ginger!" she
announced, flapping the reins.
She had better have refrained from waking up Ginger just at that moment.
A fickle breath of wind pounced upon an outspread newspaper lying on the
grass, fluttered it for a moment, and then, getting fairly under the
printed sheet, heaved it into the air.
Ginger caught a glimpse of the fluttering paper. He halted suddenly,
with all four feet braced and ears forward, fairly snorting his
surprise. As the paper began flopping across the road, he began to back.
The whites of his eyes showed plainly and he snorted again. The
wind-shaken paper utterly dissipated the pony's corn-fed complacency.
"Oh! Oh! Gidap!" shrieked the thin old lady.
"He--he's backin' us into the ditch, Pussy," cried her sister.
"I--I can't help it, Blossom," gasped the driver of the frightened pony.
The phaeton really was getting perilously near the edge of the
undefended ditch, when Janice ran out beside the pony's head, clutched
at his bridle, and halted him in his mad career. The paper dropped into
the ditch and lay still, and the pony began to nuzzle Janice's hand.
"Isn't he just cunning!" gasped the girl, turning to look at the two
little old ladies.
From a nearby house appeared a lath-like man, who strode out to the
road, grinning broadly.
"Hi tunket! Ye did come purty nigh backin' into the ditch _that_ time,
gals," he cackled. "All right now, ain't ye? That there leetle gal is
some spry. Ginger ain't shown so much sperit since b'fore Adam!"
"Now, I tell ye, Mr. Cross Moore," declared the driver of the pony,
sharply, "we came very near having a serious accident. And all because
these rails aren't repaired. You're one of the _se_-lect-men and you'd
oughter have sense enough to repair that railin'. Wait till somebody
drives plump into the ditch and the town has a big damage bill to pay."
"Aw, now, there ain't many folks drives this way," defended Mr. Cross
Moore.
"There's enough. And think o' Hopewell Drugg's Lottie. She's always
running up and down this lane. Somebody's goin' to pitch head-fust inter
that ditch yet, Cross Moore, an' then you'll be sorry."
She was a very vigorous-speaking old lady, that was sure. The sister by
her side was of much milder temperament, and she was thanking Janice
very sweetly while the other scolded Selectman Moore.
"We thank you very much, my dear. You are much braver than _I_ am, for
I'm free to confess I'm afraid of all cattle," said the plump old lady,
in a somewhat shaken voice. "Who are you, my dear? I don't remember
seeing you before."
"I am Janice Day, Ma'am."
"Day? You belong here in Poketown? There's Days live on Hillside
Avenue."
"Yes, Ma'am," confessed Janice. "Mr. Jason Day is my uncle. But I am
Broxton Day's daughter."
"Why, do tell!" cried the plump little old lady, who had pink cheeks and
the very warmest of warm smiles, as she looked into the girl's hazel
eyes. "See here, Pussy," she cried to her sister. "Do you know who this
little girl turns out to be? She's Brocky Day's girl. Surely you
remember Brocky Day?"
But "Pussy" was still haranguing the town selectman upon his crimes of
omission and could not give her attention to Janice.
"Anyhow, dear, won't you come and see us? Pussy's disturbed a mite now;
but she'll love to have you come, too. We live just a little way out o'
town--anybody can tell you where the Hammett Twins live," said this
full-blown "Blossom." "Yes. My sister an' I are twins. And we're fond of
young folks and like to have 'em 'round us. There! Ginger's all right,
Pussy. We can drive on."
"You'd oughter fix them rails, Cross Moore," repeated the lean sister,
as the old pony started placidly up the hill again.
Mr. Moore languidly squinted along the staggering barrier. "Wa-al--I
reckon I will--one o' these days," he said.
He grinned in a friendly way at Janice as she started on. "Them Hammett
gals is reg'lar fuss-bugets," he observed. "But they're nice folks. So
you're Broxton Day's gal? I heard you'd arove. How do you like
Poketown?"
"I don't know it well enough to say yet, Mr. Moore," returned Janice,
bashfully, as she went down the hill.
There were no more houses, but great, sweeping-limbed willow trees
shaded the lower range of the hill. She came out, quite suddenly, upon a
little open lawn which edged the lake itself. Here an old dock stuck
its ugly length out into the water--a dock the timbers of which were
blackened as though by a fire, and the floor-boards of which had mostly
been removed. There was but a narrow path out to the end of the wharf.
Between the wharf and the opposite side of this little bay was a piece
of perfectly smooth water; the softly breathing wind did not ruffle the
bay at all. The long arm of the shore that was thrust out into the lake
was heavily wooded. Rows of dark, almost black, northern spruce stood
shouldering each other on that farther shore, making a perfect wall of
verdure. Their deep shadow was already beginning to creep across the
water toward the old wharf.
"What a quiet spot!" exclaimed Janice, aloud.
"'Iet spot!'" breathed the echo from the opposite shore.
"Why! it's an echo!" cried the startled Janice.
"'An echo!'" repeated the sprite, in instant imitation of her tone.
It was then that Janice saw the little girl upon the old wharf. At first
she seemed just a blotch of color upon the old burned timbers. Then the
startled visitor realized that the gaily-hued frock, and sash, and
bonnet, garbed a little girl of perhaps eight or nine years.
Janice could not see her face. When she rose up from where she had been
sitting and went along the shaking stringpiece of the dock, her back
was still toward the shore.
Yet her gait--the groping of one hand before her--all the uncertainty
and questioning of her attitude--shot the spectator through with alarm.
The child was blind! More than this, her unguided feet were leading her
directly to the abrupt end of the half ruined wharf!
CHAPTER VII
THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LOST THE ECHO
Shocked by the discovery of the child's misfortune, Janice scarcely
appreciated at first the peril that menaced the blind girl. It was a
mystery how her unguided feet had brought her so far along the
wharf-beam without catastrophe. But there--just ahead--was the end of
the half-ruined framework. A few more steps and the groping feet would
be over the water.
With a sudden, stifled cry, Janice darted forward. At that moment the
child halted; but she gave no sign that she was aware of Janice Day's
presence. The child faced the not far-distant line of thickly-ranked
spruce upon the opposite shore of the little inlet, and from her parted
lips there issued a strange, wailing cry:
"He-a! he-a! he-a!" she repeated, three times; and back into her face
was flung the mocking laughter of the echo.
Janice had stopped again--held spellbound by wonder and curiosity. The
little girl stood in a listening attitude.
"He-a! he-a! he-a!" she cried again.
The obedient echo repeated the cry; but did the blind girl hear it? She
seemed still to be listening. Janice crept on along the broken wharf,
her hand outstretched, her heart beating in her throat.
The child ventured another step, and, indeed, she stamped upon the beam.
"He-a! he-a! he-a!" she wailed again--a thin, shrill, unchildlike sound
that made Janice shudder.
The cry was almost one of anger, surely that stamping of her foot
denoted vexation. Janice could see the profile of the child's face, a
sweet, wistful countenance. Her lips moved once more and, in a thin,
flat voice, she murmured over and over again: "I have lost it! I have
lost it!"
Janice spoke, her own voice shaking: "My dear! do you know it is
dangerous here?"
Her hand reached to clutch the child's arm if she was startled. A little
misstep would send the blind girl over the edge of the wharf. But it was
Janice who was startled!
The child gave her not the least attention--she did not hear. Blind and
deaf, and alone upon the shaking, broken timbers of this old wharf!
She raised her wailing cry again, and then listened for the echo that
she could no longer hear. The older girl's hand was stayed. She dared
not seize the child, for they were both in a precarious place and if the
little one was frightened and tried to wrench away from her, Janice
feared that they might both fall into the lake.
But the girl from Greensboro thought quickly; and this was an emergency
when quick thought was needed. She remembered having read that blind
people are very susceptible to any vibration or jar. She herself stamped
upon the old wharf-beam, and instantly the child turned toward her.
"Who is it?" asked the little girl, in a flat, keyless tone.
"You don't know me, my dear," Janice said, instinctively; then,
remembering the blind eyes as well as the deaf ears, she drew quite
close to the child and gently took her hand.
The child responded and touched Janice lightly, gropingly. The latter
could see her eyes now--deep, violet eyes, the appearance of which
belied the fact that the light had gone from them. They were neither
dull-looking nor with a film drawn over them. It was very hard indeed to
believe that the little girl was sightless.
She was flaxen-haired, pink-cheeked, and not too slender. Yet Janice
could not say that she was pretty. Indeed the impression the afflicted
child made upon one was quite the reverse.
The little hand crept up Janice's arm to her shoulder, touched her hair
and neck lightly, and then the slender fingers passed over the older
girl's face. She did this swiftly, while Janice took her other hand and
with a soft, urgent pressure tried to draw her along.
But although she seemed so sweet and amenable, Janice did not breathe
freely until they were both off the old wharf. Then she demanded,
quickly:
"Do they let you come here alone? Where do you live?"
The little girl did not answer; of course she did not hear. She was
still looking back toward the tall wall of spruce across the inlet, from
which the sharp echo was flung.
"He-a! he-a! he-a!" she wailed again, and the echo sent back the cry;
but the little girl shook her head.
"I have lost it! And I don't hear what _you_ say--do I? You can speak,
can't you?"
Janice squeezed her hand quickly, and the child seemed to accept it as
an affirmative reply.
"But, you see, I don't hear you," she continued, in that strange, flat
voice. Janice suddenly realized that hearing had much to do with the use
of the vocal cords. It is because we can hear ourselves speak that we
attune our voices to pleasant sounds. This unfortunate child had no
appreciation of the tones that issued from her lips.
"I used to hear," said the afflicted one. "And I could see, too. Oh,
yes! I haven't forgotten how things look. You know, I'm Lottie Drugg. I
can find my way about. But--but I've lost the echo. I used to hear
_that_ always. I'd run down there to the wharf and shout to the echo,
and it would answer me. But now I've lost it."
Janice squeezed the little hand again. She found herself weeping, and
yet the child did not complain. But it was plainly an effort for her to
speak. Like most victims of complete deafness, it would not be long
before she would be speechless, too. She "mouthed" her words in a
pitiful way.
Blind--deaf--approaching dumbness! The thought made Janice suddenly
seize the child in her arms and hug her, tight.
"Do you love me?" questioned Lottie Drugg, returning the embrace. "I
wish I could hear you. But I can't hear father any more--nor his fiddle;
only when he makes it quiver. Then I know it's crying. Did you know a
fiddle could cry? You come home with me. Father will play the fiddle for
you, and _you_ can hear it."
Janice did not know how to reply. There was so much she wished to say to
this poor little thing! But her quick mind jumped to the conclusion that
the child belonged to the person whom she had heard playing the violin
as she came down from High Street--the unknown musician in the store
above the door of which was the faded sign of "Hopewell Drugg."
She squeezed the little girl's hand again and it seemed to suffice.
"I know the way. My feet are in the path now," said little Lottie,
scuffling her slipper-shod feet about on the narrow footpath. "Yes! I
know the way now. The sun is behind us. Come," and she put forth her
hand, caught Janice's again, and urged her along the bank of the lake to
the foot of the lane down which the girl from Greensboro had wandered.
Up the hill they went, Janice marveling that Lottie could be so
confident of the way. She seldom hesitated, and Janice allowed herself
to be led. Mr. Cross Moore was still smoking his pipe out in front of
his house.
"I calkerlate that child's goin' to be drowned-ed some day," he said
calmly, to Janice. "Jest a marcy that she ain't done it afore now. An'
Hopewell--Huh! him sittin' up there fiddlin'----"
It seemed to Janice as though a spirit of criticism had entered into all
the Poketownites. There was Walky Dexter scoffing at her Uncle Jason;
and here was Selectman Moore criticising the father of little Lottie.
Yet neither critic, as far as Janice could see, set much of an example
for his townsmen to follow!
Lottie, with her hand in the bigger girl's, tripped along the walk as
confidently as though she had her eyesight. She was an affectionate
little thing, and she "snuggled" closely to Janice, occasionally
touching her new friend's face and lips with her free hand.
"I guess I love you," she said, in her strange, little, flat voice. "You
come in and see father. We are most there. Here is Mis' Robbins' gate. I
used to see her flowers. Her yard's full of them, isn't it?"
"Oh, yes!" replied Janice, fighting her inclination to burst into tears.
"Oh, yes, dear! beautiful flowers." She pressed the hand tightly.
"I can smell 'em," said the child, snuffing with her nose like a dog.
"And now here is the shade of our big trees. It's darker and cooler
under these trees than anywhere else on the street. Isn't it?"
Janice agreed by pressing her hand again, and little Lottie
laughed--such a shrill, eyrie little laugh! They were before the
gloomy-looking store of Hopewell Drugg. The wailing of the fiddle
floated out upon the warm afternoon air.
The blind girl tripped up the steps of the porch and in at the open
door. "Silver Threads Among the Gold" came to a sharp conclusion.
"Merciful goodness!" croaked a frightened voice. "I thought you was
asleep in your bed, Lottie."
Janice had followed the little girl to the doorway. She saw but dimly
the store itself and the shelves of dusty merchandise. From the back
room where he had been sitting with his violin, a gray, thin,
dusty-looking man came quickly and seized Lottie in his arms.
"Child! child! how you frighten me!" he murmured. Then he looked over
the little girl's head and blinked through his spectacles at Janice in
the doorway.
"I'm certainly obliged to ye," he said. "She--she gets away from the
house and I don't know it. I--I can't watch her all the time and she
ain't got no mother, Miss. I certainly am obliged to ye for bringing her
home."
"She was down on the old wharf at the foot of the street, trying to wake
the echo from the woods across the inlet," said Janice, gravely.
The gray man hugged his daughter tightly, and his eyes blinked like an
owl's in strong daylight, as he peered through his spectacles at Janice.
"She--she loved to go there--always," he murmured. "I go with her
Sundays--and when the store is closed. But she is so quick--in a flash
she is out of my sight."
"Can--can nothing be done for her?" questioned Janice, in a whisper.
"She cannot hear you--now," said Hopewell Drugg, gloomily, shaking his
head. "And the doctors here tell me she is almost sure to be dumb, too.
If I could only get her to Boston! There's a school for such as her,
there, and specialists, and all. But it would cost a pile of money."
"You play the fiddle, father," commanded little Lottie. "And make it
quiver--make it cry, father! Then _I_ can hear it."
He set her down carefully, still shaking his head. Her strange little
voice kept repeating: "Play for her, father! Play for her, father!"
Hopewell Drugg picked up the violin and bow from the end of the counter.
He leaned against the counter and tucked the violin under his chin.
There was only a brown light in the dusky store, and the dust danced in
the single band of sunlight that searched out a knot hole in the wall of
the back room--the shed between the store proper and the cottage in the
rear.
"Darling, I am growing old,
Silver threads among the gold----"
The old violin wailed out the tune haltingly. The deaf and blind child
caught the tremulo of the final notes, and she danced up and down and
clapped her little hands.
"I can hear that! I can hear that!" she muttered, her lips writhing to
form the sounds.
Janice felt the tears suddenly blinding her. "I'll come back and see you
again--indeed I will!" she said, brokenly, and hugging and kissing
little Lottie impetuously, she released her and ran out of the ugly,
dark little store.
It is doubtful if Hopewell Drugg even heard her. The violin was still
wailing away, while he searched out slowly the minor notes of the old,
old song.
[Illustration: The old violin wailed out the tune haltingly.]
CHAPTER VIII
A BIT OF ROMANCE
"Hopewell Drugg? Ya-as," drawled Aunt Almira. "He keeps store
'crosstown. He's had bad luck, Hopewell has. His wife's dead--she didn't
live long after Lottie was born; and Lottie--poor child!--must be eight
or nine year old."
"Poor little thing!" sighed Janice, who had come home to find her aunt
just beginning her desultory preparations for supper, and had turned in
to help. "It is so pitiful to see and hear her. Does she live all alone
there with her father?"
"I reckon Hopewell don't do business enough so's he could hire a
housekeeper. They tell me he an' the child live in a reg'lar mess! Ain't
fittin' for a man to keep house by hisself, nohow; and of course Lottie
can't do much of nothing."
"Is he an old man?" queried Janice. "I couldn't see his face very well."
"Lawsy! he ain't what you'd call old--no," said Aunt 'Mira. "Now, let me
see; he married 'Cinda Stone when he warn't yit thirty. There was some
talk of him an' 'Rill Scattergood bein' sweet on each other onc't; but
that was twenty year ago, I do b'lieve.
"Howsomever, if there _was_ anythin' betwixt Hopewell and 'Rill, I
reckon her mother broke up the match. Mis' Scattergood never had no use
for them Druggs. She said they was dreamers and never did amount to
nothin'. Mis' Scattergood's allus been re'l masterful."
Janice nodded. She could imagine that the birdlike old lady she had met
on the boat could be quite assertive if she so chose.
"Anyhow," said Aunt 'Mira, reflectively, "Hopewell stopped shinin' about
'Rill all of a sudden. That was the time Mis' Scattergood was widdered
an' come over here from Middletown to live with 'Rill.
"I declare for't! 'Rill warn't sech an old maid then. She was right
purty, if she _had_ been teachin' school some time. Th' young men use
ter buzz around her in them days.
"But when she broke off with Hopewell, she broke off with all. Hopewell
was spleeny about it--ya-as, indeed, he was. He soon took up with
'Cinda--jest as though 'twas out o' spite. Anyhow, 'fore any of us
knowed it, they'd gone over to Middletown an' got married.
"'Cinda Stone was a right weakly sort o' critter. Of course Hopewell was
good to her," pursued Aunt 'Mira. "Hopewell Drugg is as mild as
dishwater, anyhow. He'd be perlite to a stray cat."
Janice was interested--she could not help being. Miss Scattergood, it
seemed to her, was a pathetic figure; and the girl from Greensboro was
just at an age to appreciate a bit of romance. The gray, dusty man in
the dark, little store, playing his fiddle to the child that could only
hear the quivering minor tones of it, held a place in Janice's thought,
too.
"What do you do Saturday mornings, Marty?" asked the visitor, at the
breakfast table. Janice had already been to the Shower Bath and back,
and the thrill of the early day was in her veins. Only a wolfish
appetite had driven her indoors when she smelled the pork frying.
Marty was just lounging to his seat,--he was almost always late to
breakfast,--and he shut off a mighty yawn to reply to his cousin:
"Jest as near like I please as kin be."
"Saturday afternoon, where I came from, is sort of a holiday; but
Saturday morning everybody tries to make things nice about the yard--fix
flower-beds, rake the yard, make the paths nice, and all that."
"Huh!" grunted Marty. "That's work."
"No, it isn't. It's fun," declared Janice, brightly.
"What's the good?" demanded the boy.
"Why, the folks in Greensboro vie with each other to see who shall have
the best-looking yard. Your mother hasn't many flowers----"
"Them dratted hens scratch up all the flowers I plant," sighed Aunt
'Mira. "I give up all hopes of havin' posies till Jason mends the
henyard fence."
"Now you say yourself the hens only lay when they're rangin' around,
'Mira," observed Uncle Jason, mildly.
"Ya-as. They lay," admitted Aunt 'Mira. "But I don't git more'n ha'f of
what they lay. They steal their nests so. Ol' Speckle brought off a
brood only yesterday. I'd been wonderin' where that hen was layin' for a
month."
"But, anyway, we can rake the yard and trim the edges of the walk,"
Janice said to Marty.
"Ya-as, we kin," admitted Marty, grinning. "But will we?"
Janice, however, never lost her temper with this hobbledehoy cousin.
Marty could be coaxed, if not driven. After breakfast she urged him out
to the shed, and they overhauled the conglomeration of rusted and
decrepit hand tools, which had been gathered by Uncle Jason during forty
years of desultory farming.
"Here're three rakes," said Marty. "All of 'em have lost teeth, an'--Hi
tunket! that one's got a broken handle."
"But there are two which are usable," laughed Janice. "Come on, Marty.
Let's rake the front yard all over. You know it will please your
mother. And then you can tote the rubbish away in the wheelbarrow while
I trim the edges of the front walk."
"Huh! we don't never use that front walk. Nobody ever comes to our front
door," said Marty.
"And there's a nice wide porch there to sit on pleasant evenings, too,"
cried Janice.
"Huh!" came Marty's famous snort of derision. "The roof leaks like a
sieve and the floor boards is rotted. Las' time the parson came to call
he broke through the floor an' come near sprainin' his ankle."
"But I thought Uncle Jason was a carpenter, too?" murmured Janice,
hesitatingly.
"Well! didn't ye know that carpenters' roofs are always leakin' an' that
shoemakers' wives go barefoot?" chuckled Marty. "Dad says he'll git
'round to these chores sometime. Huh!"
Nevertheless, Marty set to work with his cousin, and that Saturday
morning the premises about the old Day house saw such a cleaning up as
had not happened within the memory of the oldest inhabitant along
Hillside Avenue. There was a good sod of grass under the rubbish. The
lawn had been laid down years and years before, and the grass was rooted
well and the mould was rich and deep. All the old place wanted was a
"chance," for it to become very pretty and homelike.
Marty, however, declared himself "worked to a frazzle" and he
disappeared immediately after the noon meal, for fear Janice would find
something more for him to do.
"Wal, child, it does look nice," admitted Aunt Almira, coming to view
the front yard. "And you _do_ have a way with Marty."
"Just the same," giggled Janice, "he doesn't like girls."
"Sho, child! he doesn't know _what_ he likes--a boy like him," returned
her aunt.
Sunday was a rainy day, and Janice felt her spirits falling again. It
really rained too hard at church time for her to venture out; but she
saw that her relatives seldom put themselves out to attend church,
anyway. Walky Dexter appeared in an oilskin-covered cart, drawn by
Josephus (who actually looked water-soaked and dripped from every
angle), delivering the Sunday papers, which came up from the city. The
family gave up most of their time all day to the gaudy magazine
supplements and the so-called "funny sections" which were a part of
these sheets.
Janice finally retired to her depressing bedroom and wrote a long letter
to her father which she tried to make cheerful, but into which crept a
note of loneliness and disappointment. It wasn't just like talking to
Daddy himself; but it seemed to help some.
It enabled her, too, to write shorter letters to friends back in
Greensboro and she managed to hide from them much of her homesickness.
She could write of the beauty of Poketown itself; for it was beautiful.
It was only the people who were so--well! so _different_.
Janice welcomed Monday morning. Although she had nearly completed her
junior year at the Greensboro High School, and knew that she would not
gain much help from Miss Scattergood, the girl loved study and she hoped
that the Poketown girls would prove to be better companions than they
had appeared when she had visited the school.
So she started for the old red schoolhouse in quite a cheerful frame of
mind, in spite of Marty's prophecy that "she'd soon git sick o' that old
maid." It was not Miss Scattergood that Janice had reason to be "sick
of!" The stranger in Poketown had to admit before the day was over that
she had never in her life dreamed of such ill-bred girls as some of
these who occupied the back seats in 'Rill Scattergood's school.
They had no respect for the little school-teacher, and had Miss
Scattergood taken note of all their follies she must have been in a
pitched battle with her older pupils all the time. Some of these
ill-behaved girls were older than Janice by many months; and they
plainly did not come to school to study or to learn. They passed notes
back and forth to some of the older boys all day long; when Miss
Scattergood called on them to recite, if they did not feel just like
it, they refused to obey; and of course their example was bad for the
smaller children.
Janice had determined to join such classes as were anywhere near her
grade in her old school. But when she arose to accompany one class to
the line in front of the teacher's desk, the girls who had started
giggled and ran back to their seats, leaving the new pupil standing
alone, with blazing cheeks, before Miss Scattergood. They would not
recite with her. At recess when Miss Scattergood tried to introduce
Janice to some of the girls, there were but a few who met her in a
ladylike manner.
They seemed to think Janice must be stuck up and proud because she had
come from another town. One girl--Sally Black--tripped forward in a most
affected style, gave Janice a "high handshake," saying "How-do! chawmed
ter meet yuh, doncher know!" and the other girls went off into gales of
laughter as though Sally was really excruciatingly funny.
Janice was hurt, but she tried not to show it. Miss Scattergood was very
much annoyed, and her eyes sparkled behind her glasses, as she said,
sharply:
"I really did hope you girls could be polite and kind to a stranger who
comes to your school. I am ashamed of you!"
"Don't let it bother you, Scatty," returned the impudent Sally. "We
don't want anything to do with your pet," and she tossed her head,
looked scornfully at Janice, and walked away with her abettors.
"I never did take ter them Blacks," declared Aunt Almira, when Janice
related to her the unpleasant experience she had suffered at school, on
her return that afternoon. "And Sally's mother, who was a Garrity, came
of right common stock.
"Ye see, child," added Mrs. Day, with a sigh, "I expect ye won't find
many of the children that go ter that school much ter your likin'. 'Rill
Scattergood ain't got no way with her, as I sez before; an' folks that
can afford it have got in the habit o' sendin' their young'uns over to
Middletown School. Walky Dexter takes 'em in a party waggin, and brings
'em back at night."
"But there must be some nice girls in Poketown!" cried Janice.
"Ya-as--I guess there be. But wait till I kin git around an' interduce
ye to 'em."
This promise, however, offered Janice Day but sorry comfort. If she
waited for Aunt Almira to take her about she certainly _would_ die of
homesickness!
But she refused to be driven out of the Poketown School by the
unkindness and discourtesy of the larger girls. Her unpopularity,
however, made her respond the more quickly to 'Rill Scattergood's
advances.
The school-teacher showed plainly that she appreciated Janice's
friendliness. Janice brought her luncheon and ate it with the teacher.
They walked down High Street together after school, and on Friday the
pretty little school-mistress invited the new girl home for tea.
"Mother wants to see you again. Mother's took quite a fancy to you,
Janice--and that's a fact," said Miss 'Rill.
"Of course, we're only boarding; but Mrs. Beasely--she's a widow
lady--makes it very homey for us. If mother stays we're going to
housekeeping ourselves. And I believe I _shall_ give up teaching school.
I'm really tired of it."
Janice gladly accepted the invitation, and she bribed one of the
youngsters with a nickel to run around to Hillside Avenue and tell Aunt
Almira where she was.
Miss 'Rill's boarding place was on the same side street where was
located Hopewell Drugg's store. Janice had thought often of poor little
Lottie and her father during this week; but as they neared the store and
she heard the wailing notes of the man's violin again, she felt a little
diffident about broaching the subject of the storekeeper and his child
to the school-mistress. It was Miss Scattergood herself who opened the
matter.
She half halted and held up her hand for silence, as she listened to
"Silver Threads Among the Gold."
"That's a dreadful pretty tune, I think," she said. "It used to be awful
pop'lar when--when I came here to Poketown to teach school."
"Mr. Drugg likes it, I guess," said Janice, lightly. "I've heard him
play it before."
"Have you?" queried Miss 'Rill, with that little birdlike tilt of her
head. "So you know Mr. Drugg--and poor little Lottie?"
"I've met them both--once," admitted the girl.
"Ah! then you know how little Lottie is to be pitied?"
"And isn't he to be pitied, too?" Janice could not help but ask.
Miss 'Rill blushed--such a becoming blush as it was, too! She answered
honestly: "I think so. Poor Hopewell! And I think he plays the fiddle
real sweet, too.
"But don't say anything before mother about him. Mr. Drugg's never been
one of ma's favorites," added the teacher, earnestly.
CHAPTER IX.
TEA, AND A TALK WITH DADDY
As it chanced, it was old Mrs. Scattergood herself who broached the
forbidden topic, almost as soon as Miss 'Rill and Janice were in the
house.
"What do you suppose that great gump, Hopewell Drugg, let his young'un
do to-day, 'Rill? I was tellin' Miz' Beasely that it did seem to be
_one_ mistake that Providence must ha' made, ter let that Drugg an'
'Cinda Stone have a gal baby--'specially if 'Cinda was goin' ter up and
die like she done and leave the young'un to his care. Seems a shame,
too."
"Why, mother! That doesn't sound a bit reverent," objected Miss 'Rill,
softly. "Nor kind."
"Pshaw!" snorted the old lady. "You allus was silly as a goose about
that Drugg. Sech shiftlessness I never did see. There the young'un was,
out in a white dress an' white kid shoes this mornin'--her best,
Sunday-go-ter-meetin' clo'es, I'll be bound!--sittin' on the aidge o'
that gutter over there, makin' a mud dam! Lucky yesterday's rain has
run off now, or she'd be out there yet, paddlin' in the water."
"I don't s'pose Hopewell knew of it," said the younger woman, timidly.
"The poor little thing can dress herself, blind as she is. It's quite
wonderful how she gets about."
"She ain't got no business to be out of his sight," grumbled Mrs.
Scattergood.
Miss 'Rill sighed and shook her head, looking at Janice with a little
nod of understanding. She changed the subject of talk quickly. The old
lady began at once on Janice, "pumping" her as to her interests in
Poketown, how she liked her relatives, and all. Then Mrs. Beasely, a
very tall, angular figure in severe black, appeared at the sitting-room
door and invited them in to supper.
Mrs. Beasely was a famous cook and housekeeper. She was a very grim
lady, it seemed to Janice, and the enlarged crayon portrait of Mr.
Beasely, its frame draped with crape, which glared down upon the
groaning table in the dining-room, almost took the girl's appetite away.
Fortunately, however, the widow insisted upon facing the portrait of her
departed husband, and Janice was back to him, so she recovered her
appetite. And Mrs. Beasely's "tea", or "supper" as old-fashioned folks
called the meal, was worthy of a hearty appetite.
Among old-fashioned New England housekeepers a "skimpy"
table--especially when a visitor is present--is an unpardonable sin.
There was hot bread and cold bread, sour-milk griddle cakes, each of a
delicious golden brown with crisp edges, buttered, sugared, and stacked
in tempting piles; sliced cold ham and corned beef; a hot dish of smoked
beef and scrambled eggs; two kinds of jelly, and three kinds of
preserves; plain and frosted cake, and last of all the inevitable pie
and cheese.
With all this banquet Mrs. Beasely dared raise a moist eye to the grim
crayon of the departed, and observe:
"I don't know what poor Charles would say to such a smeachin' supper, if
he was alive. Oh, me! it does seem as though I didn't have no heart for
cookery no more since he ain't here ter sample my work. A man's a gre't
spur to a woman in her housekeepin'."
"Good Land o' Goshen!" ejaculated the outspoken Mrs. Scattergood. "I
count 'em a gre't nuisance. If a body didn't have no men folks to 'tend
to she could live on bread an' tea--if she so liked.
"Not but what I 'preciate a good lay-out of vittles like this o' yourn,
Miz' Beasely. But thank the good Lord! I ain't been the slave to no
man's appetite for goin' on fourteen year. An' that's about all men air,
come ter think on it--a pair of muddy boots an' an unquenchable
appetite!"
Mrs. Beasely looked horrified, shaking her widow's cap. "Poor Charles
wasn't nothin' like that," she declared, softly.
"An' I don't s'pose a worse husband ever lived in Poketown," whispered
the pessimistic old lady, when the widow had gone out of the room for
something. "He's been dead ten year, ain't he, 'Rill?"
"About that, mother," admitted the school-teacher.
"An' I expect ev'ry year she makes more of a saint of him. I declare
for't! sech wimmen oughter be made to marry ag'in. Nothin' but a second
one will cure 'em of their fust!"
Mainly Janice and her friend, the little school-teacher, were engaged in
their own particular conversation. The girl spent a very pleasant hour
after tea, too, and started home just as dusk was dropping over the
hillside town.
There was a light in Hopewell Drugg's store. He never seemed to have
customers--or so it appeared to Janice. She hesitated a moment to peer
into the gloomy place--more a mausoleum than a store!--and saw Hopewell
leaning against the counter, while Lottie, in her pink sash and white
dress, and the kid boots, sat upon it and leaned against her father
while he scraped out some weird minor chords upon the fiddle.
Marty had come down the lane to the corner of High Street to meet
Janice. Of course, he wouldn't admit that he had done so; but he
happened to be right there when his cousin put in an appearance. There
were no street lights on Hillside Avenue, and Janice was glad of his
company.
"Huh! ain't yer gittin' pop'lar?" croaked the boy, grinning at her. "An'
goin' ter 'Rill Scattergood's ter supper. Ye must ha' had a fine time--I
don't think!"
"Of course I had a nice time," laughed Janice.
"With that old maid," scoffed Marty.
"Say, Marty, would you go to school again if they had a different
teacher?" queried Janice.
"'Course I would!" returned the boy, stoutly.
"Maybe next Fall they'll have another one. Miss Scattergood talks of
giving up teaching."
"I should think she would!" exploded Marty. "But she won't. You'll see.
She'll be teachin' Poketown school when she has ter go on crutches."
The next day, after Janice had inveigled Marty into spending most of his
forenoon in the yard and garden (and the latter was beginning to look
quite like a real garden by now), the girl went shopping. Most of the
stores were "general" stores, and she did not believe there was much
choice between them. Only she had an interest in Hopewell Drugg; so she
proceeded to his dark little shop.
Lottie sat upon a box nursing a rag doll, in the sunlight that came in
at the side door. She was crooning to herself a weird little song, and
rocking back and forth upon the box. Mr. Drugg seemed to be out.
Janice walked the length of the store very quietly, and the child did
not apprehend her approach. But when she stepped upon one of the boards
of the back-room floor, little Lottie felt the vibration and looked up,
directly at Janice, with her pretty, sightless eyes.
"Papa Drugg be right back; Papa Drugg be right back," she said, forming
the phrase with evident difficulty.
Janice went close to her and laid a hand upon Lottie's shoulder. The
little girl caught at it quickly, ran her slim fingers up her arm to her
shoulder and so, jumping up from the box, felt of Janice's face, too.
The latter stooped and kissed her.
"I know you--I know you," murmured the child. "You came home from the
lake with me. I was trying to find my echo. Did _you_ find it?"
Janice squeezed her hand, and she seemed to understand the affirmative.
"Then it's really _there_?" she sighed. "It's only _me_ that's lost it.
Well--well--Do you think I can ever find it again?"
Janice squeezed the hand firmly, and she put into that affirmative all
the confidence which could possibly be thus expressed. She did not
believe it to be wrong to raise hope of again hearing in the poor
child's heart.
Mr. Drugg came in from the back, wiping his hands and forearms of soapy
water. He had evidently been engaged in some household task. Upon closer
acquaintance he was improved, so Janice thought. He possessed the long,
thin, New England features; but there was a certain calm in their
expression that was attractive. His gray eyes were brooding, and there
were many crow's-feet about them; nevertheless, they were kindly eyes
with a greater measure of intelligence in them than Janice had expected
to find.
It proved that Hopewell had a considerable stock upon his dusty shelves;
but how he managed to find anything that a customer called for was a
mystery to Janice. She selected the few notions that she needed; and as
she did so she just _ached_ to get hold of that stock of dry goods and
straighten it out.
And the dust--and the flyspecks--and the jumble of useless scraps among
the newer stock! The interior of that old store was certainly a
heart-breaking sight. Two side windows that might have given light and
air to the place were fairly banked up with merchandise. And when had
either of the show windows been properly "dressed"?
However, Mr. Drugg was an attentive salesman and he really knew his
stock very well. It mystified Janice to see how quickly he could find
the article wanted in that conglomeration.
She remained a while to play with Lottie. Drugg came to look fondly at
the little girl putting her rag-baby to sleep in a soap-box crib.
"She's just about ruined that dress and them shoes, I shouldn't wonder,"
mused the storekeeper. "But I forgot to put out her everyday clo'es
where she could find them yesterday morning. There's so much to do all
the time. Well!" He drew the violin and bow toward him and sighed. No
other customer came into the store. Drugg tucked the fiddle under his
chin and began to scrape away.
Lottie jumped up and clapped her little hands when he struck a chord
that vibrated upon her nerves. There she stood, with her little,
up-raised face flooded by the spring sunshine, which entered through the
side doorway, a gleam of pleasure passing over her features when she
felt the vibration of the minor notes. They were deeply engaged, those
two--the father with his playing, the child in striving to catch the
tones.
Janice gathered up her few small purchases and stole out of the old
store.
It was more than a week later when Marty came home to supper one night
and grinned broadly at his cousin.
"What d'ye s'pose I've got for you, Janice?" he asked.
His cousin flashed him a single comprehending look, and then her face
went white.
"Daddy!" she gasped. "A letter from Daddy?"
"Aw, shucks! ain't there nothin' else you want?" the boy returned,
teasingly.
"Not so much as a talk with Daddy," she declared, breathlessly. "And
that's almost what a letter will be. Dear Marty! If you've got a letter
from him do, _do_ let me have it!"
"Don't you torment Janice now, Marty," cried his mother. "I hope he is
all right, Janice. Is it writ in his own hand, Marty?"
"I dunno," said the plaguesome boy, looking at the address covertly. "It
is postmarked 'Juarez'."
"Oh, yes! oh, yes!" cried Janice. "He would send it down there to be
mailed. So he said. Mail service up in Chihuahua is so uncertain. Oh,
Marty! p-l-e-a-s-e!"
"You give her that, Marty!" commanded Mr. Day.
Janice snatched the letter when the boy held it out to her; but she
flashed Marty a "Thanks, awfully!" as she ran out of the room and
upstairs. Supper? What did she care for supper? In the red light of the
sunset she sat by the window in her room and read Mr. Broxton Day's
loving letter.
It _was_ almost like seeing and talking with Daddy! Those firm, flowing
lines of black ink, displaying character and firmness and decision,
looked just like Daddy himself! Janice kissed the open page
ecstatically, and then began to read:
"DEAR DAUGHTER:
"The several thousand miles that separate us seem very short
indeed when I sit down to write my little Janice. I can see
her standing right before me in this barren, corrugated-iron
shack--which would have been burned the last time a bunch of
the Constitutionalists swept through these hills, only iron
will not burn. If a party of Federal troops come along they
may try to destroy our plant, too. Just at the present time
the foreigner, and his property, are in no great favor with
either party of belligerents. The cry is 'Mexico for the
Mexicans'--and one can scarcely blame them. But although I
have seen a little fighting at a distance, and plenty of the
marks of battle along the railroad line as I came up here, I
do not think I am as yet in any great danger.
"Therefore, my dear, do not worry too much about your
father's situation. At the very moment you are worrying he
may be eating supper, or hobnobbing with a party of very
courteous and hospitable ranch owners, or fishing in a
neighboring brook where the trout are as hungry as shoats at
feeding time, or otherwise enjoying himself.
"And so, now, to you and your letter which reached me by
one of my messengers from Juarez, by whom I shall send this
reply. Yes, I knew you would find yourself among a people as
strange to you as though they were inhabitants of another
planet. Relatives though they are, they are so much
different from our friends in and about Greensboro, that I
can understand their being a perfect shock to you.
"I was afraid Jason and Almira lived a sort of shiftless,
hopeless, get-along-the-best-way-you-can life. When I left
Poketown twenty-five years ago I thought it had creeping
paralysis! It must be worse by this time.
"But _you_ keep alive, Janice, my dear. Keep kicking--like
the frog in the milk-can. _Do something._ Don't let the
poison of laziness develop in _your_ blood. If they're in a
slack way there at Jason's, help 'em out of it. Be your
Daddy's own girl. Don't shirk a plain duty. _Do something
yourself, and make others do something, too!_"
There was much in Mr. Broxton Day's letter beside this; there were
intimate little things that Janice would have shown to nobody; but
downstairs she read aloud all Daddy's jolly little comments upon the
country and the people he saw; and about his eating beans so frequently
that he dreamed he had turned into a gigantic Boston bean-pot that was
always full of steaming baked beans. "They are called 'frijoles'," he
wrote; "but a bean by any other name is just the same!"
The paragraphs that impressed Janice most, however, as repeated above,
she likewise kept to herself. Daddy had expected she would find Poketown
just what it was. Yet he expected something of her--something that
should make a change in her relatives, and in Poketown itself.
He expected Janice to _do something_.
CHAPTER X
BEGINNING WITH A BEDSTEAD
Janice got up and took her usual before-breakfast run the next morning.
The Days remained the last family to rise in the neighborhood. The smoke
from the broken kitchen chimney crawled heavenward long after the fires
in other kitchen-stoves had burned down to hot coals.
So when the girl got back to the house, Aunt 'Mira had scarcely begun
getting the meal. Janice rummaged about in the tool-shed for some
minutes before she went upstairs to her room again. Marty crawled down,
yawning, and started for the usual morning pail of water from the
neighbor's well. Mr. Day was smoking on the bench outside of the kitchen
door. The pork began to hiss in the pan.
Suddenly, from upstairs, came a noisy pounding. Nail after nail was
being driven with confidence and dispatch.
"For the land's sake!" gasped Aunt 'Mira, looking up from the stove, a
strip of pork hanging from her up-raised fork.
Uncle Jason took his pipe from his lips and screwed his neck around so
as to look in at the door.
"What d'you reckon that gal's up to?" he demanded.
Marty came back from the Dickerson's at almost a lope. "What in
'tarnation is Janice doin' up in her room?" he queried, slopping the
water as he put the pail hurriedly upon the shelf.
"I haven't the least idea what it can be," said Mrs. Day, almost aghast.
"By jinks!" exclaimed the slangy boy. "I wanter see. By jinks! she
socked that nail home--she did!"
The whole house rang with the vigor of Janice's blows. Marty started up
the stairs in a hurry, and Mr. Day followed him. Mrs. Day came to the
foot of the stairs with the piece of pork still dangling from her fork.
Marty reached his cousin's door and banged it open without as much as
saying "By your leave."
"Hullo! What you doin'?" demanded the boy.
"Can't you _see_?" returned Janice, coolly. "I got sick of being rocked
to sleep every night on that old soap-box. I'll wager, Marty, that this
leg will stay put when I get through with it."
"Wal! of all things!" grunted Mr. Day, with his head poked in at the
open door.
"What's Janice doing?" demanded his wife, too heavy to mount the stairs
easily.
Uncle Jason turned about and descended the flight without replying to
his wife; but at her reiterated cry Marty explained.
"Ain't that gal a good 'un?" said the boy. "She's gone and put on the
old leg to that bedstead. That's been broke off ever since you cleaned
house last Fall, Maw."
"Oh! Well! Is that it?" repeated Mrs. Day. Then, when she and her
husband were alone in the kitchen, before the young folk came down, she
said, pointing the fork at him: "I declare for't! I'd feel ashamed if I
was you, Jason Day."
"What for?" demanded her husband, scowling.
"Lettin' Broxton's gal do that. You could ha' tacked on that leg forty
times if you could once. Ain't that true?"
But Mr. Day refused to quarrel. He took a long drink from the pail of
fresh water Marty had brought. Then he said, tentatively:
"Breakfast most ready, Almiry? I'm right sharp-set."
When Janice and Marty came down they were not talking of the bedstead at
all. But Aunt 'Mira was rather gloomy all through the meal, and looked
accusingly at her husband every time she heaped his plate with pork, and
cakes, and "white gravey."
Mr. Day quite ignored these looks. He was even chatty--for him--with
Janice. It was a school day, and Janice hurried to put on her hat and
get her school bag, into which she slipped the luncheon that her aunt
very kindly put up for her. Aunt 'Mira had really begun to "put herself
out" for her niece, and the luncheon was always tasty and nicely
arranged.
"Wait for me, Marty!" she cried, as her cousin was sliding out of the
door in his usual attempt to get away unobserved, and so not be called
back for any unexpected chores.
"Aw, come on! A gal's always behind--like a cow's tail!" growled the
chivalrous Marty. "What you want?"
Janice gave him a quarter of a dollar secretly. "Now, you get that pump
leather and you bring it home this noon. Just put it on the table by
your father's plate," she commanded. "You going to do it for me?"
"Sure," grinned Marty. "And I'll see that he don't lose it, nuther. I
know Dad. He'll need more than _that_ suggestion to git him started on
that old pump."
"We'll try," sighed Janice; and then Marty ran on ahead of her to
overtake one of his boy friends. He would have been ashamed to be caught
walking with his girl cousin by daylight, and on the public streets of
Poketown!
After school that day, when Janice arrived again at the old Day house,
the first thing she heard was her aunt's complaining voice begging Marty
to go down to Dickerson's for a bucket of water.
"What's the matter with Dad?" demanded the boy. "Didn't I bring him that
pump leather? Huh!"
"Mebbe your father will git around to fixin' the pump staff, and he kin
make that in ten minutes. I believe he's got a stick for't out in the
workshop now, he won't be driv'."
"Janice wasted her good money, then," said Marty, with fine disgust.
"All else it needs is a pump staff, and he kin make that in ten minutes.
I believe he's got a stick for't out in the workshop--had it there for
months."
"Now, you git erlong with that pail, Marty," commanded his mother, "and
don't stand there a-criticisin' of your elders."
Janice hid behind the great lilac bush until Marty had gone grumblingly
down the hill. Then she heard some loud language from the barnyard and
knew that her uncle had come in from the fields. After a little
hesitation she made straight for the barn.
"Uncle Jason! won't you please mend the pump? Mr. Pringle has cut you a
good pump leather."
"Goodness me, Janice! I'm druv to death. All this young corn to
cultivate, an' not a soul to help me. Other boys like Marty air some
good; but I can't trust him in the field with a hoss."
"But you don't work in the field all day long, Uncle," pleaded Janice.
"Seems to me I don't have a minute to call my own," declared the farmer.
To hear him talk one would think he was the busiest man in Poketown!
"I expect you are pretty busy," agreed the girl, nodding; "but I can
tell you how to find time to mend that pump."
"How's that?" he asked, curiously.
"Get up when I do. We can mend it before the others come down. Will you
do it to-morrow morning, Uncle?"
"Wa-al! I dunno----"
"Say you will, Uncle Jason!" cried Janice. "We'll surprise 'em--Aunty
and Marty. They needn't never know till it's done."
"I got ter find a new pump shaft----"
"Marty says you've got one put away in the workshop."
"Why--er--so I have, come to think on't."
"Then it won't take long. Let's do it, Uncle--that's a dear!"
The man looked around dumbly; he hunted in his rather slow mind for some
excuse--some reason for withdrawing from the venture that Janice
proposed.
"I--I dunno as I would wake up----"
"I'll wake you. I'll come to your door and scratch on the panel like a
mouse gnawing. Aunt 'Mira will never hear."
"No. She sleeps like the dead," admitted Uncle Jason. "Only the dead
don't snore."
"Will you do it?"
"Oh, well! I'll see how I feel in the morning," half promised Uncle
Jason, and with this Janice had to be content. She did not, however,
lose heart. She was determined to stir the sluggish waters in and about
the old Day house, if such a thing could be done!
Uncle Jason was rather sombre that evening, and even Marty did not feel
equal to stirring the quiet waters of the family pool. Janice stole away
early to bed. Aunt Almira was always the last person in the household to
retire. Long after the rest of them were asleep she remained swinging in
her creaky rocker, close to the lamp, her eyes glued to one of the cheap
story papers upon which her romance-loving soul had fed for years.
There was not a cloud at dawn. When Janice rubbed her eyes and looked
out of her wide open window the sun was almost ready to pop above the
hills. The birds were twittering--tuning up, as it were, for their
opening chorus of the day.
This was the day on which Janice determined the Day family should turn
over a new leaf!
She doused her face with cool water from her pitcher, and then
scrambled into her clothes and tidied her hair. She tiptoed to the door
of the bedchamber occupied by her uncle and aunt. At her first tap on
the panel Uncle Jason grunted.
"Well! I hear ye," he said, in no joyful tone.
Janice really giggled, as she listened outside of the door. She was
determined to have Uncle Jason up, and she waited, still scratching on
the door panel until she heard him give an angry grunt, and then land
with both feet on the straw matting. Then she scurried back to her own
room and quickly finished dressing.
She was downstairs ahead of him, and quickly opened the doors and
windows to the damp, sweet morning air. The cleaning up she and Marty
had given the yard had made the premises really pleasant to look at.
Flowers were springing along the borders of the path, and vines were
creeping up the string trellis by the back door. The apple trees were
covering the lawn with their last late shower of flower petals.
How the birds rioted in the tops of the trees! Singing, scolding,
mating, they were really the jolliest chorus one ever listened to. The
girl ran out into the yard and fairly danced up and down, she felt so
_good_! Much of her homesickness had fled since she had received Daddy's
letter.
She heard Uncle Jason heavily descending the stairs, his shoes in his
hand. Janice broke off a great branch of lilacs, shook off the dew, and
buried her face in the fragrant blossoms. Then, when Uncle Jason came
yawning into the kitchen, closing the stair door behind him, she rushed
in, with beaming face, bade him "Good-morning!" and put the lilac branch
directly under his nose.
"Just smell 'em, Uncle! Smell 'em deep--before you say a word," she
commanded.
He had come down with a full-grown grouch upon him--that was plainly to
be seen. But when he had taken in a great draught of the sweet odor of
the flowers, and found his niece with her lips puckered, and standing on
tiptoe to kiss him on his unshaven cheek, he somehow forgot the grouch.
"Them's mighty purty! mighty purty!" he agreed, and while he pulled on
his congress gaiters, Janice arranged the blossoms in a jar of water and
set them in the middle of the breakfast table. Aunt 'Mira kept the table
set all the time. The red and white tablecloth was renewed only once a
week, and the jar of flowers served to hide the unsightly spot where
Marty had spilled the gravy the day before.
"Come on and let's see what the matter is with the pump," urged Janice,
in fear lest he should get away from her, for already Mr. Day's fingers
were searching along the ledge above the door for his pipe.
"Wa-al--ya-as--we might as well, I s'pose. I'll make 'Mira's fire later.
It's 'tarnal early, child."
"Sun's up," declared Janice. "Hurry, Uncle!"
He shuffled off to get his tools and the piece of oak he had laid aside
for a pump staff so long ago. Janice tried to untie the pump handle,
and, not succeeding, ran in for the carving knife and managed to saw the
rope in two.
"I got ter take off a piece of tin in the roof of the porch--see it up
yonder? Then I kin pull out the broken staff and put in a new one," said
her uncle, coming back rather promptly for him. "These here wooden pumps
is a nuisance; but the wimmen folks all like 'em 'cause they're easier
to _pump_. Now! I bet that ladder won't hold my weight."
He searched the old, rough, homemade ladder out of the weeds by the
boundary fence. It was built of two pieces of fence rail with rungs of
laths,--a rough and unsightly affair; and two or three of the rungs
_were_ cracked.
"It'll hold _me_," cried Janice. "You let me try, Uncle Jason. Let me
have the screwdriver. I can lift the tacks and pull off the tin. You
see."
She mounted the ladder in a hurry and crept upon the roof of the porch.
Uncle Jason started the nut at the handle, and soon removed that so that
the staff could be pulled out. The sheet of tin had covered a hole in
the shingles right above the pump. In a minute the cracked staff, with
the worn leather valve, was out of the pump entirely, and Uncle Jason
carried it out to the workshop where he could labor upon it with greater
ease. Janice slid down the ladder, found the little three-fingered
weeder, and went to work upon the rich mould around the roots of the
vines--the sweet peas and morning glories that would soon be blooming in
abundance.
Before Aunt 'Mira and Marty were up, the pump was working in fine style.
Uncle Jason had taken an abundance of water out to the cattle. Usually
the drinking trough was filled but once a day, and that about noon. Now
the poor horses and the neglected cow could have plenty of water.
And so could the household. Aunt 'Mira need no longer give things "a
lick and a promise," as she so frequently expressed it. When she came
down it was to a humming fire, a steaming kettle, and a brimming pail on
the shelf.
"I declare for't, Janice!" she exclaimed. "What you done now?"
"Nothing, Aunty--save to put a pretty bunch of lilacs on the table for
you."
"An' them lilacs is always fragrant," agreed the lady. "Who went for the
water? Is Marty up?"
"Marty wouldn't lose his beauty sleep," laughed Janice.
"For the mercy's sake!" gasped Aunt 'Mira. "The pump bench is wet. I
declare for't! Jason never fixed that pump, did he?"
"Just try it, Aunty!" cried the delighted Janice. "See how easy it
works! And the more it's pumped the better the water will be. It's not
quite clear yet, you know. Moss _will_ grow in the pipe."
"Janice, you're a wonder! You kin do more with your uncle than his own
fam'bly can, an' that's a fact!"
"I hope you don't mind, Aunty?" she whispered, coming over to the large
lady and hugging her. "You know, after all, it's for you he did it."
"Wal, it does lighten my labor, that's a fact," admitted Aunt 'Mira. "He
use ter do a-many things for me, years ago. Oh, yes! Your Uncle Jason
warn't allus like he is now. But we got kinder in a rut I 'xpec'. An' I
ain't young and good-lookin' like I use ter be, an' that makes a
diff'rence with a man."
"_I_ think you're very pleasant to look at, Aunt 'Mira," declared the
girl, warmly. "And I don't believe Uncle Jason ever saw a girl he liked
to look at so well as you. Of course not!"
"But I be gittin' old," sighed the poor woman. "An' I ain't got a decent
gown to put on no more. An' I'm _fat_."
Janice still hugged her. "We'll just overhaul your wardrobe, you and I,
Aunty, and I believe we can find something that can be fixed over to
look nice. You'd ought to wear pretty gowns--of course you had. Let's
surprise Uncle Jason by dressing you up. Why, he hasn't seen you dressed
up since--since I've been here."
"Longer'n that, child--much longer'n that," admitted Aunt 'Mira,
shamefacedly. "P'r'aps _'tis_ my fault. Anyway, I'm glad about the
pump," and she kissed her niece heartily.
CHAPTER XI
A RAINY DAY
Janice had learned that there were at least two senses left to Hopewell
Drugg's unfortunate child that connected her with the world as it is,
and with her fellow creatures. As she gradually had lost her sight and
hearing, and, consequently, speech was more and more difficult for her,
Lottie's sense of touch and of smell were being sharpened.
Her olfactory nerves were almost as keen as a dog's. How she loved the
scent of flowers! She named many of the blossoms in the gardens about
just by the odor wafted to her upon the air. And she was really a pretty
sight, sitting upon the shady porch of her father's store, sorting and
making into bouquets the flowers that neighbors gave her.
The old-fashioned shrubs and flowers in the Day yard were in bloom now
in abundance, and one morning before school Janice carried to little
Lottie a huge armful of odorous blossoms. It was a "dripping" morning.
As yet it had not rained hard; but just as Janice turned off High
Street toward the store, the heavens opened and the rain fell in
torrents.
She ran laughing to the porch of the Drugg's store. For once the man was
at the front, and he welcomed her with his polite, storekeeper's smile,
and the natural courtesy which was usual with him. Janice remembered how
the carping Mrs. Scattergood had declared that Hopewell Drugg would be
"polite to a stray cat!"
"You must not go farther in this rain, Miss Janice," he said. "Do come
in. Miss 'Rill went along to school half an hour ago--or she never would
have gotten there without a wetting. Are these for little Lottie? How
kind of you!"
"She's a dear, and she loves flowers so," replied Janice, brightly. "I
_will_ come in out of the rain, if you don't mind, Mr. Drugg."
"Yes. The roof of the porch leaks a little. I--I ought to fix that,"
said the storekeeper, feebly.
He followed his visitor in, and as his fiddle lay on the counter near at
hand, he took it up. He was playing softly an old, old tune, when Janice
came back through the passage from the house. She had found Lottie in
the kitchen, and had left her, delighted with the posies, sitting at the
table to make them up into bouquets.
The rain was pouring down with no promise of a let-up, and Janice did
not have even an umbrella. She took off her coat and hung her hat to
dry on the back of a chair.
"I shall have to be company for a while, I expect, Mr. Drugg," she said,
laughing.
"You are more than welcome, Miss Janice," returned the storekeeper, as
he put down his instrument again. "Is the child all right?"
"She will be busy there for an hour, I think," declared Janice.
"I--I am afraid I shall scarcely know how to entertain you, Miss," said
Drugg, hesitatingly. "We have little company. I--I have a few books----"
"Oh, my, Mr. Drugg! you mustn't think of entertaining me," cried the
girl, cheerfully. "You have your own work to do--and customers to
serve----"
"Not many in this rain," he told her, smiling faintly.
"Why, no--I suppose not. But don't you have orders to put up? I supposed
a storekeeper was a very busy man."
"I am not that kind of a storekeeper, I am afraid," returned Hopewell
Drugg, shaking his head. "I have few customers now. Only a handful of
people come in during the day. You see, I am on the side street here. We
owned this property--mother and I. Mother was bedridden. I thought it
would be easier to keep store and wait on her back in the house there,
than to do most things; so I got into this line. It--it barely makes us
a living," and he sighed.
"But you _do_ have some business?"
"Oh, yes. Old customers who know my stock is always first-class come to
me regularly,--especially out-of-town people. Saturdays I manage to have
quite some trade, like the Hammett Twins, and the farmers. I can't
complain."
"You never liked the business, then?" asked Janice, shrewdly.
"No. Not that it isn't as good as most livelihoods. We all must work.
And I never could do the thing I _loved_ to do. Not with mother
bedridden."
"And that thing was?" asked Janice.
He touched the violin on the counter softly. "I had just music enough in
me to be mad for it," he said, and his gray face suddenly colored
faintly, for it evidently cost him something to speak so frankly.
"Mother did not approve--exactly. You see, my father was a music
teacher, and he never--well--'made good', as the term is now. So mother
did not approve. This was father's violin--fiddle 'most folks call it.
But it is very mellow and sweet--if I had only been taught properly to
play it. You see, father died before I was born."
Out of these few sentences, spoken so gently, Janice swiftly built, in
her quick mind, the whole story of the man. His had been a life of
repression--perhaps of sacrifice! The soul of music in the man had never
been able to burst its chrysalis.
"Mother died after I was of age. It seemed too late then for me to get
into any other business," Hopewell Drugg went on to say, evenly. "You
know, Miss, one gets into a rut. I was in a rut then. And we hadn't any
too much money left. It was quite necessary that I do something to keep
the pot a-boiling. There wasn't enough money left for music lessons, and
all that.
"And then----"
He stopped. A queer look came over his face, and somehow the alert girl
beside him knew what he was thinking of. 'Rill Scattergood was in his
mind. He must have thought a great deal of the little school-mistress at
one time--before he had married that other girl. Aunt Almira had said he
had married 'Cinda Stone "out of spite!" Was it so?
"Well," sighed the storekeeper, finally coming back from his reverie as
though all the time he had been talking to Janice. "It turned out this
way for me, you see. And here's Lottie. Poor little Lottie! I wish the
store _did_ pay me better. Perhaps something could be done for the child
at the school in Boston. They have specialists there----"
"But, Mr. Drugg! why don't you _try_?" gasped Janice, quite shaken by
all she had heard and _felt_.
"Try what, Miss?" he asked, curiously.
"Why don't you try to make business better? Can't you improve it?"
"How, Miss?"
"Oh, dear me! You don't want _me_ to tell you how, do you?" cried
Janice, "I--I am afraid it would sound impudent."
"I couldn't imagine your being that, Miss Janice," he said, in his slow
way, looking down at her with a smile that somehow sweetened his gray,
lean face mightily.
"But why not put out some effort to attract trade here?"
"To this little, dark, old shop?" asked Drugg, in wonder. "Impossible!"
"Don't use that word!" the girl commanded, with vigor. "How do you know
it is impossible?"
"People prefer the big shops on High Street."
"There's not much choice between them and yours, I believe," declared
Janice.
"They're handier."
"You've got your own neighborhood. You used to have customers."
"Oh, yes. But that's when the store was new."
"Make it new again," cried Janice, feeling a good deal as though she
would like to shake this hopeless man. Hopewell, indeed! His name surely
did not fit him in the least. Wasn't old Mrs. Scattergood almost right
when she called him "a gump"? At least, if "gump" meant a spineless
creature?
Drugg was looking languidly about the store in the dim, brown light.
Outside the rain still fell heavily. Occasionally the clouds would
lighten for a moment as they frequently do in the hills; but the rain
was still behind them and _would_ burst through.
"Come, Mr. Drugg," said Janice, more softly. "Let me show you what I
mean. You can't really expect folks to come here and trade when they can
scarcely see through the windows----"
"Yes, yes," he murmured. "I _had_ ought to clean up a bit."
"More than that!" she cried. "You want to have a regular
overhauling--take account of stock, and all that--know what you've
got--arrange your goods attractively--get rid of the flies--put on fresh
paint----"
He was looking at her with wide-open eyes. "My soul!" he breathed.
"How'd I ever git around to doin' all _that_?"
"You love little Lottie, don't you?" Janice demanded, with sudden
cruelty. "I should think you'd be willing to do something for her!"
"What do you mean?" and a little snap, which delighted Janice, suddenly
came into Drugg's tone.
"Just what I say, Mr. Drugg. You _speak_ as though you loved her."
"And who says I don't?"
"Your actions."
"My actions? What do you mean by that?" and the man flushed more deeply
than before.
"I mean if you truly loved her, and longed to get her to Boston and to
the surgeons, and the school there, it seems to me you'd be willing to
work hard to that end."
"You show me--" he began, wrathfully, but she interrupted with:
"Now, wait! Let me have my way for an hour here, will you? I want you to
go back to Lottie and do up the housework; I see your breakfast dishes
are still unwashed. Leave me alone here and let me do as I like for an
hour."
"You mean to clean up?" he asked, gazing about the store hopelessly.
"Something like that. It rains so hard I can't get to school. I'll visit
with you, Mr. Drugg," said Janice smiling and her voice cheerful again.
"And instead of helping about the housework, I'll help in the store.
_Do_ let me, sir!"
"Why--yes--I don't mind. I guess you mean right enough, Miss Janice. But
you don't understand----"
"Give me an hour," she cried.
"Why, yes, Miss," he said, in his old, gentle, polite way. "If you want
to mess about I won't mind. Come in and I'll give you a big long apron
that will cover your frock all over. It--it's dreadful dusty in here."
Janice would not be discouraged. She smiled cheerfully at him, found
brush, pan, broom, pail, and cloths, and with some hot water and
soap-powder went back to the store. The rain continued to fall heavily.
There was no likelihood of her being disturbed at her work.
She chose the more littered of the two show windows and almost threw
everything out of it in her hurry. Then she swept down the cobwebs and
dead flies, and brushed away all the dust. It was no small task to scrub
the panes of glass clean, and all the woodwork; but Janice knew how to
work. The old black Mammy who had kept house for her and Daddy so many
years had taught the girl domestic tasks, and had taught her well.
Within an hour the work was done. More light came through the panes of
that window than usually ventured in upon a sunshiny day!
The balance of the task was a pleasure. Her bright eyes had noted the
newer goods upon Mr. Drugg's shelves. She selected samples of the more
recent canned goods--those of which the labels on the cans were fresh
and bright. She arranged these with package goods--breakfast foods, and
the like--so as to make a goodly display. She found colored tissue
papers, too, and she brightened the window shelf with these. She
festooned the flyspecked, T-arm light bracket in the window, and
carried twisted strings of the pink and green paper to the four corners
of the window shelf from the bottom of this bracket.
She went out upon the porch at last to look in at the display. From the
outside the window was pretty and bright--it was like the windows she
was used to seeing in the Greensboro stores.
"One thing about it," she declared, with confidence. "There's nothing
like this in the whole of Poketown. There isn't another store window
that looks so fresh and--yes!--dainty."
Then she went inside to Mr. Drugg. He was listlessly brushing up the
cottage kitchen. Lottie had fallen asleep on the wide bench beyond the
cookstove, a great bunch of posies hugged against her stained pinafore.
"Come in and see, sir," said Janice, beckoning the gray man into the
store. Drugg came with shuffling steps and lack-lustre eyes. He seemed
to be considering in his mind something that had nothing whatsoever to
do with what she had called him for.
"Do you re'lly suppose, Miss Janice," he murmured, "that I could
increase trade here? I need money--God knows!--for little Lottie. If I
could get her to Boston----
"Good gracious, Miss! what you been doing here?" he suddenly gasped.
"Isn't that some better?" demanded Janice, chuckling. "Astonished,
aren't you, Mr. Drugg? Don't you believe if both windows were like that,
and the whole store cleaned up, folks would sit up and take notice?"
"I--I believe you," admitted the shopkeeper, still staring.
"And wouldn't it pay?"
"I--I don't know. It might."
"Isn't it worth trying?" demanded Janice, cheerily. "Now, please, I want
you to do as I say--and you must let me have my own way to-day here.
I've brought my lunch, and it's too late to go to school now, even if it
_does_ stop raining. You'll let me, won't you?"
"I--I--I don't know just what you want me to do--or what _you_ want to
do," stammered Hopewell Drugg, still staring at the transformed window.
"I want you to turn in and help me put your whole store to rights," she
declared. "You don't understand, Mr. Drugg. I believe you can attract
trade here if you will have things nice, and bright, and tidy. You carry
a good stock of wares; and you are not any more behind the times than
other Poketown merchants. Why not be _ahead of them all_?"
"Me?" breathed Drugg, in increasing wonder.
"And why not _you_? You've got as good a chance as any. Just get to work
and _make_ trade. Think of little Lottie. If your business can be
increased and you can make money, think of what you can do for her!"
Drugg suddenly straightened his stooped shoulders and held up his head.
"Just you show me what you want me to do," he said, with unexpected
fire.
"Grand!" cried the excited Janice. "I can set you to work in a minute.
First thing of all, you fix your screen doors; let's keep the fly family
out of the store--and we'll kill those already in here. You commence on
the screens, Mr. Drugg, while I tackle that other window."
About the time school was usually out, Janice removed her apron and the
other marks of her toil, and put on her hat and coat. As she said, they
had made a good beginning. Better still, Hopewell Drugg seemed quite
inspired.
"You have done me a world of good, Miss Janice," he declared. "And
already the shop looks a hundred per cent better."
"I should hope so," said Janice, vigorously. "And you keep right on with
the good work, Mr. Drugg. I'll come in and dress your windows every
week. And when you've torn those shelves away from the side windows and
let the light and air in here, and done your painting as you promised,
I'll come and arrange your wares on the shelves.
"Then you get out a little good advertising, and remind folks that
Hopewell Drugg is still in Poketown and doing business. Oh! there are a
dozen things I want you to do! But I won't tell you about all of them
now," and Janice laughed as she picked up her bag and ran out.
The rain had ceased. The sun was breaking through the clouds, promising
a beautiful evening. Janice almost ran into 'Rill Scattergood on the
sidewalk.
"Why, Janice dear!" cried the little school-mistress. "I missed you
to-day." Then her eyes turned toward the store. "Is--is anything the
matter? Nothing's happened to little Lottie?"
"Not a thing," replied the girl, cheerfully.
"Nor--nor to Mr. Drugg? I don't hear him playing," said Miss 'Rill.
"And I hope you _won't_ hear him playing so much for a while," laughed
Janice. "The fiddle and the bow have been laid away on the shelf for a
while, I hope."
"But I really _do_ think Mr. Drugg plays very nicely," murmured the
little schoolmistress, not at all understanding what Janice meant. But
the girl ran on, smiling mysteriously.
CHAPTER XII
ON THE ROAD WITH WALKY DEXTER
Janice Day found the weeks sliding by more quickly after this. Although
school soon closed, she had begun to find so many interests in Poketown
that she could now write dear Daddy in Mexico quite cheerful letters.
She had "kept at" Hopewell Drugg until his store was the main topic of
conversation all over town. The man himself was even "spruced up" a bit,
and he met the curious people who put themselves out to see his
rejuvenated store with such a pleasant and businesslike air, that many
new customers were attracted to come again.
Neatly printed announcements had been scattered about Poketown, signed
by Hopewell Drugg, and making a bid for a share of the general trade.
His windows remained attractively dressed. He displayed new stock and
up-to-the-minute articles. The drummers who came to Poketown began to
pay more attention to this store on the side street.
But Janice Day believed, that, like charity, reformation should begin at
home. The old Day house was slowly revolutionized that summer.
Commencing with the cleaning up of the yard and the mending of the pump,
Janice inspired further improvements. Marty and she spent each Saturday
morning in the dooryard and garden, while Mr. Day mended the front porch
flooring, where the minister had met with his accident, and reshingled
the roof.
The boles of the fruit and shade trees about the house were whitewashed,
and the palings of the fence renewed. Somehow a pair of new hinges were
found for the gate. The sidewalk was raked, all the weeds cut away from
the fence-line, and the sod between the path and the gutter trimmed and
its edges cut evenly.
When Marty actually whitewashed the fence, Mr. Day admitted that it was
such an improvement he wished he could go on and paint the house. "But,
by mighty!" he drawled, "it's been so long since 'twas painted, it 'ud
soak up an awful sight of oil."
Other people along Hillside Avenue began to take notice of the
improvement about the old Day house. Mr. Dickerson built a new front
fence, getting it on a line with the Days' barrier. Others trimmed
hedges and trees, put the lawn mower to their grass, bolstered up
sagging fences, and rehung gates. Hillside Avenue, up its whole length,
began to look less neglected.
Janice had a fondness for the little inlet, with its background of tall
firs, where she had first met little Lottie Drugg, and she often walked
down there. So she became pretty well acquainted with "Mr. Selectman"
Cross Moore. But as yet she did not get as far out on the Middletown
Lower Road as the house where the Hammett Twins lived.
One day she found a long lumber-reach dropping new posts and rails along
the length of the deep ditch into which the twins' pony had come so near
to backing the little old ladies on that memorable day when Janice had
first met them.
"Hi tunket!" ejaculated Mr. Moore, grinning in a most friendly way at
Janice, "I hope you'll be satisfied now. You've jest about hounded me
into havin' this fence put up again."
"Why, Mr. Moore! I never said a thing to you about it," cried the girl.
"No. But I see ye ev'ry time you go by, and I'm so reminded of the
'tarnal fence that I remember it o' nights. If somebody _should_ fall
inter the ditch, ye know. And then--Well, I've found out you've made
little Lottie Drugg promise not to come down this way 'nless somebody's
with her. 'Fraid _she'll_ fall in here, too, I s'pose----"
"Well, she might," said Janice, firmly.
"She won't have no chance," growled Mr. Moore, but with twinkling eyes
in spite of his gruffness. "Hi tunket! I'll build a railing along here
that'll hold up an elephunt."
This day Janice had set forth for a long jaunt into the country. She
took the turn where the Hammett Twins and their pony had first come into
her sight, and kept walking on the Middletown Lower Road for a long way.
It overlooked the lake, Janice had been told, for most of the distance
to the larger town.
She passed several farmhouses but did not reach the Hammett place;
instead she rested upon a rustic bridge where a swift, brawling brook
came down from the hills to tumble into the lake. Then, as she was going
on, a quick "put, put, put" sounded from along the road she had been
traveling.
"It's a motorcycle," thought Janice. "I didn't know anybody owned one
around Poketown."
Turning the bend in the road the 'cycle flashed into view, along with a
whisp of dust. A young man rode the machine--a young man who looked
entirely different from the youths of Poketown. Janice looked at him
with interest as he flashed past. She thought he was going so fast that
he would never notice her curiosity.
He was muscularly built, with a round head set firmly upon a solid neck,
from which his shirt was turned well away, thus displaying the cords of
his throat to advantage. He was well bronzed by the sun, and the heavy
crop of hair, on which he wore a visorless round cap, was crisp and of
a dull gold color. He really _was_ a good-looking young man, and in his
knickerbockers and golf stockings Janice thought he seemed very
"citified" indeed.
"He's a college boy, I am sure," decided the girl, with interest,
watching the rider out of sight. "I couldn't see his eyes behind those
dust glasses; but I believe there was a dimple in his cheek. If his face
was washed, I don't doubt but what he'd be good-looking," and she
laughed. "Why! here's Walky Dexter!"
The red-faced driver of the "party wagon" drew in Josephus and his mate,
with a flourish.
"Wal, now! I _am_ beat," he ejaculated, his little eyes twinkling.
"Can't be I've found a _lost_ Day?"
"No, indeed, Mr. Dexter," she told him. "I _was_ thinking I'd walk to
the Hammetts'; but it's turned so hot and dusty----"
"And the Hammett gals live two good mile ahead o' ye."
"Oh! as far as that?"
"Surest thing ye know. Better hop in an' jog along back 'ith me," said
Walkworthy Dexter, cordially.
"Can I, Mr. Dexter?"
"You air jest as welcome as the flowers in May," he assured her. "Whoa,
Josephus. Stand still, Kate! My sakes! but the flies bite the critters
this morning, an' no mistake."
Janice "hopped in," and Mr. Dexter clucked to the willing horses.
"I jest been takin' a party of our young folks over to Middletown to
take examinations for entrance to the Academy," proclaimed Walky. "An'
that remin's me," added he. "Did yer see that feller go by on one o'
them gasoline bikes?"
"On the motorcycle?"
"Ya-as."
"I saw him," admitted Janice.
"Know him?"
"Of course not. He doesn't belong in Poketown, I'm sure."
"Mebbe he will," said Walky, his eyes twinkling with fun again.
Janice looked at him, puzzled.
"Ain't you heard?" he questioned. "'Rill Scattergood's resigned and the
school committee is lookin' for a new teacher. _That_ feller's got the
bee in his bonnet, they told me at Middletown."
"The school-teaching bee?" laughed the girl.
"Yep. He'd been for his certif'cate. He's been writin' to the Poketown
committee."
"But--but he isn't much more than a boy himself, is he?"
"They tell me he's been through college. Must be a smart youngster for,
as you say, he's nothin' but a kid."
"I didn't say that!" cried Janice, in some little panic, for she knew
Dexter's proneness to gossip. "Don't you dare say I did!"
He chuckled. "Wa-al, ye meant it. Come now--didn't ye? An' he _is_ a
mighty young feller ter be teachin' school. 'Specially with sech big
girls an' boys in it. He'll have ter fight the boys, it's likely, an' I
shouldn't wonder if the big gals set their caps for him."
"I'm afraid you're a very reckless talker, Mr. Dexter," sighed Janice.
Then her hazel eyes brightened suddenly, and she added, "They ought to
call you 'Talky' Dexter, instead of 'Walky', I believe."
"'Talkworthy Dexter', eh?" he grinned.
"I'm not sure that you _do_ always _talk worthy_," she told him, shaking
a serious head. "You're very apt to say things to 'stir folks all up,'
as my Aunt says. Oh, yes, you do! You know you do, Mr. Dexter."
"Wal, I declare!" chuckled the man, but with a queer little side glance
at the serious face of the girl. "Think I'm a trouble-breeder, do ye?"
"You just ask yourself that, sir," said Janice, firmly. "You know you're
just delighted if you can say something to 'start things going,' as you
call it. And it isn't worthy of you----"
"Whether I'm 'Talkworthy', or 'Walkworthy', eh?" he broke in, laughing.
"Oh, I didn't mean any offence!" exclaimed Janice, much disturbed now
to think that she had criticised the man just as he was in the habit of
criticising everybody else.
"I snum! mebbe you're right," grunted Walky Dexter. "And I reckon
talkin' don't do much good after all. Now, look at Cross Moore. I been
at him a year an' more to fix that rail fence along the ditch by his
house. 'Tain't done no good. But, by jinks! somebody else got at him,"
added Walky, slyly, "an' I see this mornin' Cross was gittin' the rails
and new posts there. He was right on the job."
Janice's cheeks grew rosy. "Why!" she cried, "I never said a word to him
about it."
"No; but somehow he got the idee from you. He told me so," and Walky
chuckled.
"I think Mr. Moore likes to joke--the same as you do, Mr. Dexter," said
Janice, quietly.
"Ahem! You sartainly have got some of us goin'," said the driver,
whimsically. "Look at Jase Day! I never _did_ think nothin' less'n
Gabriel's trump would start Jase. But yest'day I'm jiggered if I didn't
see him mendin' his pasture fence. And the old Day house looks like
another place--that's right. How d'you do it?"
"I--I don't just know what you mean," stammered Janice, feeling very
uncomfortable.
He looked at her with his eyes screwed up again. "D'you know what they
said about yer uncle las' year? He come down to Jefferson's store with
a basket of pertaters. All the big ones was on top and the little ones
at the bottom. Huh! _He_ ain't the only one that 'deacons' a basket of
pertaters," and Walky chuckled.
"But the boys said 'twas easy to see how come Jase's pertaters that-a
way. 'Twas 'cause it took him so 'tarnal long to dig a basket, that the
pertaters grew ahead of him in the row--that's right! When he begun they
was little, but by the time he got a basket full they'd growed a lot,"
and the gossip guffawed his delight at the story.
"But he's sure gettin' 'round some spryer this year. An' I snum! there's
Marty, too. He's workin' in his mother's garden reg'lar. I seen him.
'Fore you came, Miss Janice, if Marty was diggin' in the garden an'
found a worm, he thought he was goin' fishin' and got him a bait can and
a pole, an' set right off for the lake--that's right!" and Walky shook
all over, and grew so red in the face over his joke that Janice was
really afraid he was becoming apoplectic.
But something in the middle of the road, as they made another corner,
stopped all this fun.
"Hullo!" exclaimed Walky. "That young feller on the gasoline bike has
had an accident. Don't it look that way to you?"
CHAPTER XIII
NELSON HALEY
The team drew to a halt without any command, and directly beside the
young man, who was working diligently over the overturned motorcycle.
His repair kit was spread out at the roadside, and the cause of the
trouble was self-evident, it would seem. But Walky was a true Yankee and
had to ask questions.
"Had a puncture, Mister?" he drawled, as the young man looked up, saw
Janice on the seat beside the driver, and flushed a little.
"Oh, no!" returned the victim of the accident, with some asperity. "I'm
just changing the air in these tires. The other air was worn out, you
know."
For a moment Walky's eyes bulged, and Janice giggled loudly. Then Mr.
Dexter saw the point of the joke. He slapped his leg and laughed
uproariously.
"You'll do! By jinks! you surely will _do_," he declared. "I reckon you
air smart enough, young feller, ter teach the Poketown school. An'
that's what they say you're in these parts for?"
"I am here to see the school committee about the position," said the
young fellow. "Are you one of the committee?"
"Me? No--I should say not!" gasped Walky. "Old Bill Jones, an' 'Squire
Abe Connett, and Elder Concannon air the committee."
"Oh!" returned the youth, quite coolly. "I didn't know but you were one
of the number, and that I was already being put through my examination."
But Walky Dexter was not easily feazed. He just blinked twice over this
snub and pursued the conversation:
"They tell me you've been ter college?"
"My! my!" exclaimed the young man, "_they_ tell you a good deal, don't
they? Is it just a habit folks have, or have the Poketown selectmen
passed an ordinance that you are to be the recipient of all personal
information?"
Janice was still amused, although she thought the young man was rather
hard upon the town gossip. But Walky thought the observation over, and
seemed finally to realize that the motorcyclist was making sport of him.
"Aw, well," he said, grinning broadly, "if you air tender about your
pussonal record, I'll say no more about it. But I allus b'lieve in goin'
right ter headquarters when I want ter know anything. Saves makin'
mistakes. If you air ashamed of your criminal past, Mister, why, that's
all right--we won't say no more about it."
At this the young fellow stood up, put his hands upon his hips, and
burst into a hearty shout of laughter. Janice had to join in, while
Walky Dexter grinned, knowing he had made a good point.
"You certainly had me there, old timer!" declared the youth at last.
"Now providing you will be as frank, and do the honors as well, I'll
introduce myself as Nelson Haley. I hail from Springfield. I have spent
four years in the scholastic halls of Williamstown. I hope to go to law
school, but meanwhile must earn a part of the where-with-all. Therefore,
I am attacking the citadel of the Poketown School."
"Oh! That's the why-for of it, eh?" crowed Walky. "Much obleeged. I'll
know what to say now when anybody asks me."
"I hope so," returned Nelson Haley, with some sarcasm. "But fair
exchange, Mister. You might tell me who I have the honor of speaking
to--and, especially, you might introduce me to the lady?"
"Oh! Eh?" and Walky looked at the blushing Janice, questioningly. The
girl smiled, however, and the driver cleared his throat and gravely made
the introduction. "And I'm Walky Dexter," he concluded. "If you git the
Poketown school you'll come ter know me quite well, I shouldn't wonder."
"That is something to look forward to, I am sure," declared Nelson
Haley, drily. Then he turned to Janice, and asked:
"Will you be one of my pupils, if I have the good fortune to get the
school, Miss Day?"
"I--I am afraid not. I do not really belong in Poketown," Janice
explained. "And the ungraded school could not aid me much."
"No, I suppose not," returned the young man. "Well! I hope I see you
again, Miss Day."
Walky clucked to the horses and they jogged on, leaving Nelson Haley to
finish his repairs. Walky chuckled, and said to Janice:
"He's quite a flip young feller. He is young to tackle the Poketown
school. An' 'twill be an objection, I shouldn't wonder. Ye see, they
couldn't find that fault with 'Rill Scattergood."
"But I venture to say that they did when she first came to Poketown to
teach," cried Janice.
"Oh, say! I sh'd say they did," agreed Walky, with a retrospective
rolling of his head. "An' she was a purty young gal, then, too. There
was more on us than Hopewell Drugg arter 'Rill in them days--yes,
sir-ree!"
Janice was curious, and she yielded to the temptation of asking the town
gossip a question:
"Why--why didn't Miss 'Rill marry Hopewell, then?"
"The goodness only knows why they fell out, Miss Janice," declared
Walky. "We none of us ever made out. I 'spect it was the old woman done
it--ol' Miz' Scattergood. She didn't take kindly to Hopewell. And
then--Well, 'Cinda Stone was lef' all alone, an' she lived right back o'
Drugg's store, an' her father had owed Drugg a power of money 'fore he
died--a big store bill, ye see. Hopewell Drugg is as soft as butter;
mebbe he loved 'Cinda Stone; anyhow he merried her after he'd got the
mitten from Amarilla. Huh! ye can't never tell the whys and wherefores
of sech things--not re'lly."
A presidential election would have made little more stir in Poketown
than the coming there of this young man who looked for the position of
school-teacher. Marty brought home word at night to the old Day house
that Mr. Haley had put up at the Lake View Inn; that he had let two of
the older boys try out his motorcycle; that he could pitch a ball that
"Dunk" Peters couldn't hit, even though "Dunk" had played one season
with the Fitchburg team. Likewise, that Mr. Haley was to go before the
school committee that evening. And after supper Marty hastened down town
again to learn how the examination of the young collegian "came out."
"I do hope," sighed Aunt 'Mira, "that this young man gits the school.
Mebbe Marty will like him, an' go again. I won't say but that the boy's
a good deal better'n he was; he's changed since you've come, Janice. But
he'd oughter git more schoolin'--so he had."
"I met Mr. Haley," said her niece, quietly. "He seems like quite a nice
young man; and, if he has any interest in his work, he ought to give a
good many of the Poketown boys a better start."
For Marty Day was not the only young loafer in the town. There was
always a group of half-grown boys hanging about Josiah Pringle's harness
shop, or the sheds of the Lake View Inn.
In Greensboro there had been a good library and reading-room, and the
Young Men's Christian Association boys and young men had a chance
_there_. Janice knew that her father's influence had helped open these
club-like places for the boys, and so had kept them off the streets.
There wasn't a thing in Poketown for boys to do or a place to go to,
save the stores where the older men lounged. Sometimes, her aunt told
her, men brought jugs of hard cider to the Inn tables, and the boys got
to drinking the stuff.
"Now, if this Nelson Haley is any sort of a fellow, and he gets the
school," murmured Janice to herself, "he may do something."
Marty brought home the latest report from the committee meeting before
they went to bed. Mr. Haley seemed to have made a good impression upon
the three old dry-as-dust committeemen, especially on old Elder
Concannon, the superannuated minister who had lived in Poketown for
fifty years, although he had not preached at the Union Church, saving on
special occasion, for two decades.
"The Elder says he thinks this Haley'll do," said Marty, with a grin. "I
heard him tell Walky Dexter so. He knows some Latin, Haley does," added
the boy. "What's Latin, Janice?"
"Nothing that will help him in the least to teach the Poketown School,"
declared his cousin, rather sharply for her. "Isn't that ridiculous!
What can that old minister be thinking of?"
"The Elder's great on what he calls 'the classics,'" said Mr. Day, with
a chuckle. "He reads the Bible in the 'riginal, as he calls it. He allus
said 'Rill Scattergood didn't know enough to teach school."
"I don't believe that Poketown really needs a teacher who reads Hebrew
and can translate a Latin verse. That is, those studies will not help
Mr. Haley much in your school," Janice replied.
"Wal," said Marty, "I'll go when school opens and give him a whirl.
Maybe he'll teach me how to fling that drop curve."
"Now!" whined Aunt 'Mira, when Marty had stumped up to bed. "What good
is it goin' ter do that boy ter go ter school an' learn baseball, I want
ter know?"
CHAPTER XIV
A TIME OF TRIAL
Janice met Nelson Haley a couple of days later in Hopewell Drugg's
store. The matter had been decided ere then; Haley had obtained the
school and had quickly established himself in a boarding-place, as the
school would open the next week.
'Rill Scattergood and her mother had already gone to housekeeping in
three nice rooms just around the corner on High Street, and Mr. Haley
had the good fortune to be "taken in" by Mrs. Beasely. The gaunt old
widow was plainly delighted once more to have "a man to do for."
"If my digestion holds out, Miss Day," whispered the young man to
Janice, "I'm going to do fine with Mrs. Beasely. Good old creature! But
she may kill me with kindness. I don't see how I am going to be able to
do full justice to her three meals a day."
"I hope you will like it as well in school as you do at your
boarding-place," ventured Janice, timidly.
"Oh, the school? That's going to be pie," laughed Haley. "You know about
how it's been run, don't you?"
"I--I attended for more than a month last spring," admitted the girl.
"Then you know very well," said the young man, smiling broadly, "that it
won't be half a trick to satisfy the committee. They don't expect much.
'Just let things run along easy-like'; that will please them. If I can
keep the boys straight and teach the youngsters a little, that will be
about all the committee expects. Elder Concannon admitted that much to
me. You see, the whole committee are opposed to what they term
'new-fangled notions.'"
"But there is some sentiment in town for an improvement in the school,"
declared Janice. "Don't you know that? Many people would like to see the
children taught more, and the school more up-to-date."
"Oh, well," and Haley laughed and shrugged his shoulders. "The committee
seem to be in power, and--Well, Miss Day, you can be sure that I know
which side my bread is buttered on," he concluded, lightly.
Janice liked this bright, laughing young man very much. But she was
sorry he had no more serious interest in his position than this
conversation showed.
Then there suddenly came a time when Janice Day's own interest in
Poketown and Poketown people--in everything and everybody about
her--seriously waned. Daddy had not written for a fortnight. When the
letter finally came it had been delayed, and was not postmarked as
usual. Daddy only hinted at one of the belligerent armies being nearer
to the mines, and that most of his men had deserted.
There was trouble--serious trouble, or Daddy would not have kept his
daughter in suspense. Janice watched the mails, eagle-eyed. She wrote
letter after letter herself, begging him to keep her informed,--begging
him to come away from that hateful Mexico altogether.
"Broxton's no business to be 'way down there at all," growled Uncle
Jason, who was worried, too, and hadn't the tact to keep his feelings
secret from the girl. "Why, Walky Dexter tells me they are shootin'
white folks down there jest like we'd shoot squirrels in these parts."
"Oh, Jason!" gasped Aunt 'Mira. "It can't be as bad as that!"
"Wuss. They jest shot a rancher who was a Britisher, an' they say
there'll be war about it. I dunno. Does look as though our Government
ought ter do somethin' to protect Americans as well as Britishers. But,
hi tunket! Broxton hadn't ought ter gone down there--no, sir-ree!"
This sort of talk did not help Janice. She drooped about the house and
often crept off by herself into the woods and fields and brooded over
Daddy's peril. School had begun, and Marty went with several of the
bigger boys that had hung around Pringle's harness shop and the Inn
stables.
"That Nelse Haley is all right," the boy confided to his cousin. "We're
going to have two baseball teams next year. He says so. Then we kin have
matched games. But now he's goin' to send for what he calls a 'pigskin'
and he's a-goin' to teach us football. Guess you've heard of that, eh?"
"Oh, yes," said Janice. "It's a great game, Marty. But what about
school? Is he teaching you anything?"
Marty grinned. "Enough, I guess. Things goin' along easy-like. He don't
kill us with work, that's one thing. Old Elder Concannon's been up once
and sat an' listened to the classes. He seems satisfied."
Janice did not lose sight of Hopewell Drugg and little Lottie. The store
was now doing a fairly good business; but the man admitted that the
profits rolled up but slowly, and it would be a long time before he
could take his little daughter to Boston.
These fall days Janice was frequently with Miss 'Rill. The little maiden
lady seemed to understand better than most people just how Janice was
troubled by her father's absence, his silence, and his peril. Besides,
when old Mrs. Scattergood did not know, many were the times that 'Rill
and Janice went to Hopewell Drugg's and "tidied up" the cottage for him.
'Rill would not go without Janice, and they usually stole in by the side
door without saying a word to the storekeeper. He was grateful for their
aid, and little Lottie was benefited by their ministrations.
Then another letter came from Broxton Day. He admitted that the two
armies were very near--one between him and communication with his
friends over the Rio Grande--and that operations at the mine had
completely ceased. Yet he felt it his duty to remain, even though the
property was "between two fires," as it were.
Ere this Janice had sent off for an up-to-date map of northern Mexico
and the Texan border. She and Marty and Mr. Day had pored over it
evenings and had now marked the very spot in the hills where the mine
was located. The girl subscribed for a New York newspaper, too, and that
came in the evening mail. So they followed the movements of the Federal
and the Constitutionalist armies as closely as possible from the news
reports, and Janice read about each battle with deeper and deeper
anxiety.
Had her uncle and aunt been wise they would have interfered in this
occupation, or at least, they would not have encouraged it. Janice lost
her cheerfulness and her rosy cheeks. Aunt 'Mira declared she drooped
"like a sick chicken."
"Ye mustn't pay so much 'tention to them papers," she complained. "I
never did think much o' N'York daily papers, nohow. They don't have
'nuff stories in 'em."
But it was her own money Janice spent for the papers. Whenever Daddy had
written he had usually enclosed in his envelope a bank note of small
denomination for Janice. The bank in Greensboro sent the board money
regularly to Uncle Jason (and Aunt 'Mira got it for her own personal
use, as she declared she would), but Janice always had a little in her
pocket.
Had she been well supplied with cash about this time the girl would have
been tempted to run away and take the train for Mexico herself. It did
seem to her, when the weeks went by without a letter reaching her from
her father, as though he must be wounded, and suffering, and needing
her!
But she did not have sufficient money to pay her fare such a long
distance.
Aunt 'Mira was a poor comforter. Yet she fortunately aided in giving
Janice something else to think about just then. The girl had helped
"spruce up" Aunt 'Mira long since, so that they could go to church
together on Sundays. But now the good lady was in the throes of making
herself a silk dress for best--a black silk. It was the thing she had
longed for most, and now she could satisfy the craving for clothes that
had so obsessed her.
Aunt 'Mira loved finery. Janice had to use her influence to the utmost
to keep the good lady from committing the sin of getting this wonderful
dress too "fancy." Left to herself, Mrs. Day would have loaded it with
bead trimming and cut-steel ornaments. At first she even wanted it cut
"minaret" fashion, which would have, in the end, made the poor lady look
a good deal like an overgrown ballet dancer!
Janice had been glad to go to church. Always, before coming to Poketown,
the girl had held a vital interest in church and church work. But here
she found there was really nothing for the young people to do. They had
no society, and aside from the Sunday School, a very cut-and-dried
session usually, there was no special interest for the young.
Mr. Middler, the pastor, was a mild-voiced, softly stepping man,
evidently fearing to give offense. Although he had been in the pastorate
for several years, he seemed to have very little influence in the
community. Elder Concannon and several other older members controlled
the church and its policies utterly; and they frowned on any innovation.
One Sabbath, old Elder Concannon--a grizzled, heavy-eyebrowed man, with
a beak-like nose and flashing black eyes--preached, and he thundered
out the "Law" to his hearers as a man might use a goad on a refractory
team of oxen. Mr. Middler was a faint echo of the old Elder on most
occasions. He seemed afraid of taking his text from the New Testament.
It was Law, not Love, that was preached at the Poketown Union Church;
and although the dissertations may have been satisfactory to the older
members, they did not attract the young people to service, or feed them
when they _did_ come!
Janice often wondered if the loud "Amens!" of Elder Concannon, down in
the corner, were worth as much to poor little Mr. Middler as would have
been a measure of vital interest shown in the church and its work by
some of the young people of the community.
There was a Ladies Sewing Circle. There is always a Ladies Sewing
Circle! But, somehow, the making up of barrels of cast-off clothing for
unfortunate missionaries in the West, or up in Canada, or the sewing
together of innumerable ill-cut garments, which must, of course, be
"misfits" for the unknown infants for whom they were intended,--all this
never could seem sufficient to "feed the spirit," to Janice Day's mind.
Once or twice she went with Aunt 'Mira (who was proud of her new clothes
and would occasionally go about to show them, now) to the sewing
society meeting. But there were few other young girls there, and the
gossip was not seasoned to her taste.
One day came a letter from Daddy's friend and business associate in
Juarez. For three weeks Janice had not received a word from her father.
The man in Juarez wrote:
"DEAR MISS JANICE:--
"Communication is quite shut off from the district in which
your father's property lies. From such spies as have been
able to get to me, I learn that a disastrous battle has been
fought near the place and that the Constitutionalists have
swept everything before them. They have overrun that part of
Chihuahua and, that being the case, foreigners are not
likely to be well treated or their property conserved.
"I write this because I think it my duty to do so. You
should be warned that the very worst that can happen must be
expected. I have not heard directly from Mr. Day for a
fortnight, and then but a brief message came. He was then
well and free, but spoke of being probably obliged to desert
his post, after all.
"Just what has become of him I cannot guess. I have put the
matter in the hands of the consul here, the State Department
has already been telegraphed, and an inquiry will be made.
But Americans are disappearing most mysteriously every week
in Mexico, and I cannot hold out any hope for Mr. Day. He
may get word through to you by some other route than this;
if so, will you wire me at once?
"Sincerely yours,
"JAMES W. BUCHANAN."
CHAPTER XV
NEW BEGINNINGS
The very worst of it was, there was nothing Janice could do! She must
wait, and to contemplate that passive state, almost drove her mad!
Day after day passed without bringing any further news. She read the
papers just as eagerly as before; but the center of military activity in
Mexico had suddenly shifted to an entirely different part of the
country. There was absolutely no news in the papers from the district
where the mine was situated.
Mr. Buchanan wrote once again, but even more briefly. He was a busy man,
and had done all that he could. If he heard from, or of, Mr. Day he
would telegraph Janice at once, and if _she_ heard she was to let him
know by the same means.
That was the way the matter stood. It seemed as though the State
Department could, or would, do nothing. Mr. Day, like other citizens of
the United States, had been warned of the danger he was in while he
remained in a country torn by civil strife. The consequences were upon
his own head.
The folks who knew about Janice's trouble tried to be good to her. Walky
Dexter drove around to invite the girl to go with him whenever he had a
job that took him out of town with the spring wagon. Janice loved to jog
over the hilly roads, and she saw a good bit of the country with Dexter.
"I'd love to own just a little automobile that I could run myself," she
said once.
"Why don't you borry Nelse Haley's gasoline bike?" demanded Walky, with
a grin. "Or, mebbe he'll put a back-saddle on fer yer. I've seen 'em
ride double at Middletown."
"I don't like motorcycles. I want a wide seat and more comfort," said
Janice. "Daddy said that, perhaps, if things went well with him down
there in Mexico, I could have an auto runabout," and she sighed.
"Now, Miss Janice!" exclaimed the man, "don't you take on none. Mr.
Broxton Day'll come out all right. I remember him as a boy, and he was
jest as much diff'rent from Jason as chalk is from cheese! Yes,
sir-ree!"
This implied a compliment for her father, Janice knew, so she was
pleased. Walky Dexter meant well.
Little Miss Scattergood was Janice's greatest comfort during this time
of trial. She did not discuss the girl's trouble, but she showed her
sympathy in other ways. Old Mrs. Scattergood always wanted to discuss
the horrors of the Mexican War, whenever she caught sight of Janice,
which was not pleasant. So Miss 'Rill and Janice arranged to meet more
often at Hopewell Drugg's, and little Lottie received better care those
days than ever before.
Miss 'Rill was not a bad seamstress, and the two friends began to make
Lottie little frocks; and, as Hopewell only had to supply the material
out of the store, Lottie was more prettily dressed--and for less
money--than previously.
As Janice and the ex-schoolmistress sat sewing in the big Drugg kitchen,
Hopewell would often linger in the shed room with his violin, when there
were no customers, and play the few pieces he had, in all these years,
managed to "pick out" upon his father's old instrument. "Silver Threads
Among the Gold" was the favorite--especially with Lottie. She would
dance and clap her hands when she felt the vibration of certain minor
chords, and come running to the visitors and attract their attention to
the sounds that she could "hear."
"He-a! he-a! he-a!" she shouted in that shrill toneless voice of hers.
Janice noticed that she talked less than formerly. Gradually the power
of speech was going from her because of disuse. It is almost always so
with the very young who are deprived of hearing.
Such a pitiful, pitiful case! Sometimes Janice could not think of little
Lottie without weeping. It seemed so awful that merely a matter of
money--a few hundred dollars--should keep this child from obtaining the
surgical help and the training that might aid her to become a happy,
normal girl.
It was from Mr. Middler--rather, through a certain conversation with the
minister--that Janice received the greatest help during these weeks when
her father's fate remained uncertain.
She could not spend all her time at Hopewell Drugg's, or with Walky
Dexter, or even about the old Day house. Autumn had come, and the
mornings were frosty. The woods were aflame with the sapless leaves. Ice
skimmed the quiet pools before the late-rising sun kissed them.
Janice had sometimes met the minister when she tramped over the
hillside--and especially up toward the Shower Bath in Jason Day's wood
lot. One glowing, warm October afternoon the girl and the gentle little
parson met on the cow path through Mr. Day's upper pasture.
"Ah, my dear!" he said, shaking hands. "Where are you bound for?"
"I don't know whether I had better tell you, or not, sir," she returned,
smiling, yet with some gravity. "You see, I was going to get comfort."
"Comfort?"
"Yes, sir. You see, sometimes I get to thinking of--of Daddy so much
that the whole world seems just made up of _my_ trouble!" said Janice,
with a sob. "Do you know what I mean, sir? Just as though me and my
troubles were the most important things in existence--the _only_ things,
in fact."
"Ah--yes. I see--I see," whispered Mr. Middler, patting her shoulder,
but looking away from her tear-streaked face. "We are all that
way--sometimes, Janice. All that way."
"And then I go somewhere to get out of myself,--to--to get comfort."
"I see."
"And so I am going now to the place I call The Overlook. It's a great
rock up yonder. I scramble up on top of it, and from that place I can
see so much of the world that, by and by, I begin to realize just how
small I really am, and how small, in comparison, my troubles must be in
the whole great scheme of things. I begin to understand, then," she
added, softly, "that God has so much to 'tend to in the Universe that He
can't give me first chance _always_. I've got to wait my turn."
"Oh, but my dear!" murmured the doctrinarian. "I wouldn't limit the
power of the Almighty--even in my thoughts."
"No-o. But--but God does just seem more _human_ and close to me if I
think of Him as very busy--yet thoughtful and kind for us all.
Just--just like my Daddy, only on a bigger scale, Mr. Middler."
The minister looked at her gravely for a moment and then took her hand
again. "Suppose you show me that place of comfort?" he suggested,
quietly.
They went on together through the pasture and up into the wood lot. They
came out upon an unexpected opening in the wood, at the beginning of a
great gash in the hillside. At the center of this opening was a huge
boulder, surrounded by hazelnut bushes, to which the brown leaves still
clung.
"You can climb up easily from the back. Let me show you," said Janice,
who had by now got control of her tears, and was more like her smiling,
cheerful self.
She ran up the incline, sure-footed as a goat; but at the more difficult
place she gave the minister her hand. He was much more breathless than
she when they stood together upon the overhanging rock.
Below them was the steep, wooded hillside, and the broken pastures and
scattered houses north of Poketown, along the shore of the lake. This
spot was on the promontory that flanked the bay upon one side. From this
point it seemed that all of the great lake, with both its near and
distant shores, lay spread at their feet!
[Illustration: God's world _did_ look bigger and greater from The
Overlook. (See page 155.)]
In the northwest frowned the half-ruined fortress, so heroic a landmark
of pre-Revolutionary times. Nearer lay the wooded, rocky isle where a
celebrated Indian chief had made his last stand against the encroaching
whites. Yonder was the spot where certain of those bold pioneers and
fighters, the Green Mountain Boys, embarked under their famous leaders,
Allen and Warner, upon an expedition that historians will never cease to
write of.
It was a noble, as well as a beautiful, view. God's world _did_ look
bigger and greater from The Overlook. Sitting by her side, the minister
held the girl's hand, and listened to her artless expressions. She told
him quite frankly what all this view meant to her,--how it helped and
soothed her worried spirit, brought comfort to her grieving heart. Here
were many square miles of God's Footstool under her gaze; and there were
many, many thousands of other spots like this between her and the
Mexican mountains in which her father was held a prisoner. And God had
the same care over one bit of landscape as he did over another!
"Then," she said, softly, in conclusion, "then I just seem to grasp the
idea of God's _bigness_--and how much He has to do. I won't complain.
I'll wait. And meanwhile I'll do, if I can, what Daddy told me to."
"What is that, Janice?" asked the minister, still gazing out over the
vast outlook himself.
"I must _do something_,--keep to work, you know. Try and make things
better. You know: 'Each in his small corner.' And there's so much to be
done in Poketown!"
"So much--in Poketown?" ejaculated the minister, suddenly brought out of
his reverie.
"Yes, sir."
"But I thought Poketown was a particularly satisfactory place. There
really is very little to do here. We have a very clean political
government, remarkably so. Of course, that fact would not so much
interest you, Janice. But the life of the church is very
spiritual--very. We have no saloons; we seldom have an arrest----"
"Oh, I never thought of those things," admitted Janice. "There isn't
really anything for young people to do in the Poketown Church, I know.
But outside----"
"And what can be done outside?" asked the minister, and perhaps he
winced a little at the confidence in Janice's voice when she spoke of
the church system which kept the young people at a distance.
"Why, you know, there are the boys. Boys like Marty--my cousin. He goes
to school now, it's true; but he's down town just as much as ever at
night. And there's no good place for the boys to go--to congregate, I
mean."
"Humph! I thought once of opening the church basement to them," murmured
Mr. Middler. "But--but there was opposition. Some thought the boys might
take advantage of our good nature and be ill-behaved."
"So they continue to hang around the hotel sheds and the stores,"
pursued Janice, thoughtfully, without meaning to be critical. "Boys
_will_ get together in a club, or gang. Daddy used to say they were
naturally gregarious, like some birds."
"Yes," said the minister, slowly.
"They ought to have a nice, warm, well-lighted room where they could go,
and play games, and read,--with a circulating library attached. Of
course, a gymnasium would be too much to even _dream_ of, at first! Why!
wouldn't that be fine? And isn't it practical? _Do_ say it is!"
"I do not know whether it is practicable or not, Janice," said the
minister, slowly, yet smiling at her. "But the thought is inspired. You
shall have all the help I can give you. It _ought_ to be in the
church----"
"No. That would scare the boys away," interposed Janice, with finality.
"Why, my dear? You speak as though the church was a bogey!"
"Well--but--dear Mr. Middler! Just ask the boys themselves. How many of
them love to go to church--even to Sunday School? I mean the boys that
hang about the village stores at night."
"It is so--it is so," he admitted, with a sigh.
From this sprang the idea of the Poketown Free Library. It was of slow
growth, and there is much more to be said about it; but Janice found her
personal troubles much easier to bear when she began trying to interest
the people of Poketown in the reading-room idea.
And didn't Mr. Middler bear something of his own away from that visit to
The Overlook--something that glowed in his heart? He preached quite a
different kind of a sermon that next Sunday, and the text was one of the
most helpful and _living_ in all the New Testament.
Some of the older members of his congregation shook their heads over it.
It was not "strong meat," they said; there was nothing to argue about!
But a dozen troubled, needy members who heard the sermon, felt new hope
in their hearts, and they got through the following week--trials and
all!--much easier than usual.
CHAPTER XVI
"SHOWING" THE ELDER
No millionaire library-giver had found Poketown on the map. Or else, the
hard-headed and tight-fisted voters of that Green Mountain community
were too sharp to allow anybody to foist upon them a granite mausoleum,
the upkeep of which would mainly advertise the name of the donor.
The Union Sunday School had a library; but its list of volumes was open
to the same objections as are raised to many other institutions of its
kind. Nor was a circulating library so much needed in Poketown as a
reading and recreation room for the youth of the village.
Aside from her brief talk with Mr. Middler, Janice Day advised with no
adult at first as to how the establishment of the needed institution
should be brought about.
The girl had studied Marty, if she had had little opportunity of
becoming acquainted with other specimens of the genus _boy_. She knew
they were as bridle-shy as wild colts.
The idea of the club-room for reading and games must seem to come from
the boys themselves. It must appear that they accepted adult aid
perforce, but with the distinct understanding that the room was _theirs_
and that there was not to be too much oversight or control by the
supporting members of the institution.
The scheme was not at all original with Janice. The nucleus of many a
successful free library and village club has been a similar idea.
"Marty, why don't you and your chums have a place of your own where you
can read and play checkers these cold nights? I hear Josiah Pringle has
chased you out of his shop again."
"Ya-as--mean old hunks!"
"But didn't somebody spoil a whole nest of whips for him by pouring
liquid glue over the snappers?"
"Well! that was only one feller. An' Pringle put us all out," complained
the boy, but grinning, too.
"You wouldn't have let that boy do such a thing in your own
club-room--now, would you?"
"Huh! how'd we ever git a club-room, Janice? We had Poley Haskin's
father's barn one't; but when we tried to heat it with a three-legged
cookstove, Poley's old man put us out in a hurry."
"Oh, I mean a real _nice_ place," said the wily Janice. "Not a place to
smoke those nasty cigarettes in, and carry on; but a real reading-room,
with books, and papers, and games, and all that."
"Oh, that would be fine! But where'd we get that kind of a place in
Poketown?" queried Marty.
That was the start of it.
There was an empty store on High Street next to the drug store. It was a
big room which could be easily heated by a pot stove and a few lengths
of stovepipe. It was owned by the drug-store man, and had been empty a
long time. He asked six dollars a month rent for it.
It was just about this time that Janice learned she possessed powers of
persuasive eloquence. The druggist was the first person she "tackled" in
her campaign.
"It's a secret, Mr. Massey," she told him; "but some of the boys want a
reading-room, and some of the rest of us are anxious to help them get
it. Only it mustn't be talked of at first, or it will be all spoiled.
You know how 'fraid boys are that there is going to be a trap set for
them."
"Ain't that so?" chuckled the druggist.
"And we want your empty room next door."
"Wa-al--I dunno!" returned the man, finding the matter suddenly serious,
when it was brought so close home to him.
"Of course, we expect to pay for it. Only we'd like to have you cut the
rent in two for the first three months," said Janice, quickly.
"Say! that might be all right," the druggist observed, more briskly.
"But I don't know about all these harum-scarums collecting around this
corner. I have been glad heretofore that they have hung around
Pringle's, or Joe Henderson's, or the hotel, instead of up here. They've
been up to all sorts of mischief."
"If they don't behave reasonably they'll lose the reading-room. Of
course that will be understood," said Janice.
"You can't trust some of 'em," growled the druggist. "Never!"
"We'll make those who want the reading-room make the mischievous ones
behave," laughed Janice.
"Well," agreed the druggist, "we'll try it. Three dollars a month for
three months; then six dollars. I can afford no more."
"So much for so much!" whispered Janice, when she came away from the
store. "At least, it's a beginning."
But it was a very small beginning, as she soon began to realize. She had
no money to give toward the project herself, and it was very hard to beg
from some people, even for a good cause.
There was needed at least one long table and two small ones, as well as
some sort of a desk for whoever had charge of the room; and shelves for
the books, and lamps, and a stove, and chairs, beside curtains at the
windows. These simple furnishings would do to begin with. But how to
get any, or all, of these was the problem.
Janice went to several people able to help in the project, before she
said anything more to Marty. Some of these people encouraged her; some
shook their heads pessimistically over the idea.
She wished Elder Concannon to agree to pay the rent of the room for the
first three months. It would be but nine dollars, and the old gentleman
could easily do it. Since closing his pastorate of the Union Church,
years before, Mr. Concannon had become (for Poketown) a rich man. He had
invested a small legacy received about that time in abandoned marble
quarries and sugar-maple orchards. Both quarries and orchards had taken
on a new lease of life, and had enriched the shrewd old minister.
But Elder Concannon let go of a dollar no more easily now than when he
had been dependent upon a four-hundred-dollar salary and a donation
party twice a year.
It was not altogether parsimony that made the old gentleman "hem and
haw" over Janice Day's proposal. Naturally, an innovation of any kind
would have made him shy, but especially one calculated to yield any
pleasure to the boys of Poketown.
"I don't dispute but you may mean all right, Miss Day," he said, shaking
his bristling head at her. "But there's no good in those young
scamps--no good at all. You would waste your time trying to benefit
them. They would turn your reading-room into a bear garden."
"You do not _know_ that, sir," said Janice, boldly. "Let us try them."
"You are very young, Miss Day," said the Elder, stiffly. "You should
yield more easily to the opinions of your elders."
"Why?" demanded the girl, quickly, but smiling. "We young ones have got
to learn through our own experiences, haven't we? When _you_ were young,
sir, you had to learn at first hand--isn't that so? You would not accept
the opinions of the older men as infallible. Now, did you, sir?"
The Elder was a bit staggered; but he was honest.
"Ahem!" he said. "For that very reason I desire to have you accept my
advice, young lady. It will save you much trouble and heartache. These
boys need a stronger hand than yours----"
"Oh, my goodness!" gasped Janice. "_I_ wouldn't undertake to have
anything to do with governing them--no, indeed! I thought of speaking to
Mr. Haley--if I could interest him in the project--and get him to keep
an eye on the reading-room at night. But the boys will have to
understand that they can only have the benefits of the place as long as
they are on their good behavior."
"Ahem!" coughed the Elder again. "Mr. Haley is a very bright young
man--an especially good Latin scholar. But I fancy he finds the boys
quite enough to handle during the daytime, without having the care of
them at night. And--to be frank--I do not approve of the idea at all."
"Then--then you positively will not help us?" asked Janice,
disappointedly.
"You have not proved your case--to _my_ mind--Miss Day," said the old
gentleman, sternly. "It is not a feasible plan that you suggest. The
young rascals would make the place a regular nuisance. They would be
worse than they already are--and that is saying a good deal."
"I am sorry you think that, sir," returned Janice, quietly. "I think
better of them than you do. I believe the boys will appreciate such a
place and--if I can find enough people to help--I hope to see the
reading-room established."
"I disapprove, Miss--I disapprove!" declared Elder Concannon, almost
angrily, for he was not used to being crossed, especially in any
semi-public matter like this. "You will find, too, that my opinion is
the right one. Good-day, Miss. I am sorry to find one so young
impervious to the advice of her elders."
"I'll just _show_ him! That's what I'll do--I'll _show_ him!" was the
determination of the girl from Greensboro. "And I don't believe Poketown
boys are much worse than any other boys--if they only have half a
chance."
Fortunately all those to whom Janice went in her secret canvass were not
like the opinionated old minister. Several subscribed money, and
insisted upon paying their subscription over to her at once so that she
might have a "working fund." Janice set aside three dollars for the
first month's rent of the store and with the remainder purchased a
second-hand table, some plain kitchen chairs, and some lumber. She began
to use this subscribed money with some little trepidation, for--suppose
her scheme fell through, after all?
She got her uncle to agree to the needed carpenter's work; a painter
gave her a brush and sufficient wood-stain to freshen up all the
woodwork of the store. Miss 'Rill came and helped her clean the place
and kalsomine the walls and ceiling. A storekeeper gave her enough
enameled oilcloth to cover neatly the long table. Hopewell Drugg
furnished bracket lamps, and gave her the benefit of the wholesale
discount on a hanging lamp and reflector to light the reading-table.
Walky Dexter did what carting was needed. Janice and her aunt made the
curtains themselves, and they put them up so as to keep out the prying
eyes of all Poketown, for the community now began to wonder what was
going on in the empty room next the drug store. As Walky had been bound
to secrecy, too, the curious had no means of learning what was going on.
It was just as though the printing office of a thriving town newspaper
had burned down and there was no means of disseminating the news. This
was the effect of the muzzle on Walky Dexter!
It was at this point that Janice took Marty, and through him, the other
boys, into the scheme.
"What would you boys each pay in dues to keep up a nice reading-room
such as we talked about, Marty?" she asked her cousin.
"Aw, say!" grunted Marty. "Let's talk about the treasure chest we've
found in our back yard. _That_ sounds more sensible."
"Wouldn't you be glad of such a place?" laughed Janice.
"Say! would a duck swim?" growled the boy, thinking that she was teasing
him. "Bring on your old reading-room, and we'll show ye."
That very afternoon she and Miss 'Rill had given the last touches to the
room. It was as neat as a pin; the lamps were all filled and the
chimneys polished. It was only a bare room, it was true; but there were
possibilities in it, Janice was sure, that would appeal to Marty. She
put on her hat and held her coat out for him to help her into.
"I'm going down town with you to-night, Marty," she said, smiling. "I've
got something to show you."
"Huh! What's it all about?"
"You come along and see," she told him. "It's just the finest thing that
ever happened--and you'll say so, too, I know."
But she refused to explain further until they turned up High Street and
stopped at the dark and long-empty shop beside the drug store.
"Oh, gee! In Massey's store?" gasped Marty, when his cousin fitted a key
to the lock.
"Come in and shut the door. Now stand right where you are while I light
the lamp," commanded Janice.
She lit the hanging lamp over the table. The soft glow of it was soon
flung down upon the dull brown cloth. Marty stared around with mouth
agape.
His father had built a sort of counter at one end, with a desk and
shelves behind it. Of course, there was not a book, or paper, in the
place as yet--nor a game. But Marty needed no explanation.
"Janice Day! did you do all this?" he demanded, with a gasp.
"Of course not, goosey! Lots of people helped. And they're going to help
more--if you boys show yourselves appreciative."
"What's that 'appreciative' mean?" demanded Marty, suspiciously.
"No fights here; no games that are so boisterous as to disturb those who
want to read. Just gentlemanly behavior while you are in the room.
That's all, besides a small tax each month to help toward the upkeep of
the room. What do you say, Marty?"
"You done this!" declared the boy, with sudden heat. "Don't say you
didn't, for that'll be a lie. I never saw a girl like you, Janice!"
"Why--why--Don't you like it?" queried Janice, disturbed.
"Of course I do! It's bully! It's great!" exclaimed Marty. "Lemme show
it to the boys. They'll be crazy about it. And if they don't behave
it'll be because they're too big for me to lick," concluded Marty,
nodding his head emphatically.
Janice burst out laughing at this, and pressed the key into his hand.
"Until we get organized properly, you will take charge of the room,
won't you, Marty?"
"Sure I will."
"You'll need a stove; I think I can get that for you in a day or two.
And lots of folks have promised books. I've written to friends in
Greensboro for books, too. And several people who take magazines and
papers regularly have promised to hand them over to the reading-room
just as soon as they have read them. And you boys can bring your
checkers, and dominoes, and other games, from home, eh?"
Marty was scarcely listening; but he was looking at her with more
seriousness than his plain face usually betrayed.
"Janice, you're almost as good as a boy yourself!" he declared. "I'm not
sorry a bit that you came to Poketown."
Janice only laughed at him again; yet the boy's awkward earnestness
warmed her heart.
The girl was finding in these busy days the truest balm for her own
worriments. Nothing more was heard of Mr. Broxton Day; yet Janice felt
less need of running alone into the woods and fields to find that
comfort about which she had told the minister.
Besides, it soon grew too cold for frequent jaunts afield. The small
streams and pools were icebound. Then, over the fir-covered heights,
sifted the first snow of winter, and Poketown seemed suddenly tucked
under a coverlet of white.
The reading-room was an established fact. An association to support it
was formed, divided into active and honorary members. The boys, as
active members, themselves contributed twenty-five cents per month each,
towards its support. Tables for games were set up. A goodly number of
books appeared on the shelves. From Greensboro a huge packing-case of
half-worn books was sent; Janice's friends at home had responded
liberally.
Files of daily and weekly papers were established and magazines of the
more popular kind were subscribed for. Nelson Haley gave several
evenings each week to work as librarian, and to keep a general
oversight of the boys. To tell the truth, he did this more because
Janice asked him to than from personal interest in the institution; but
he did it.
Slowly the more pessimistic of the townspeople began to show interest in
the reading-room. Mr. Middler openly expressed his approval of the
institution. Mr. Massey, the druggist, reported that the boys behaved
themselves "beyond belief!"
At length, even old Elder Concannon appeared unexpectedly in the
reading-room one night to see what was going on. He came to criticise
and remained to play a game of "draughts," as he called them, with Marty
Day himself!
"Them young scalawags, Elder," declared Massey, when the old gentleman
dropped into the drug store afterward. "Them young scalawags are
certainly surprising _me_. They behaved themselves more like human
bein's than I ever knowed 'em to before. An' it's a nice, neat, warm
room, too, ain't it, now?"
"Ahem! It appears to be," admitted Elder Concannon, and not so
grudgingly as might have been expected. "But where's that young girl who
had so much to do with it at first--where's that Day girl?"
"Why, pshaw, Elder! _she_ don't have nothing to do with the
reading-room," and the druggist's eyes twinkled. "Don't you know that
she only _starts_ things in this town? She sets folks up in the business
of 'doing for themselves'. Then she goes along about her own business.
"What's _that_? Well, I dunno. I'm wonderin' myself just where she'll
break out next!"
CHAPTER XVII
CHRISTMAS NEWS
It bade fair to be an old-fashioned northern New England winter. Janice
Day had never seen anything like this in the prairie country from which
she had come.
There three or four big storms, the traces of which soon melted, had
been considered a "hard" winter. Here in Poketown the hillside was made
white before Thanksgiving, and then one snow after another sifted down
upon the mountains. Tree branches in the forest broke under the weight
of snow. Sometimes she lay awake in the night and heard the frost burst
great trees as though a stick of dynamite had been set off inside them.
The lake ice became so thick that the steamboat could no longer make her
trips. Walky Dexter became mail carrier and brought the mail from
Middletown every other day.
Janice found the time not at all tedious in its flight. There really was
so much to do!
As for real _fun_--winter sports had been little more than a name to the
girl from the Middle West before this winter. The boys had got their
bob-sleds out before Thanksgiving. Toboggans were not popular in
Poketown, for the coasting-places were too rough. At first Janice was
really afraid to join the hilarious parties of boys and girls on some of
the slides.
Marty, however, owned a big sled, and she did not want her cousin to
lose his good opinion of her. He had declared that she was almost as
good as a boy, and Janice successfully hid from him her fear of the
sport that really is a royal one.
A favorite slide of the Poketown young people was from the head of the
street on which Hopewell Drugg's store was located, down the hill, past
the decayed dock on which Janice had first seen little Lottie Drugg, and
on across the frozen inlet to the wooded point in which Lottie declared
the echo dwelt.
When the whole lake froze solidly, the course of the sleds was continued
across its level surface as far as the momentum from the hill would
carry the bobs. There was skating here, too; and many were the moonlight
nights on which a regular carnival was held at the foot of these hilly
streets.
Walky Dexter owned a great sledge, too, and when he attached two span of
horses to this, and the roads were even half broken, he could drive
parties of Poketown young people all over the county, on moonlight
sleigh-rides. Janice was invited to go on several of these, and she did
so. Her heart was not always attuned to the hilarity of her companions;
but she did not allow herself to become morose, or sad, in public.
Yet the gnawing worriment about her father was in her mind continually.
It was an effort for her to be lively and cheerful when the fate of Mr.
Broxton Day was so uncertain.
Her more thoughtful comrades realized the girl's secret feelings. She
was treated with more consideration by the rough boys who were Marty's
mates, than were the other girls.
"Say, that Janice girl is all right!" one rough fellow said to Marty
Day. "I see her scouring the papers in the readin'-room the other night,
and she was lookin' for some news of her father, of course."
"I reckon so," Marty answered. "We don't know nothing about what's
become of him. They stand 'em up against a wall down there in Mexico and
shoot 'em just for fun--so Walky Dexter says. Dad says he never expects
to hear of Uncle Brocky alive ag'in."
"And yet that girl keeps up her pluck! She's all right," declared the
other. "Gee! suppose she should come smack upon the story of her
father's death some night there in the readin'-room? Wouldn't that be
tough?"
From this conversation sprang the idea of a sort of Brotherhood of
Defense (in lieu of a better title) among the boys who used the
reading-room whose existence Janice Day's initiative had established.
Whoever got the papers from the mail and spread them on the file in the
reading-room, first examined the columns carefully for any mention of
the execution of prisoners by either belligerent party in Mexico;
especially was the news searched for any mention of the lost Mr. Day.
Sometimes, when the news story suggested one of these horrible
executions, the whole paper was "lost in the mail." At least, when it
was inquired for, that was the stock reply. The boys made sure that
Janice should never see such blood-chilling accounts of Mexican
activities.
It drew toward Christmas. Janice had another sorrow, of which she never
said a word. Her spending money was nearly gone. She saw the bottom of
her narrow purse just as the season of giving approached!
There were so many things she wanted to do for all her friends, both in
Poketown and back at Greensboro. Some few little things she had made,
for her fingers were both nimble and dexterous. But "homemade" presents
would not do for Uncle Jason, Aunt 'Mira, Marty, and a dozen other
people towards whom she felt kindly.
She had begun to worry, too, about what would finally happen to her if
her father never came back! How long would the bank continue to pay her
board to Uncle Jason? And how was she to get clothes, and other
necessary things?
In the midst of these mental tribulations came a letter from the
Greensboro bank, addressed to Janice herself. In it was the cashier's
check for twenty-five dollars, and a brief note from the official
himself, stating that Mr. Day, before ever he had separated from his
daughter, had looked forward to her Christmas shopping and instructed
the bank to send on the fifteenth of December this sum for her personal
use.
"Dear, dear Daddy! He forgot nothing," sobbed Janice, when she read this
note, and kissed the check which seemed to have come warm from her
father's hand. "Whatever shall I do all through my life long without
him, if he never comes back?"
Christmas Eve came. The clouds had been gathering above the higher peaks
of the Green Mountains all day, and, as evening dropped, the snow began
falling.
Janice and Marty went down town together after supper. Even Poketown
showed some special light and life at this season. Dusty store windows
were rejuvenated; candles, and trees, and tinsel, and wreathes blossomed
all along High Street. Janice was proud to know that the brightest
windows, and the most tastefully dressed, were Hopewell Drugg's. And in
the middle of the biggest window of Drugg's store was a beautiful wax
doll, which she and Miss 'Rill had themselves dressed. On Christmas
morning that doll was to be found by Lottie Drugg, fast asleep with its
head on the blind child's own pillow!
Janice had to run around just to take a last peek at the window and the
doll, while Marty went to the post office for the evening mail. Papers
and magazines were due in that mail for the reading-room; and, despite
the fact that the snow was falling more heavily every minute, there
would be some of the "regulars" in the reading-room, glad to see the
papers.
Janice had turned her own subscription for the New York daily over to
the reading-room association; and when she wanted to read the New York
paper herself, she went to the files to look at it. Weeks had passed now
since there had been anything printed about that district in Chihuahua
where her father's mine was located.
Coming back, down the hill from Drugg's, Janice saw that Marty had not
gone at once into the reading-room and lit the lamps. Her cousin was
standing in the light of the drug-store window, a bundle of papers and
magazines under his arm, and one paper spread before his eyes. He seemed
to be reading eagerly.
"Hey, Marty! come on in and read! It's awful cold out here!" she shouted
to him, shaking the latch of the reading-room door with her mittened
hand.
Marty, roused, looked up guiltily, and thrust the quickly folded paper
into the breast of his jacket. "Aw, I'm comin'," he said.
But when he came to open the door Janice noticed that he seemed to
fumble the key greatly, and he kept his face turned from her gaze.
"What's the matter, Marty?" she asked, lightly.
"Matter? Ain't nothin' the matter," grunted the boy.
"Why, Marty! you're crying!" gasped Janice, suddenly.
"Ain't neither!" growled the boy, wiping his rough coat sleeve across
his eyes. "Snow's blowed in 'em."
"That's more than snow, Marty," was Janice's confident remark.
"Huh!" snorted Marty. "Girls allus know so much!"
He seemed to have suddenly acquired "a grouch." So Janice went cheerily
about the room, singing softly to herself, and lighting the lamps.
Nobody else had arrived, for it was still early in the evening.
Marty stole softly to the stove. The fire had been banked, and the room
was quite chilly. He rattled the dampers, opened them, and then, with a
side glance at his cousin, pulled the paper from within the breast of
his jacket and thrust it in upon the black coals before he closed the
stove door.
"Where's the New York paper, Marty?" Janice was asking, as she arranged
the Montpelier and the Albany papers on their files.
"Didn't come," grunted Marty, and picked up the empty coal hod. "I got
to git some coal," he added, and dashed outside into the snow.
Instantly the girl hastened across the room. She jerked the stove door
open. There lay the folded paper, just beginning to brown in the heat of
the generating gas. She snatched it from the fire and, hearing the outer
door opened again, thrust the paper inside her blouse.
It wasn't Marty, but was one of the other boys. She did not understand
why her cousin should have told her an untruth about the New York paper.
But she did not want an open rupture with him here and now--and before
other people.
"I'm going right home," she said to Marty, when he came back with the
replenished coal hod. "It's snowing real hard."
"Sure. There won't be many of the fellows around to-night, anyway. Peter
here will stay all evening and lock up--if Mr. Haley don't come. Won't
you, Pete?"
"Sure," was the reply.
"Then I'll go along with you," declared Marty, who wasn't half as
ashamed to escort a girl on the street nowadays as he had been a few
months before.
Now, Janice had intended running over to Hopewell Drugg's store and
looking at the paper Marty had tried to destroy. She did not for a
moment suspect what was in it, or why her cousin had told her a
falsehood about it. But she saw she would have to defer the examination
of the news-sheet.
"All right. Come along, Marty," she agreed, with assumed carelessness.
The boy was very moody. He stole glances at her only when he thought she
was not looking. Never had Janice seen the hobbledehoy act so strangely!
They plowed through the increasing snow up Hillside Avenue, and the snow
fell so rapidly that the girl was really glad she had come home. She
entered first, Marty staying out on the porch a long time, stamping and
scraping his boots.
When he came in he still had nothing to say. He pulled his seat to the
far side of the glowing stove and sat there, hands in his pockets and
chin on his breast.
"What's the matter with you, Marty?" shrilled Mrs. Day. "You ain't sick,
be ye?"
"Nop," growled her son.
That was about all they could get out of him--monosyllables--until
Janice retired to her own room. The girl was so anxious to get upstairs
and look at that paper she had recovered from the reading-room fire,
that she went early. When she had bidden the others good night and
mounted to her room, however, she did something she had never done
before. She unlatched her door again softly and tiptoed out to the
landing at the top of the stairs, to listen.
Marty had suddenly come to life. She heard his voice, low and tense,
dominating the other voices in the kitchen. She could not hear a word he
said, but suddenly Aunt 'Mira broke out with: "Oh! my soul and body,
Marty! It ain't so--don't _say_ it's so!"
"Be still, 'Mira," commanded Uncle Jason's quaking voice. "Let the boy
tell it."
She heard nothing more but the murmur of her cousin's voice and her
aunt's soft crying. Janice stole back into her cold room. She shook
terribly, but not with the chill of the frosty air.
Her trembling fingers found a match and ignited the wick of the skeleton
lamp. She had, ere this, manufactured a pretty paper shade for it, and
this threw the stronger radiance of the light upon a round spot on the
bureau. She drew out the scorched paper and unfolded it in that light.
She did not have to search long. The article she feared to see was upon
the first page of the paper. The black headlines were so plain that she
scanned them at a single glance:
THE BANDIT, RAPHELE, AT WORK
A Fugitive's Story of the Christmas-Week Execution in
Granadas District
TWO AMERICANS DRAW LOTS FOR LIFE
John Makepiece Tells His Story in Cida; His Fellow-Prisoner,
Broxton Day, Fills One of Raphele's "Christmas Graves"
CHAPTER XVIII
"THE FLY-BY-NIGHT"
Janice Day could never have told how long she sat there, elbows on the
bureau, eyes glued to those black lines on the newspaper page. The heat
of the tall oil lamp almost scorched her face; but her back was
freezing. There was never anything invented--not even a cold storage
plant--as cold as the ordinary New England farmhouse bedchamber!
But the girl felt neither the lamp's heat, nor the deadly chill of the
room. For a long time she could not even read beyond the mere headlines
of the article telegraphed from Cida.
This seemed to be conclusive. It was the end of all hope for Janice--or,
so she then believed. There seemed not a single chance that her father
could have escaped. No news had been good news, after all. This story in
the paper was all too evil--all too certainly evil!
By and by she managed to concentrate her numbed mind upon the story
itself. There is no need to repeat it here in full; when Janice had
read it twice she could not easily forget its most unimportant phrase.
The man, John Makepiece, with Broxton Day, of Granadas district, had
been held "incommunicado" for months by the bandit, Raphele. This leader
had fought with his _commando_ for the Constitutionalists at the battle
of Granadas; but he was really an outlaw and cutthroat, and many of his
followers were brigands like him.
The prisoners had been held for ransom. Several of the Mexican captives
of Raphele had managed to pay their way out of the villain's clutches;
but both Americans refused to apply to their friends for ransom. Indeed,
they did not trust to Raphele's protestations, believing that if any
money at all for their release was forthcoming, it would only whet the
villain's cupidity and cause Raphele to make larger demands.
Raphele feared now to remain longer in that part of Chihuahua. His
unlawful acts had called down upon his head the serious strictures of
the Constitutionalist leaders. They were about to abolish his command.
In his rage and bloodthirstiness he had declared his intention of either
destroying his remaining prisoners, or sending them to their homes
crippled. But the two Americans he treated differently. With fiendish
delight in seeing those two brave men suffer, he had commanded them to
cast lots to see which should be escorted beyond the lines, while the
other was marched to the edge of an open grave, there to find a sure and
sudden end under the rain of bullets from a "firing squad."
John Makepiece had drawn the long straw. There was no help for it. He
rode away on a sorry nag that was given him, and from a distant height
saw the other American marched out to the place of burial, and even
waited to see the puff of smoke from the guns as the soldiers fired at
the doomed man.
The details were horrible. The effect upon Janice was a most unhappy
one. For more than an hour she sat there before her bureau in the cold
room, her gaze fastened upon the story in the newspaper.
Then the family came up to bed. Aunt 'Mira saw the light under the
girl's door.
"Janice! Janice!" she whispered. "Whatever is the matter with you?"
Aunt 'Mira had been crying and her voice was still husky. When she
pushed open the door a little way and saw the girl, she gasped out in
alarm.
"Oh, my dear!" sobbed Aunt 'Mira. "_Do you know?_"
Janice could not then speak. She pointed to the paper, and when Aunt
'Mira folded her in her arms, the girl burst into tears--tears that
relieved her overcharged heart.
"You run down an' open up the drafts of that stove again, Jason,"
exclaimed the fleshy lady, for once taking command of affairs. "This
child's got a chill. She's got ter have suthin' hot, or she'll be sick
on our hands--poor dear! She's been a-settin' here readin' all that
stuff Marty told us was in the paper--I do believe. Ain't that so,
child?"
Janice, sobbing on her broad bosom, intimated that it was a fact.
"That boy ain't no good. He didn't burn up the paper at all. She got
holt on it," declared Uncle Jason, quite angry.
"Oh, it wasn't--wasn't Marty's fault," sobbed Janice. "And I had to
know! I had to know!"
They got her downstairs, and Mrs. Day sent "the men folks" to bed. She
insisted upon putting Janice's feet into a mustard-water bath, and made
her swallow fully a pint of steaming hot "composition." Two hours later
Janice was able to go to bed, and, because she hoped against hope, and
was determined not to believe the story until it was thoroughly
confirmed, she fell immediately into a dreamless sleep.
When she awoke on Christmas morning, it was with a full and clear
knowledge of what had happened, and a pang of desolation and grief such
as had swept over her the night before. But she set herself to hope as
long as she could, and to suppress any untoward exhibition of her sorrow
and pain, while she made every effort to find out the truth about her
father.
The family was very gentle with the heartsick girl. Even Marty showed by
his manner that he sympathized with her. And she could not forget that
he had tried his very best to keep the knowledge of the awful crime from
her.
Janice brought down with her to the breakfast table the little presents
which she had prepared for her uncle, and aunt, and cousin. There were
no boisterous "Merry Christmases" in the old Day house that morning;
even Uncle Jason wiped his eyes after saying grace at the breakfast
table.
After all, Janice was the most self-controlled of the four. She said,
midway of the meal:
"I cannot believe all of that dreadful story in the paper. I want to
know more of the particulars."
"Oh, hush! hush!" begged her aunt. "I read it. It's too horrible! I
wouldn't want to know any more, child."
"But I must _know_ more--if there's more to be known. I believe I can
telegraph to Cida. At least, Mr. Buchanan at Juarez may know something
more about this man's story. I wish there was either telegraph, or
telephone, in Poketown."
"Gee, Janice!" exclaimed Marty. "Nobody could git over to Middletown
to-day. Not even Walky Dexter. The wind blowed great guns last night,
and the roads are full of drifts."
"But it doesn't look so from my window," said his cousin.
"Pshaw! all you can see is the lake. Snow blowed right across the ice,
an' never scarcely touched it. But there's heaps and heaps in the road.
Say! we got ter dig out Hillside Avenue--ain't we, Dad?"
"A lot of snow fell in the night--that's a fact," admitted Uncle Jason.
"But I see somebody coming up the street now," cried Janice, jumping up
eagerly from the table.
It was Walky Dexter, plowing his way through the drifts in hip boots.
"This is sure a white Christmas!" he bawled from the gate. "I got
suthin' for you, Janice. Hi tunket! can't git through this here gate, so
I'll climb over it. Wal, Janice, a Merry Christmas to ye!" he added, as
he stumped up upon the porch, and handed her a little package from Miss
'Rill.
"I am afraid not a very merry one, Walky," said the girl, shaking his
mittened hand. "Come inside by the fire. Uncle Jason, where is that
paper? I want Mr. Dexter to read it."
"Oh, dear, me!" murmured Walky, when he saw the heading of the Mexican
telegraph despatch. Then, with his fur cap cocked over one ear, and his
boots steaming on the stove hearth, he read the story through. "Oh,
dear, me!" he said again.
"I want you to try to get me to Middletown, Walky," Janice said, with a
little catch in her voice. "Right away."
"Mercy on us, child! a day like this?" gasped her aunt.
"Why, the storm's over," said Janice, firmly. "And I must send some
telegrams and get answers. Oh, I must! I must!"
"Hoity-toity, Miss Janice!" broke in Walky. "'Must' is a hard driver, I
know. But I tell ye, we couldn't win through the drif's. Why, I been as
slow as a toad funeral gettin' up here from High Street. The ox teams
won't be out breakin' the paths before noon, and they won't get out of
town before to-morrer, that's sure, Miss."
"Oh, my dear!" cried her aunt, again. "You mustn't think of doing such a
thing. Wait."
"I _can't_ wait," declared Janice, with pallid face and trembling lip,
but her hazel eyes dry and hard. "I tell you I must know _more_."
"I can't take ye to Middletown, Janice. Not till the roads is broke,"
Walky said, firmly, shaking his head.
"Hi! here comes somebody else up the road," shouted Marty, from outside.
Janice ran, hoping to see a team. It was only a single figure struggling
through the snow.
"By jinks!" exclaimed Marty. "It's the teacher."
"It _is_ Mr. Haley," murmured Janice.
The young collegian, well dressed for winter weather, waved his hand
when he saw them, and struggled on. He carried a long parcel and when he
went through the more than waist-high drifts he held this high above his
head.
"Hi, there!" yelled Marty, waving his mittened hands. "Ain't you lost
over here, Mr. Haley?"
"I see somebody has been before me," laughed Nelson Haley, following
Walky Dexter's tracks over the fence and up to the cleared porch. "How
do you do, Miss Janice? A very happy Christmas to you!"
"Thank you for your good wish, Mr. Haley," she replied, soberly. "But it
is not going to be a very glad Christmas for me, I fear. Oh! is it for
_me_?" for he had thrust the long pasteboard box into her arms.
"If you will accept them, Miss Janice," returned the young man, with a
bow.
"Open it, Janice!" exclaimed Marty. "Let's see."
"I--I----"
"Lemme do it for you," cried Marty, the curious.
He broke the string, yanked off the paper, and Janice herself lifted the
cover. A great breath of spicy odor rushed out at her from the box.
"Oh! Mr. Haley! Cut flowers! _Hothouse flowers!_ Wherever did you get
them?" cried Janice, drawing aside the tissue paper and burying her face
in the fragrant, dewy blossoms.
"Aw--flowers! Huh!" grunted Marty, in disappointment.
"I am glad you like them so," said Nelson Haley. "Marty, I didn't bring
them to _you_. But here is something that will please you better, I
know," and he put into the boy's hand a combination pocketknife that
would have delighted any out-of-door youth. "Only you must give me a
penny for it. I don't believe in giving sharp-edged presents to friends.
It cuts friendship, they say," and the collegian laughed.
"Golly! that's a dandy!" acknowledged Marty. "Here's your cent. Thanks!
See what Mr. Haley gimme, Maw!" and he rushed into the house to display
his treasure.
Haley and Janice were left alone in a sheltered corner of the porch.
"Oh, Mr. Haley," the girl repeated. "How lovely they are! And how kind
of you to get them for me! How did you ever secure such fresh cut
flowers 'way up here? Nobody has a hothouse in Poketown."
"They come from Colonel Van Dyne's place at the Landing."
"'Way down there!" exclaimed Janice, in wonder. "Why, it's farther than
Middletown. That's where I took the boat to get here?"
"I guess so, Miss Janice."
"But--but the boats aren't running," she cried, in amazement. "And
these flowers are so fresh."
"_My_ boat is running," and Haley laughed. "I brought them up for you
yesterday afternoon. Got in just before it began to snow hard."
"Mr. Haley! The lake is frozen solidly!"
"Sure," he laughed. "But my boat sails on the ice. Didn't you hear that
I had built the _Fly-by-Night_? It's an ice boat--and it's a dandy! I
hope to take you out in it----"
"An ice boat?" cried Janice. "Oh! you can--you shall! You can take me to
the Landing. There is a telegraph office there, isn't there?"
"Why--why----Yes! At the railroad station," the young man admitted,
rather amazed.
Janice stepped up to him, with the pasteboard box of flowers in her
arms, and her eyes shining in expectation.
"Oh, Mr. Haley! You _must_ take me down there. Won't you?"
Marty ran out again, and heard what she said. "Where you goin'?" he
demanded. "Mr. Haley can't ice boat you to Middletown."
"To the Landing," begged Janice.
"By jinks! so he can," shouted the boy. "Lemme go, too, Mr. Haley.
You'll want somebody to 'tend sheet on the _Fly-by-Night_."
"But I do not understand?" queried the teacher, staring from one to the
other of the excited pair.
"You--you tell him, Marty!" said Janice, turning toward the door. "I
must put these beautiful flowers in water. Come in, Mr. Haley, and get
warm."
But the teacher remained out there on the windswept porch while he
listened to what Marty had to tell. The girl's trouble struck home to
the generous-hearted young man. He was moved deeply for her--especially
upon a day like this when, in the nature of things, all persons should
be joyous and glad.
"I will take you to the Landing, if the breeze holds fair," he declared
and he pooh-poohed Mrs. Day's fears that there was any danger in sailing
the ice boat. He had come up from the Landing himself the night before
in an hour and a half.
"What a dreadful, dreadful way to spend Christmas Day!" moaned Aunt
'Mira, as she helped Janice to dress. "Something's likely to happen to
that ice boat. I've seen 'em racing on the lake. Them folks jest take
their lives in their han's--that's right!"
"I'll make the boys take care," Janice promised.
Aunt 'Mira saw them go with fear and trembling, and immediately
ensconced herself in the window of Janice's room, with a shawl around
her shoulders, to watch the flight of the ice boat after it got under
way down at the dock.
Janice, and the teacher and Marty had fairly to wade to the shore of the
lake. The drifts were very deep on land; but, as Marty said, the wind
had swept the ice almost bare. Here and there a ridge of snow had formed
upon the glistening surface; but Mr. Haley made light of these
obstructions.
"The _Fly-by-Night_ will just go humming through those, Miss Janice.
Don't you fear," he said.
There were few people abroad in High Street, for it was not yet
mid-forenoon. Most who were out were busily engaged shoveling paths. The
three young folks got down to the dock, and Haley and Marty turned up
the heavy body of the ice boat and swept the snow off.
There was a good deal of a drift of snow right along the edge of the
lake; but they pushed the ice boat out beyond this windrow, with
Janice's help, and then stepped the mast and bent on the heavy sail. It
was a cross-T boat, with a short nose and a single sail. The steersman
had a box in the rear and in this there was room for Janice to ride,
too. The sheet-tender likewise ballasted the boat by lying out on one or
the other end of the crosspiece.
There was a keen wind, not exactly fair for the trip down the lake; yet
their sheet filled nicely on the longer tack, and the _Fly-by-Night_
swept out from the Poketown dock at a very satisfactory speed.
"We'll hit the Landing in two hours, at the longest, Miss Janice,"
declared Nelson Haley. "Keep your head down. This wind cuts like
needles. Too bad you haven't a mask of some kind."
He was wearing his motorcycle goggles, while Marty had one of those
plush caps, that pull down all around one's face so that nothing but the
eyes peer out, and was doing very well.
As the ice yacht gathered speed, Janice found that she could not face
the wind. Nor could she look ahead, for the sun was shining boldly now,
and the glare of it on the ice was all but blinding.
The timbers of the boat groaned and shook. The runners whined over the
ice with an ever-increasing note. Ice-dust rose in a thin cloud from the
sharp shoes, and the sunlight, in which the dust danced, flecked the
mist with dazzling, rainbow colors.
When the ice boat came about, it was with a leap and bound that seemed
almost to capsize the craft. Janice had never traveled so fast
before--or so she believed. It fairly took her breath, and she clung to
the hand-holds with all her strength.
"Hi, Janice!" yelled Marty, grinning from ear to ear. "How d'ye like it?
Gittin' scaret?"
She had to shake her head negatively and smile. But to tell the truth
there was an awful sinking in her heart, and when one runner went
suddenly over a hummock and tipped the ice boat, she could scarcely keep
from voicing her alarm.
CHAPTER XIX
CHRISTMAS, AFTER ALL!
Janice Day possessed more self-control than most girls of her age. She
would not, even when her heart was sick with apprehension because of the
story in the newspaper, give her cousin the opportunity of saying that
she showed the white feather.
She lay close to the beam of the ice boat, clung to the hand-holds, and
made no outcry as the craft flew off upon the other tack. Had the wind
been directly astern, the course of the _Fly-by-Night_ would have been
smoother. It was the terrific bounding, and the groaning of the timbers
while the boom swung over and the canvas slatted, that really frightened
the girl.
It seemed as though the mast must be wrenched out of the boat by the
force of the high wind filling the canvas. And the shrieking of the
runners! Janice realized that the passage of an ice boat made as much
noise as the flight of a fast train.
She could scarcely distinguish what Nelson Haley shouted at her, and he
was so near, too. He pointed ahead. She stooped to look under the boom
and saw a great windrow of snow--a huge drift more than six feet
high--not half a mile away.
This drift stretched, it seemed, from side to side of the lake. They
could not see what lay beyond it. Janice expected the others would drop
the sail and bring the ice boat to a halt. Some roughness in the ice, or
perhaps a narrow opening, had caught the first driven flakes of snow
here the night before. The snow had gathered rapidly when once a streak
of it lay across the lake. Deeper and deeper the drift had grown until
tons of the white crystals had been heaped here in what looked to Janice
to be an impassable barrier.
"Oh! Oh!" she shrieked. "Won't you stop?"
Nelson Haley smiled grimly and shook his head. Marty uttered a shriek of
exultation as the ice boat bore down upon the drift. _He_ was quite
speed-mad.
"Hang on! hang on!" commanded Nelson Haley.
Another moment and the frightened Janice saw the bow of the boat
rise--as it seemed--straight into the air. Amid the groaning of timbers
and the shrieking of the wind, the _Fly-by-Night_ shot up the steep
slant of the drift and over its crest!
The cry Janice tried to utter was frozen in her throat. She saw the ice
ahead and below them. Like a great bird--or a huge batfish leaping from
the sea--the ice boat shot out on a long curve from the summit of the
hard-packed snowdrift.
The shock of its return to the ice was terrific. Janice felt sure the
boat must be racked to bits.
But the _Fly-by-Night_ was strongly built. With the momentum secured by
its leap from the drift, it skated over the ice for a mile or more, with
scarcely a thimbleful of wind in its sail, yet traveling like a fast
express.
Then it answered the helm again, the wind filled the sail, and they bore
down upon the Landing on a direct tack.
"Gee! Ain't it great?" cried Marty, as Nelson Haley signaled him to drop
the sail. "Don't that beat any traveling you ever done, Janice?"
Janice faintly admitted that it did; but neither the boy nor Nelson
Haley realized what a trial the trip had been to the girl. Janice was
too proud to show the fear she felt; but she could scarcely stand when
the _Fly-by-Night_ finally stopped with its nose to the shore, just
beyond the steamboat dock.
Popham Landing was scarcely larger than Poketown; only there were
canning factories here, and the terminus of the narrow-gauge railroad on
which Janice had finished her rail journey from Greensboro the spring
before. So it was a livelier place than the village in which the girl
had been living for eight months.
Colonel Van Dyne, owner of one of the canning factories, had a fine home
on the heights overlooking the lake. It was with the colonel's gardener
and superintendent that Nelson Haley had an acquaintance, and through
that acquaintanceship had obtained the cut flowers from the colonel's
greenhouse.
When the three had hurried up the half-cleared landing to the railroad
station, Janice fairly staggering between her two companions, the office
was closed and nobody was about the railroad premises. It was a holiday,
and no more trains were expected at the Landing until night.
Janice all but broke down at this added bad turn of affairs. To come all
this distance only to be balked!
"It's jest blamed _mean_!" sputtered Marty. "Telegraph shops ain't got
no right to shut up--in the daytime, too."
"It's not a Western Union wire," explained Nelson. "The railroad only
takes ordinary messages as a matter of convenience. But wait! That
door's open and there's a fire in the waiting-room, you see. Just
because this card says the agent and operator won't be here till five
o'clock doesn't mean that he's gone out of town. Besides, I'll see my
friend, Jim Watrous."
This was the gardener and general factotum at Colonel Van Dyne's. The
Poketown school-teacher hurried away, and left Janice and Marty sitting
together in the railroad station.
"He'll find some way--don't you fear, Janice," said the boy, with much
more sympathy than he had ever shown before. Janice squeezed his hand
and hid her own face. She could not forget how Marty had tried the
evening before to hide the knowledge of her father's fate from her.
_This_ was a much different Marty than the boy she had first met at the
old Day house on her arrival at Poketown.
In half an hour Nelson Haley was back with the operator and agent. The
gardener at Colonel Van Dyne's knew the man personally. The story in the
newspaper, and an explanation of who Janice was, did the rest.
"There isn't any better day than Christmas, I reckon," said the
telegraph operator, when he shook hands with the girl and she tried to
thank him in advance for the trouble he was taking on her behalf, "to do
a helpful deed. And I want to help you, Miss Day, if I can. Write your
messages and I will put them through as rapidly as possible. I shall
have plenty of time to go home for dinner between the sending of your
telegrams, and the receiving of the answers. Now, don't worry at all
about it."
"Oh, dear!" half sobbed the girl. "Everybody is _so_ good to me."
"Not a bit more than you deserve, I am sure," laughed the operator.
"Now, Miss, if you are ready, I am."
Janice knew just what she wished to say. If she had not written the
messages she was anxious to send, she had already formulated them in her
mind. It was but a few minutes' work to write both--one to Mr. Buchanan
at Juarez, and the other addressed to the man, John Makepiece, who
claimed to have been a fellow-prisoner with Mr. Broxton Day.
When the messages were sent, all they could do was to wait. Janice had
expected that she and Marty and Mr. Haley would have to camp in the
waiting-room of the station during the long interval, and the girl was
very sorry that, because of her, her friends would have to forego any
holiday dinner.
While Janice was engaged, Nelson Haley had been off on an excursion of
his own. He came tramping back into the station just as the operator
closed his key and told Janice that there was nothing to do now but
wait.
"And I'm afraid it will be an awfully tedious time for you, Marty," said
the girl. "I'm sorry. Aunt 'Mira was going to have _such_ a nice dinner
for you, too!"
"Huh! I guess I won't starve," growled the boy. "Mebbe we can find some
sandwiches somewhere--and a cup of coffee. By jinks! flyin' down the
lake like we did, _did_ make me sharp-set."
"If you're hungry, then, Marty," broke in Nelson Haley, "we'll all go to
dinner. It's just about ready by now, I reckon."
"Aw! don't fool a feller," said Marty, ruefully.
The school-teacher laughed at him. "I'm not fooling," he said. "I was
quite sure Miss Janice would be hungry enough to eat, too; so I found a
kind woman who is willing to share her dinner with us. Come on! She and
her daughter are all alone. The storm has kept their friends from coming
to eat with them, so we're in luck."
The three had quite a delightful dinner at the Widow Maltby's. Nelson
had told her and her daughter something about Janice's trouble, and the
good creatures did everything they could to make it agreeable for the
girl.
As for Marty, the "lay-out," as he expressed it, was all that heart
could desire--a boy's heart, at least! There was turkey, with dressing,
and cranberries, and the usual vegetables, with pie and cake galore, and
a pocketful of nuts to top off with.
Janice was afraid that the dinner would cost Nelson a great deal of
money, until she saw him fairly press upon the good widow a two-dollar
bill for their entertainment!
"And I ain't right sure that I'd ought to take anything at all," the
widow declared. "An' at sech a time, too! We'd never been able to eat
all o' them vittles, Em and I, an' we're thankful to have somebody come
along and help us. An' it sure has perked us up right smart."
Nelson had been very gay at the dinner, and had kept the widow and her
daughter in good humor. But with Janice, as they walked back to the
station (Marty had gone off on some matter of his own), the young man
was very serious.
"I sincerely hope, Janice, that you will hear better news from your
father or his friends on the border than the newspaper gave last night.
The trains are snowbound, and no morning papers have reached the Landing
yet, so nobody here knows more than we do about the matter. Don't set
your heart too strongly upon hearing better news--that's all."
"I do not need that warning," Janice told him, with a sigh. "But I felt
as though I should quite go all to pieces if I had to sit still and just
_wait_. I had to _do something_. I can't tell you how thankful I am to
you for your trouble in bringing me down here."
"Trouble?" cried Nelson Haley. "You know it is a pleasure, Janice," and
just then they reached the railroad station and found the operator at
his telegraph key again.
"I was just going to hunt you up, Miss Day," he cried, beckoning her
into the office. "Do you know, young lady, that you have suddenly become
a person of considerable importance?" and he laughed again.
"_Me?_" cried Janice, in amazement.
"You are the tea party--yes, ma'am! You are an object of public
interest. Two New York papers have sent to me for five-hundred word
interviews with you----"
"My goodness me!" gasped Janice. "How dreadful! What does it mean?"
"Your father's case has been taken up by the big papers all over the
country. It may be made a cause for American intervention. That is the
talk. The newspapers are interested, and the truth about your father is
likely to be known very quickly. All the special correspondents down
there on the border have been set to work----Ah! and here is something
from your man at Juarez."
The telegrapher had caught the relay number of the despatch then coming
over the wire, and knew that it was from Juarez. "Hello!" he chuckled,
when the sounder ceased. "Your man is certainly some brief--and to the
point."
He scratched off a copy of the message and put it into Janice's eager
hand. The girl read it out loud:
"J. M. always a story-teller. Have telegraphed consular
agent at Cida for later particulars. I consider any news of
B. D. good news.
JAMES W. BUCHANAN."
"That Buchanan evidently knows the John Makepiece who is telling this
yarn," observed the telegraph operator, "and he doesn't have much
confidence in him."
"Oh, dear!" murmured the girl. "Maybe it's even worse than Makepiece
reported."
"Hardly," broke in Nelson Haley, quickly. "He intimated that your father
was surely dead. But this friend of yours at Juarez says any news at all
is good news."
"Keep your heart up, Miss," urged the telegraph operator. "And do tell
me a little something about yourself, so that I can satisfy these
insistent newspapers."
"Oh, dear, me! I don't want to get into the newspapers," cried Janice,
really disturbed by this possibility.
"But folks will be awfully interested in reading about you, Miss Day,"
urged the man; "and the newspapers are going to do more than anybody
else for you and your father in this trouble. You may make sure of
_that_."
But it was because of the operator's personal kindness that Janice
submitted to the "interview." Nelson Haley entered into the spirit of
the affair and wrote down Janice's personal history to date, just as
briefly and clearly as the girl gave it under the operator's
questioning. Young Haley added a few notes of his own, which he
explained in the operator's ear before the latter tapped out his message
to New York.
It was only when Janice saw the paper a few days later that she realized
what, between them, the school-teacher and the telegraph operator had
done. There, spread broadcast by the types, was the story of how Janice
had come to Poketown alone, a brief picture of her loneliness without
her father, something of the free reading-room Janice had been the means
of establishing, and a description of the flight down the lake on the
_Fly-by-Night_ on Christmas morning, that she might gain further
particulars of her father's fate.
It was the sort of human-interest story that newspaper readers enjoy;
but Janice was almost ashamed to appear in public for several days
thereafter!
However, this is ahead of our story.
The wait for further messages from the border was not so tedious,
because of these incidents. By and by an answer came from the American
consular agent at Cida, relayed from Juarez by Mr. Buchanan. The agent
stated his doubt of the entire truth of John Makepiece's story. The man
was notoriously a reckless character. It was believed that he himself
had served with the Constitutionalist army in Mexico some months. Since
appearing in Cida and telling his story to the Associated Press man, he
had become intoxicated and was still in that state, so could not be
interviewed for further particulars.
A posse had started for Granadas the day before, to see what was the
condition of affairs around the mining property of which Mr. Day had had
charge. It was a fact that the guerrilla, Raphele, had overrun that
district and had controlled it for some months; but his command was now
scattered, and the more peacefully-inclined inhabitants of Granadas were
stealing back to their homes.
"Have requested consular agent at Cida to wire you direct to Popham
Landing, report of returning posse now overdue," was how Mr. Buchanan
concluded the message.
"And that report may be along any time, now," declared the operator,
encouragingly. "You people haven't got to start back up the lake yet
awhile?"
"We'll stay as long as Miss Day wants to," said Nelson Haley, quickly.
"Sure we'll stay," cried Marty. "Miss Maltby told me to come back by and
by, and finish that mince pie I couldn't manage at dinner time. There
ain't no hurry to get back to Poketown, is there?"
Janice and Nelson were much amused by this frank statement of the boy;
but the girl was only too glad to have the others bear out her own
desire to remain within reach of the telegraph wires for a while longer.
Mr. Buchanan's messages had eased her heart greatly.
Janice cried a little by herself--the first tears she had shed since the
night before. But even Marty respected them and did not make fun of his
cousin.
"Everybody is so good to me!" she cried again, when she had wiped her
eyes and could smile at Marty and Nelson Haley. "And I believe it's all
coming out right. This long day is going to be a _real_ Christmas Day,
after all!"
CHAPTER XX
THE TROUBLE WITH NELSON HALEY
From that time on Janice refused longer to be in what she called "the
dumps." It was not her way to mope about; usually she cheered other
people and did not herself stand in need of cheering.
She made the operator go home to his family to spend Christmas
afternoon. When his call came Marty was to run over after him. This kept
the trio of friends from Poketown close to the railroad station all the
afternoon; but the interval was spent quite pleasantly.
Mrs. Maltby and her daughter came over, through the snow, to visit a
while with Janice--and to bring Marty the pie!--and several other
villagers dropped in. News of Janice's reason for being at Popham
Landing had been spread abroad, and the people who came were more than
curious--they were sympathetic.
The pastor of one of the churches, who was well acquainted with Mr.
Middler, left his own family for half an hour and came to the station to
ask if he could do anything of practical use for Janice. Had it been
wise the trio from Poketown could have accepted half a dozen invitations
for supper and evening entertainment.
"People _are_ so good!" Janice cried again to Haley and Marty. "I never
realized that mere strangers could be so very, very nice to one."
"Huh!" grunted Marty. "Ain't _you_ always nice to folks--an' doing
something for 'em? How do you like it yourself?" which remark made
Janice and Nelson Haley laugh very heartily.
So, after all, it _was_ a real Christmas, as Janice said. It was an odd
one, perhaps, but there were some very enjoyable things about it. For
instance, Janice and the young school-teacher got far better acquainted
than they had ever been before--and Janice had always liked Nelson
Haley.
In this present situation, Nelson stood out well. He was generous,
sympathetic, and helpful. The fact that he was inclined to pursue the
way of least resistance, and considered it right to "let well enough
alone," did not impress one so deeply at the present moment.
Janice learned that the young man had neither father nor mother, and
that his nearest relative was an old aunt who had supplied the money for
his college tuition--at least, such money as he had not been able to
earn himself. Nelson Haley, however, desired to be self-supporting, and
he felt that he had accepted all the assistance he should from the old
aunt, whose patrimony was not large.
"Old Aunty Peckham is just as good as she can be," he confided to
Janice; "but I realize now--have realized for some years, in fact--that
if she had not had me to worry about, she could have enjoyed many more
good things in life than she has. So I told her I'd come to the end of
accepting money from her whenever my own purse got low.
"I'll teach school in Poketown a couple of years and save enough to take
up law; or perhaps I'll get a chance in some small college. Only, to
teach in a real college means _work_," and he laughed.
"But--but don't you like to work?" queried Janice, doubtfully.
"Now, Janice! who really _likes_ work?" demanded the young man, lightly.
"If we can get through the world without much effort, why not take it
easily?"
"That is not _my_ idea of what we are put in the world for--just to
drift along with the current."
"Oh, dear, me! what a very strenuous person you are," said the young
man, still teasingly. "And--I am afraid--you'd be a most uncomfortable
person to have around all the time. Though that doesn't sound gallant, I
admit."
Janice laughed. "I tell you what it is," she observed, not at all shaken
by the young man's remark, "I shouldn't want to feel that there wasn't
something in life to get by going after it."
"'By going after it?'" repeated the young man, in some puzzlement.
"Yes. You say I'd be an uncomfortable comrade. And I expect you're
right. Especially for a downright _lazy_ person."
"Oh, oh!" he cried. "That was a hard hit."
"You're not really lazy, you know," she pursued, coolly. "You only
haven't been 'woke up' yet."
"I believe that's worse than your former statement," he cried, rather
ruefully now. "I suppose I _do_ drift with the current."
"Well!"
"What kind of a fellow do you expect to marry, Janice?" he asked, with a
twinkle in his eye.
"Why, I'll tell you," said the girl, practically and without a shadow of
false modesty. "I expect a man to prove himself good for something in
the world before he even _asks_ me to marry him."
"Goodness me! he must be a millionaire, or president, or something like
that?" chuckled Nelson.
"Nothing at all so great," she returned, with some heat. "I don't care
if he's right down _poor_, if only he has been successful in
accomplishing some really hard thing--something that shows the metal
he's made of. No namby-pamby young man for me. No, sir! They can keep
away," and Janice ended her rather serious speech with a laugh and a
toss of her head.
"I shall bear your strictures in mind, Miss Day," declared Haley, with
mock gravity. "I see very plainly what you mean. The young St. George
who wears your colors must have slain his dragon."
"At least," Janice returned, softly, "he must have shown his willingness
to kill the horrid thing."
The short winter day was already drawing to a close when the telegraph
sounder began to call the station. Marty ran out at once and brought
back the operator. He was quickly in communication with one of the great
New York papers and found that it was over the paper's private wire that
first authentic news from the Granadas district had arrived in the East.
The posse from Cida had found everything peaceful about the mines. The
guerrilla leader, Raphele, had decamped. There had been an execution on
the day John Makepiece had fled from the place; but the victims were
some unfortunate Indians. The bandit had not dared kill the remaining
American prisoner.
Mr. Broxton Day had managed to get into a shaft of the mine and there
had lain hidden until Raphele, and his gang, had departed. Now he had
gathered some of his old employees, and armed them with rifles hidden
all these months in the mine, and the property was once more under Mr.
Day's control and properly guarded.
Through the posse, Mr. Day made a statement to the newspapers, and to
his friends and fellow-stockholders of the mine, in the States. To
Janice, too, he sent a brief message of love and good cheer, stating
that letters to her were already in the mail.
The relief Janice felt is not to be easily shown. To be positive, after
these hours of uncertainty--and after the long weeks of worriment that
had gone before--that dear Daddy was really alive and well, seemed too
good to be true.
"Oh, do you suppose it _can_ be so?" she cried, again and again,
clinging to Nelson Haley's arm.
"Of course it is! Pluck up your courage, Janice," he assured her, while
Marty sniveled:
"Aw, say, Janice! Doncher give way, now. Uncle Brocky is all right an'
it would be dead foolish ter cry over it, when you kep' up your pluck
so, before."
"Well! to please you both!" choked Janice, trying to swallow the sobs.
"But--but----Come on! let's go home. Just think how worried Aunt 'Mira
will be."
So they shook hands with the telegraph operator and Janice thanked him
heartily. There were several other friendly folk of the neighborhood in
the waiting-room when the three friends came out of the office, and the
happy girl thanked them, too, for their sympathy.
It was quite dark when they got out into the cold again. The wind had
shifted a point or two since morning, but it was still in their favor.
Although the sun had set, the way up the lake was clearly defined. The
stars began to twinkle, and after the _Fly-by-Night_ was gotten under
way the course seemed plain enough before them.
Now Janice enjoyed the sail. She was no longer afraid, and her heart
beat happily. The ice boat made good its name on the trip to Poketown,
and Nelson Haley brought the craft to land beside the steamboat dock in
season for a late supper.
There was a crowd down at the lake's edge to see them come in. News of
their trip to the Landing, and the reason for it, had been well
circulated about town; and when Marty shouted to some of his boy friends
that "Uncle Brocky was found--and he warn't dead, neither!" the crowd
started to cheer.
The cheers were for Janice--and she realized it. The folks were glad of
her father's safety because they loved her.
"People are so kind to me--they are so kind to me!" she cried again, and
then she _did_ burst into tears, much to Marty's disgust.
CHAPTER XXI
A STIR OF NEW LIFE IN POKETOWN
After that strange Christmas Day Janice saw a good deal more of Nelson
Haley than she had before. The teacher was several years her senior, of
course; but he seemed to find more than a little pleasure in her
society.
On Janice's side, she often told herself that Nelson was a real nice
young man--but he could be so much more attractive, if he would! When
the girl sometimes timidly took him to task for his plain lack of
interest in the school he taught, he only laughed lightly.
Nelson Haley suited the committeemen perfectly. He made no startling
innovations; he followed the set rules of the old-fashioned methods of
teaching; and (to quote Elder Concannon) he was a Latin scholar! Why the
old gentleman should consider that accomplishment of such moment, when
no pupil in the Poketown school ever arrived even to a Latin declension,
was a mystery to Janice.
Even Miss 'Rill had better appreciated the fact that Poketown needed a
more advanced system of education, and a better school building as well.
And there were other people in the town that had hoped for a new order
of things when this young man, fresh from college, was once established
in his position.
They waited, it seemed, in vain. Nelson Haley was content to jog along
in the rut long since trodden out for the ungraded country school.
It was not long after the Christmas holidays, however, when there began
to be serious talk again in the town over the inconvenience in locality
and the unsanitary condition of the present schoolhouse. Every winter
the same cry had been raised--for ten years! Elder Concannon declared
loudly, in the post office one day, that if the school had been good
enough for the fathers of the community, and for the grandfathers as
well, it should be good enough for the present generation of scholars.
Truly, an unanswerable argument, it would seem!
Yet there was now a stir of new life in Poketown. There was a spirit
abroad among the people that had never before been detected. Walky
Dexter hit it off characteristically when he said:
"Hi tunket! does seem as though that air reading-room's startin' up has
put the sperit of unrest in ter this here village. People never took
much int'rest in books and noospapers before in Poketown. Look at 'em,
now. I snum! they buzz around that readin'-room for chances to read the
papers like bees around a honey-pot.
"An' that ain't all--no, sir! 'Most ev'rybody seems ter be
discontented--that's right! Even folks that git their 'three squares' a
day and what they want to wear, ain't satisfied with things as they is,
no more. I dunno what we're all comin' to. 'Lectric street lights, and
macadamized roads, and all sech things, I s'pose," and Walky chuckled
over his flight of imagination.
"Wal, I dunno," said the druggist, argumentatively, "I'm free ter
confess for one that a different system of street lightin' wouldn't hurt
Poketown one mite. This here havin' a lot of ile lamps, that ain't
lighted at all if the almanac says the moon ought ter shine, is a
nuisance. Sometimes the moon acts right contrary!"
"My soul an' body!" gasped Walky. "You say that to Elder Concannon, and
Mr. Cross Moore, and ol' Bill Jones! They say taxes is high 'nuff as
they be."
"And school tax, too, I s'pose?" demanded another idler in the drug
store.
"Wal," said Walky, "I b'lieve we _could_ give the little shavers a
better chance to l'arn their A, B, C's. And that old schoolhouse can't
be het on re'l cold days. And it's as onhandy as it can be----"
"I believe you're goin' in for these new-fangled notions, too, Walky,"
declared the druggist.
"Guess I be, on the school question, anyway. My woman says she sha'n't
let our Helen go ter school again this winter, for she's got one cold
right on top of another las' year. It's a plumb shame."
It was from talks such as these in the village stores that the fire of
public demand for a new school building--if not for a new system of
education--finally burst into open flame.
Usually, when there was a public meeting, the basement of the Union
Church--"the old vestry", as it was called--was used. But although Mr.
Middler had timidly expressed himself as in favor of a new school
building, he did not have the courage to offer the use of the vestry
room.
Therefore the reading-room next to the drug store was one evening
crowded with earnest supporters of the belief that it was time Poketown
built a new structure for the training of her youth.
Janice saw to it that Uncle Jason went. Indeed, with Janice on one side
and Marty on the other, Mr. Day could scarcely escape, for his son and
his niece accompanied him to the place of meeting.
Not that the young folks went in, for there wasn't room. It seemed that
the people who favored a change in the old town's affairs were pretty
numerous, and there was not a dissenting voice in the meeting. It was
decided to have a special town meeting called to vote, if possible, an
appropriation for the building of a new schoolhouse.
This first meeting was only a beginning. It served merely to solidify
that public opinion which was in favor of the improvement. At once
opposition raised its head, and during the fortnight preceding the town
meeting, argument, _pro_ and _con_, was hotter than at election time.
Janice was deeply interested in the project, although she had, during
these first weeks of the New Year, more important thoughts to fill her
heart and mind. Daddy was writing to her regularly. The mine buildings
were being re-erected. The old force had come back to work, and for the
first time since Broxton Day had arrived in Mexico, the outlook for
getting out ore and making regular "cleanups" was bright. But trouble
down there was not yet at an end, and that worried her greatly.
The story of her father's captivity in the hands of the brigand,
Raphele, had been made of light moment in Mr. Day's letters that
immediately followed his escape; but Janice understood enough about it
to know that God had been very good to her. Some other American mining
men and ranchers in Granadas had not escaped with their lives and
property from Raphele and his ilk.
Daddy sent a photograph, too; but that was not until he had recovered
some from his hiding out in the mine without much to eat. Although he
was haggard and bewhiskered, his eyes had that look in them that Janice
so clearly remembered. When she awoke and lit her lamp in the early
morning, there he was looking at her from the bureau; and when she
retired she kissed the picture in lieu of having his real presence to
bid good-night.
Those gray eyes of Broxton Day reminded her always of his oft-spoken
motto: "Do something!" He seemed to be saying that to Janice from his
photograph; therefore the girl was not likely to lose her interest in
such a momentous affair as the new schoolhouse.
There was another interest that held Janice's mind and sympathy. This
was the condition of poor little Lottie Drugg. As she had been quite
blind when Janice first met her, now her hearing had departed entirely.
She could seldom now distinguish the notes of her father's violin as he
played to her. She would sit on the store counter and put her hand often
on Hopewell's bow-hand as he dragged the more or less harmonious sounds
out of the wood and strings. Otherwise she could not know that he was
playing at all!
Nelson Haley had been touched by the case of the storekeeper's little
girl, and had discussed the matter with Janice. Nelson had even written
to a Boston specialist who treated the eyes, and who had been very
successful in such cases as Lottie's. The fee the surgeon demanded was
from five hundred to a thousand dollars for an operation. And poor
Hopewell Drugg, although he strained every effort, had succeeded in
saving less than two hundred dollars during all these months!
Nevertheless, Janice would not let the storekeeper lose heart. "It will
come in time, Mr. Drugg," she told him, cheerfully. "And Lottie will be
able to go to that wonderful school, too, where she will be taught many
things."
For if the child could once obtain her sight, lip-reading would be
possible for her, and through that the little girl might gradually
become as well educated as any one, and have a fair chance for happiness
in the world after all!
Although Nelson Haley was touched by Lottie's sad condition, and by
anything else going on about him that had the personal note in it,
Janice thought the Poketown school-teacher showed very little public
spirit.
She began to realize that his overseeing of the reading-room and library
was inspired by his wish to please _her_ instead of his actual interest
in the institution. This was very complimentary, but it did not satisfy
Janice Day at all.
She was not interested in Nelson Haley in a way to crave the attentions
that he had begun to show her. Indeed, she did not really appreciate his
attitude, for there was nothing silly in Janice's character. She was
still a happy, hearty _girl_; and if she had romantic dreams of the
future, they were nothing but dreams as yet!
She had the same interest in Nelson that she had in her cousin Marty. It
troubled her that the young man did not seem to have any serious
interest in life. Just as long as he tutored his classes through their
recitations in a manner satisfactory to the school committee, he seemed
quite careless of anything else about the school. He admitted this, in
his laughing way, to the girl, when she broached the subject of the
fight for a new school.
"But it's your _job_!" exclaimed Janice. "You more than anybody else
ought to be interested in having the boys and girls of Poketown get a
decent schoolhouse."
"And suppose old Elder Concannon and the rest of the committee get after
me with a sharp stick?" queried Nelson.
"I should think _you_, a collegian and an educated man, would be only
too eager to help in such a movement as this," Janice cried. "Oh,
Nelson! don't you know that the people who are waking up in this town
need your help?"
"My goodness me! how serious you are about it," he returned, teasingly.
"Of course, if you insist, I'll risk my job with the committee and come
out flat-footed for the new schoolhouse and reform."
"I don't wish you to do anything at all for _me_," returned Janice,
rather tartly. "If your own conscience doesn't tell you what course to
pursue, pray remain neutral--as you are. But I am disappointed in you."
"There is feminine logic for you!" laughed the young man. "With one
breath you tell me to follow the dictates of my own conscience, and then
you show me plainly just how much you will despise me if I go against
your side of the controversy."
"You are mistaken," Janice said, with some little heat. "I do not
personally care what you do, only as your action reflects upon your own
character."
"Now, dear me!" he sighed, still amused at her earnestness, "I thought
if I came out strongly at the town meeting for the new school, you would
award me the palm."
"My goodness me!" exclaimed the exasperated girl. "Somebody ought to
award you a palm--and right on the ear! You're as big a tease as Marty,"
and she refused to discuss the school project with him any further.
CHAPTER XXII
AT THE SUGAR CAMP
Nelson Haley was, however, at the town meeting and spoke in favor of the
new school building. Janice had a full report of it afterward from
Marty, who squeezed in at the back with several of the other boys and
drank in the long and tedious wrangle between the partisans in the
school matter.
"And, by jinks!" the boy proclaimed, "lemme tell you, Janice, it looked
like the vote was goin' ag'in us till Mr. Haley began to talk. I thought
he didn't have much interest in the thing. Nobody thought he did. I
heard some of the old fellers cacklin' that 'teacher didn't favor the
idee none.'
"But, say! When he got up to talk, he showed 'em. He was sitting
alongside of Elder Concannon himself, and the Elder had made a mighty
strong speech against increasin' taxes and burdenin' the town for years
and years with a school debt.
"But, talk about argument! Mr. Haley sailed inter them old fossils, and
made the fur fly, you bet!"
"Oh, Marty! Fur fly from fossils?" chuckled Janice.
"That _does_ sound like a teaser, don't it?" responded her cousin, with
a grin. "Just the same, Mr. Haley made 'em all sit up and take notice.
He didn't only speak for the schoolhouse, and new methods of teaching,
and a graded school; but he took up Elder Concannon's arguments and shot
'em full of holes.
"You ought to have seen the old gentleman's face when Mr. Haley proved
that a better-taught generation of scholars would possess an increased
earning power and so be better able to take up and pay the school bonds
than the present taxpayers.
"Say! the folks cheered! When Mr. Haley sat down, the question was put
and the vote went through with a rush. But Elder Concannon and Old Bill
Jones, and Mr. Cross Moore, and some of the others, were as mad as they
could be."
"Mad at Mr. Haley?" queried Janice, with sudden anxiety.
"You bet! But they can't take the school away from him till the end of
the year, as long as he doesn't neglect his work. So Dad says, and he
knows."
Janice was worried. She knew that Nelson Haley had hoped to teach the
Poketown school at least two years, so as to get what he called "a
stake" for law-school studies. And there were not many ungraded schools
in the state that paid as well as Poketown's; for it was a large school.
The furor occasioned by the special town meeting, and the fight for the
new school, passed over. A site for the school was secured just off of
High Street near the center of the town--a much handier situation for
all concerned. The ground would be broken for the cellar as soon as the
frost had gone.
The committee appointed at the town meeting to have charge of the
building of the school were all in favor of it. There were three of
them,--Mr. Massey, the druggist, the proprietor of the Lake View Inn,
and Dr. Poole, one of the two medical practitioners in the town. These
three were instructed to appoint two others to act with them, and as
these two appointees need not be taxpayers, one of them was Nelson
Haley, who acted as secretary.
When Janice heard of this, she was delighted. She had not seen the
teacher more than to say "how-de-do" since their rather warm discussion
before the date of the town meeting. Now she put herself in the way of
meeting him where they might have a tête-à-tête.
There were not many social affairs in Poketown for young people. Janice
had attended one or two of the parties where boys and girls mingled
indiscriminately and played "kissing games," then she refused all such
invitations. She was not old enough to expect to be bidden to the few
social gatherings held by the more lively class of people in the town.
The church did little outside of the ladies' sewing circle to promote
social intercourse in the congregation. So, although the school-teacher
might have been invited to a dozen evening entertainments during that
winter, Janice did not chance to meet him where they could have a "good,
long talk" until the Hammett Twins gave their annual Sugar Camp party.
The two little old ladies, whom Janice had met so soon after coming to
Poketown, had become staunch friends of the girl. She had been at their
home on the Middletown road several times--twice to remain over night,
for both Miss Blossom and Miss Pussy enjoyed having young people about
them.
They were an odd little couple, but kindly withal, and loved children
desperately, as many spinster ladies do. They had never married because
of the illness for many years of both their father and their mother.
Besides, the twins had never wished to be separated.
Now, at something over sixty years of age, they owned a fine farm and
the most productive sugar-maple orchard in that part of the state. At
sugaring time each year they invited all the young folk Walky Dexter
could pack into his party wagon, to the camp not far from their house;
and, as maple-sugar making was a new industry to Janice, she was not a
little eager when she received her invitation from the two old ladies.
The "sugaring" was on a Saturday, and the party met at the schoolhouse.
Some of the larger girls who had treated Janice so unpleasantly when she
first visited the school were yet pupils; but they were much more
friendly with the girl from Greensboro than at first. They might have
been a wee bit jealous of her, however; for Nelson Haley would never
treat them other than as a teacher should treat his scholars, whereas he
paid marked attention to Janice whenever he was in her society.
Once he had asked permission to call upon her; but Janice had only
laughed and told him that her aunt would be pleased to have him come, of
course. She was not at all sure that she liked Mr. Nelson Haley well
enough to allow him to confine his attentions to her! Young as she was,
Janice had serious ideas about such matters.
However, she was glad to have him to talk to again on this occasion.
"I've never had a chance to tell you how proud of you I was when they
told me what you did at the town meeting," Janice whispered, as they sat
side by side in the party wagon.
Nelson grinned at her cheerfully. "The old Elder scarcely speaks to me,"
he said. "He's even forgotten that I can turn a Latin phrase as they
used to when he went to the university."
"Oh, that is too bad! But don't you feel that you did right?"
"I'll tell you better when it comes time to engage a teacher for next
year."
"Oh, dear! Maybe they'll put in a new school committee at the July
school meeting. They ought to."
"The Elder and his comrades in crime have been in office for eight or
ten years, I understand. They are fairly glued there, and it will take a
good deal to oust them. You see, they have nothing to do with the
building of the new school."
"But if that school is finished and ready for occupancy next fall, you
ought to be at the head of it. It won't be fair to put you out," Janice
said, with gravity.
"We'll hope for the best," and Nelson Haley laughed as usual. "But if I
lose my job and have to beg my bread from door to door, I hope you will
remember, Janice, that I told you so."
"You are perfectly ridiculous," declared the girl. "Aren't you ever
serious two minutes at a time?"
"Pooh! what's the good of being 'solemncholly'? Take things as they
come--that's _my_ motto."
Still, Janice believed that the young man was really becoming more
deeply interested in the Poketown school and its problems that he was
willing to admit, even to her. She had heard that the Middletown
architect who was planning the school had consulted Nelson Haley
several times upon important points, and that the teacher was the most
active of all the five special committeemen.
They reached the sugar camp before the middle of the forenoon, although
the roads at that season were very heavy. Winter had by no means
departed, although a raucous-voiced jay or two had come up from the
swamp and scoured the open wood as though already in search of spring
quarters.
The Hammett sugar camp consisted of an open shed in which to boil the
sap and an old cabin--perhaps one of the first built in these New
Hampshire grants--in which dinner was to be cooked and eaten. Miss
Blossom Hammett was already busy over the pots, and pans, and bake oven
in the cabin; while her sister, the thin Miss Pussy, overseered the
sap-boiling operations.
It was a regular "bee", for beside the twins' hired hands, there were
several of their neighbors, and the visitors from Poketown were expected
to make themselves useful, too, the boys and Nelson Haley especially.
Janice joined the sap gatherers, for she was strong and liked exercise.
They carried buckets to collect the sap that had already run into the
shiny two-quart cups which were used to collect it.
First an incision was made through the bark and into the wood of the
tree. Into this incision was thrust a whittled plug that had a shallow
gutter cut in its upper side, and notches from which the bail of the
two-quart cup hung. Into the cup the sap dripped rapidly--especially
about midday, when the sun was warmest.
They tapped only about a quarter of the grove belonging to the old
ladies, for that numbered as many trees as could be handled at once.
Pail after pail of the thin sap was brought in and emptied into one of
the two big cauldrons, under which a steady fire of hickory and beech
was kept burning. Later the fire was started under the second pot, while
the contents of the first one was allowed to simmer down until the sugar
would "spin", when dipped up on the wooden ladle and dropped into a bowl
of cold water.
The old ladies supplied a hearty and substantial dinner for the young
folks to put away before the sugar was boiled enough to spin. After
that, the visitors gathered about the sugar troughs like flies about
molasses. The Hammett Twins were not niggard souls by any manner of
means; but they kept warning the girls and boys all the afternoon to
"save room for supper."
In truth, the supper down at the old Hammett farmhouse, after the work
of the day was over, was the principal event. It grew cold towards
night, and that sharpened the young folks' appetites. The sap ceased
running before sunset, so they trooped down from the camp, the little
old ladies riding in their phaeton behind Ginger. Walky Dexter was going
to drive out to the Hammett place after supper to pick up his load of
young people.
But Walky was late--very late indeed. After supper the majority of the
young folk, both those from Poketown and in the near neighborhood, began
to play forfeit games; so Janice and Nelson Haley slipped away, bidding
the kind old ladies good-night, and set out to walk home.
The distance was under five miles; there was a good path all the way
despite the mud in the driveway, and there was a glorious moon. The wind
had died down and, although the night air was keen, it was a perfect
hour for walking.
CHAPTER XXIII
"DO YOU MEAN THAT?"
"It was right along here--at the bridge, you know--I saw you the first
time, Janice," said the teacher, when they had covered some two miles of
the way. "Do you remember?"
"I didn't suppose _you_ would," laughed Janice, blushing a little. "And
I stared at you because you were the first citified-looking person I had
seen since coming to Poketown."
He laughed. "Did I look as bad as all that? I was going fast, I know,
but I could see that you were a mighty pretty girl."
"Why! That's a story!" exclaimed Janice, seriously, and looking at the
young man in astonishment. "You know that isn't so. I'm _not_ pretty."
"Goodness me! am I not to have my way in _anything_?" demanded Nelson
Haley, in mock anger. "If I think you're pretty I can say so, I hope?"
"No, sir. Such ridiculous statements are forbidden. I shall think your
eyes need treating almost as badly as do poor little Lottie's. Dear me,
whatever are we going to do about that child?"
"If either of us were rich it would be an easy question to answer."
"True enough. I know what _I'd_ do. And I believe you'd be a very
generous young man, indeed--as long as being generous did not entail any
particular work on your part."
"Oh--now--I call that unfair!" he complained. "We can't all be like you,
Janice. I believe you lay awake nights thinking up nice things to do for
folks----"
"There you go again--making fun of me," she said, shaking a gloved
finger at him. "I don't claim to be a bit more unselfish than the next
one. But I'm not lazy."
"Thanks! I suppose I am?"
"There you go--picking one up so quick," Janice repeated. "I _do_ think,
however, that you just don't care, a good deal of the time. If things
only go on smoothly----"
"That's what I told you Christmas Day," he said, quickly.
"And isn't it so?"
"Well--it used to be," he admitted, shaking his head ruefully. "But I'm
not sure but that, since you've got me going----"
"_Me?_" exclaimed Janice. "What have _I_ got to do with it?"
"Now, there's no use your saying that you don't know _why_ I took up
that matter of the new school last month," said Nelson Haley, seriously.
"You spoke just as though you were ashamed of me when we talked about
it, and I began to wonder if I wasn't a fit subject for heart-searching
inquiry," and the teacher burst into laughter again.
But Janice felt that he was more serious than usual, and she hastened to
say: "I should really feel proud to know that any word of _mine_
suggested your present course, Mr. Nelson Haley. Why! what a fine thing
that would be."
"What a fine thing _what_ would be?" he demanded.
"To think that I could really influence an educated and clever young man
like you to do something very much worth while in the world. Nelson, you
are flattering me."
"Honest to goodness--it's so," he said, looking at her with a rather wry
smile. "And I'm not at all sure that I thank you for it."
"Why not?"
"See what you've got me into?" he complained. "I've got a whole bunch of
extra work because of the school building, and in the end the old Elder
and his friends may discharge me!"
"But you've brought about the building of a new school, and Poketown
ought always to thank you."
"Likely. And they'll build a monument to me to stand at the head of
High Street, eh?" and he laughed.
"I do not care," said Janice, seriously, and looking up at him with
pride. "_I_ shall thank you. And I shall never forget that you said it
was _my_ little influence that made you do it."
"Your _little_ influence----"
But she hastened to add: "It's a really great thing for me to think of.
And how proud and glad I'll be by and by--years and years from now, I
mean--when you accomplish some great thing and I can think that it was
because of what _I_ said that you first began to use your influence for
good among these people----"
Her voice broke a little and she halted. She feared she had gone too far
and that perhaps Nelson Haley would misunderstand her. But he was only
silent for a moment. Then, turning to her and grasping her hands firmly,
he said:
"Do you mean that, Janice?"
"Yes. I mean just that," she said, rather flutteringly. "Oh! here comes
a wagon. It must be Walky."
"Never mind Walky," said Nelson, firmly. "I want to tell you that I
sha'n't forget what you've said. If there really is a nice girl like you
feeling proud of me, I'm going to do just my very best to retain her
good opinion. You see if I don't!"
They were in the shadow as Walky drove by and he did not see them.
After that Janice and the teacher hurried on so as not to be overtaken
by the noisy party of young folks before they reached the village.
As they came up the hill toward Hopewell Drugg's store they saw a dim
light in the storekeeper's back room, and the wailing notes of his
violin reached their ears.
"Hopewell is grinding out his usual classic," chuckled Nelson Haley. "I
hear him at it morning, noon, and night. Seems to me 'Silver Threads
Among the Gold' is kind of _passé_."
"Hush!" said Janice. "There is somebody standing at the side gate,
listening. You see, sir, everybody doesn't have the same opinion of poor
Mr. Drugg's music----"
"My goodness!" ejaculated Nelson, under his breath. "It's Miss
Scattergood, I do believe!"
The timid little spinster could not escape. They had come upon her so
quietly.
"Oh! is it you, Janice dear?" she said, in a startled voice.
"And Mr. Haley. We are walking home from the Hammetts' sugaring."
"Well! I'm glad it ain't anybody else," said Miss 'Rill frankly. "But I
_do_ run around here sometimes of an evening, when mother's busy or
asleep, just to listen to that old song. Mr. Drugg plays it with so much
feelin'--don't you think so, Mr. Haley? And then--I was always very
fond of that song."
They left her at the corner of High Street, and the flurried little
woman hurried home.
"I do believe there is a romance there," whispered the teacher, when
Miss 'Rill was out of earshot.
"So there is. Didn't you know that--years and years ago--she and Mr.
Drugg were engaged?" cried Janice. "Why, yes, they were. But why they
did not marry, and why he married the girl he did, and why Miss 'Rill
kept on teaching school and never would look at any other man, is all a
mystery."
"Romance!" commented Nelson, with a little laugh, yet looking down upon
Janice with serious eyes. "The night is full of it--don't you think so,
Janice?"
"No, no!" she laughed up at him. "It's only the moonlight," and a little
later he left her at the old Day house with a casual handshake.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE SCHOOL DEDICATION
Thereafter there was a somewhat different tone to the friendship between
Janice and the school-teacher. They were confidential. They both assumed
that the other was interested in the matters dear to each. It was a
comradery that had no silly side to it. Nelson Haley was a young man
working his way up the first rungs of the ladder of life; Janice was his
good friend and staunch partisan.
As neither was possessed of brother or sister, they adopted each other
in that stead.
The winter fled away at last and Spring came over the mountain range and
down to the lakeside, scattering flowers and grasses as she passed.
Although Janice had enjoyed some of the fun and frolic of the New
England winter, she was perfectly delighted to see the season change.
It had been late spring when she reached Poketown the year before. Now
she saw the season open, and her first trips over the hillsides and
through the wood lot where the snow still lay in sheltered places,
searching for the earliest flowers, were days of delight for the girl.
The Shower Bath was released from its icy fetters, and the little
mountain stream poured over the lip of granite with a burst of sound
like laughter. She visited The Overlook, too; but she did not need to
view the landscape o'er to enable her to understand why God did not
immediately answer her prayers for her father.
Great news from the mine in Mexico:
"We haven't made much money yet, it is true," Mr. Day wrote about this
time. "But things are going right. The armies--both of them--are now far
away and if they leave us in peace for a few months, your Daddy will
make so much money that you can have the desire of your heart, my dear."
And the "desire of her heart" just then was--and had been for months--a
little automobile in which she might ride over the roads about Poketown.
There wasn't a good horse and carriage obtainable in the town; and
Janice found the time hanging heavily upon her hands.
"If I just had a car!" she would often say, until Marty got to teasing
her about it, and Nelson Haley, whenever he saw her, usually asked very
sober questions about her car--if she'd had much tire trouble on her
last trip, and so forth!
"You can all just laugh at me," Janice declared. "I know Daddy will send
the money some time. And then, if you are not _very_ good, and _very_
polite, you sha'n't ride with me at all."
Aunt 'Mira was so inspired by her niece's talk of an automobile that she
studied the mail-order catalogues diligently, and finally sent off for a
coat and veil, together with an approved automobile mask, to be worn
when she went motoring through the country with Janice!
The spring passed and summer came. The cellar walls of the new
schoolhouse were laid, and then the framework went up, and finally the
handsome edifice was finished upon the outside. Really, Poketown was
fairly startled by the appearance of the new building. Some of the very
people who had been opposed to the thing were won over by its
appearance.
"Hi tunket!" exclaimed Mr. Cross Moore, "barrin' the taxes we'll haf ter
pay for the next ten year, I could be glad ter see sech a handsome house
in the town. An' they tell me 'at teacher has had more ter do with the
plannin' of the school than the architect himself. Too bad Mr. Haley
ain't goin' ter be here no longer than this term. He'd ought ter have
the bossin' of the new school."
"Who says he won't?" snapped Walky Dexter, who heard the selectman's
statement.
"You ax the Elder--or old Bill Jones," chortled Moore.
"Come now! what do you mean by that?" demanded Mr. Massey, in whose
store the conversation took place.
"Ax 'em," said Mr. Moore again. "They've got it fixed up to fire Mr.
Haley at the end of this term."
"Nothin' like bein' warned in time," said Walky Dexter. "Them old
shagbarks ain't been e-lected themselves for next year, yet. They air
takin' too blamed much for granted, that's what's the matter with them.
July school meetin' is purty near; but mebbe we kin put a spoke in their
wheel."
Forthwith Walkworthy Dexter began to earn his right to the nickname
Janice had once given him. He became "Talky" Dexter, and he talked to
some purpose. When the school meeting was held in July there was the
most astonishing overturn that had been seen in Poketown for years. An
entirely new committee was elected to govern school affairs, and all
were men in favor of new methods.
Before this, the school had closed and Nelson Haley had gone to Maine to
work in a hotel during the summer. The last half of the school year had
been much different from the young man's fall term. Although he gave the
boys all the instruction in baseball he had promised, and otherwise had
kept up their interest in the school, he had begun to lay out the work
differently for the pupils and really try to increase the value of his
instruction. Whether he was to be fortunate enough to head the new
school in the fall, or not, he began to train the pupils to more modern
methods. Whoever took hold of the new school would find the scholars
somewhat prepared for the graded system.
Poketown was actually shocked! The good old Elder and his mates had so
long governed school matters just as they pleased that many of the
people could not realize that a new day had dawned--in school affairs,
at least.
Elder Concannon was doomed to see more of his influence wane during this
summer. Heretofore he had managed to keep out of the church anything
like a young people's society, in spite of Mr. Middler's desire to the
contrary. But there were now several earnest young people in the church
membership who were anxious to be set to work to some purpose.
The association was a small one at first. Janice was a member. Soon the
influence of the organization began to be felt in more ways than one.
"I can see just how things are going, Brother Middler--I can see
plainly," old Elder Concannon declared. "Just as soon as they told me
that Day girl was a member of the society I knew what would happen. A
new carpet for the aisle and the pulpit chairs upholstered! Ha! And them
girls and boys themselves cleaning windows and sweeping and dusting the
whole church once a month. Ridiculous! Myron Jones has always suited us
as sexton before. Oh! we'll have no peace--no peace at all!"
"But, Elder," timidly suggested the pastor, "such things as the young
people have asked to do have been helpful things. And I'm sure if you
would attend one of their meetings you would find their spiritual
growth commendable--surely commendable."
"Ha!" sniffed the old gentleman, wagging his bristling head. "What do
those boys and girls know about religion, and the work of the spirit,
and----"
"One thing is sure, Elder," interposed Mr. Middler with more courage
than was usual with him, "One thing is sure: if our children have no
proper appreciation of such things, it is certainly _our_ fault. We
older ones have been remiss in our duty."
This seemed to take the Elder aback. He stared at the younger man for a
moment; but as he turned away he muttered:
"It's all nonsense! And it's just as I've said. No peace since that Day
girl came to town."
Mr. Middler had the courage of his convictions for once. He said nothing
more to rasp the old gentleman's feelings and prejudices; but he backed
up the young people in their attempt to freshen up the old church. He
mingled with them more than ever he had before; and from that contact
with their young and hopeful natures he carried into his pulpit a more
joyful outlook upon life. Mr. Middler was growing, along with his young
people, and he really preached a sermon now and then in which there
wasn't a doctrinal argument!
Not that Janice held a very important position in the young people's
society. But she had belonged to one back in Greensboro, in her own
beloved church, and she had helped form this Poketown organization. She
would not take office in this new society, for all the time she hoped
that her father's affairs would change and they might be together again.
There was never a day begun that Janice did not hope that this reunion
might be consummated soon; and the desire was a part of her bedside
prayer at night. She was no longer lonely, or even homesick, in
Poketown. She really loved her relatives, and she knew that they loved
her. She had made many friends, and her time was fairly well occupied.
But her longing for Daddy seemed to grow with the lapse of time. She
wanted to see him so much that it actually _hurt_ when she allowed
herself to think about it!
"Ain't you ever goin' to be still a minute, Janice?" complained her aunt
frequently. "You're hoppin' 'round all the time jest like a hen on a hot
skillet, I declare for't!"
"Why, Aunt 'Mira," she told the good lady, "I couldn't possibly sit with
my hands folded. I'd rather work on the treadmill than do _that_."
"You wait till you've worked as many years as I have--an' got as leetle
for it," said Aunt 'Mira, shaking her head. "You won't be so spry," and
with that she buried herself in her story paper again.
There was an improvement, however, even in Aunt 'Mira. She could not
leave the "love stories" alone, and if she had a particularly exciting
one, she would sit down in her chair in the middle of the kitchen floor
and let the breakfast dishes go till noon.
Usually, however, she "slicked up," as she called it, after dinner,
instead of spending her time on the sofa, and sometimes she and Janice
went calling with their needlework, like the other ladies up and down
Hillside Avenue, or had some of the neighbors in to call on them.
Aunt 'Mira had spent some of Janice's board money on the furnishings of
the house as well as in silk dresses and automobile veils. There were
new curtains at the windows; the sitting-room had a new rag carpet woven
by a neighbor; the rather worn boards of the kitchen were covered with
brightly-figured linoleum.
Inside and out there were now few "loose ends" about the old Day house.
The stair to the upper story was mended, and covered with a bright
runner. The premises about the house were kept neat and attractive, and
Mr. Day had somehow found the money to paint the house that spring,
while the stables and other outbuildings looked much neater than when
Janice had first seen them.
She and Marty had taken complete charge of the garden this year, and the
girl had inspired her cousin with some of her own love of neatness and
order. The rows of vegetables were straight; the weeds were kept out;
and they had earlier potatoes and peas for the table than anybody else
on Hillside Avenue.
The lane was, by the way, different in appearance from the untidy and
crooked street up which Janice had climbed with Uncle Jason that day of
her arrival at Poketown. The neighboring homes showed the influence of
association with the Day place.
There had been other houses painted on the street that spring. More
fences had been reset and straightened. The driveway itself had had some
attention from the town. And you couldn't have found a one-hinged gate
the entire length of the street!
As for Uncle Jason, he was really carrying on his farming in a
businesslike way. Marty was getting to be a big boy now, and he could
help more than he once had. Janice had suggested to Uncle Jason that, as
he had such good pasture at the upper end of his farm, and as the milk
supply of Poketown was but a meager one, it would pay somebody to run a
small dairy.
Mr. Day now had three cows that he proposed to winter, and was raising
one heifer calf. Such milk as the family did not use themselves the
neighbors gladly bought. Mrs. Day was doing better with her hens, too.
The wire fencing had been repaired and she gave the biddies more
attention; therefore she was being repaid in eggs and chickens for
frying. Altogether it could no longer be said that the Day family was
shiftless.
Janice received several cheerful and entertaining letters that summer
from Nelson Haley. He was clerk of a summer hotel on the Maine shore,
and he seemed to be having a good time as well as earning a considerable
salary.
When the new school committee of Poketown tendered him an offer of the
head mastership of the school (he was to begin with one assistant for
the kindergartners), he threw up his clerkship and hastened to a certain
summer normal school in central Massachusetts.
Janice was very glad, although his action surprised her, knowing, as she
did, how much young Haley needed the money he was earning at the hotel.
His tuition at the summer school for a month, and his board there, would
eat up a good deal of the money he had saved. He might not be able to
enter for his law studies at the end of another school year.
Janice believed, however, that Nelson Haley was "cut out," as the local
saying was, for a teacher. He had an easy, interesting manner, which was
bound to hold the attention of even the wandering minds among his
pupils. She knew by the improvement in Marty that the young man's
influence, especially on the boys of Poketown, was for good.
"If he would only make up his mind to _work_, he might rise high in the
profession," she thought. "Some day he might even be president of a
college--and wouldn't that be fine?"
But she did not write anything of this nature to the absent Nelson. She
treasured in her mind what he had said about working because _she_ was
proud of him; and she wisely decided that Nelson Haley was a young man
who needed very little encouragement in some ways. Janice was by no
means sure that she liked Nelson Haley as he liked her.
So she kept her answers to his letters upon a coolly friendly basis and
only showed him, when he returned to Poketown in September in time for
the dedication exercises of the school building, how glad she was to see
him by the warmth of her greeting.
It was a real gala day in Poketown when the new school building was
thrown open for public inspection. In the evening the upper floor of the
building (which for the present was to be used as a hall) was crowded by
the villagers to hear the "public speaking"; and on this occasion Nelson
Haley again covered himself with glory.
He seemed to have gained enthusiasm, as well as a distinct idea of
modern school methods, from his brief normal training. He managed to
inspire his hearers with hope for a broader and higher education; his
hopes for the future of the Poketown school lit responsive fires in the
hearts of many of his listeners.
Of course, Elder Concannon did not agree. He was heard to say afterward
that he couldn't approve of "no such new-fangled notions," and that he
believed the boys and girls of Poketown "better stick to the three
R's--reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic!"
However, the opinion of the people in general seemed to be in favor of
the new ideas, and they promised to back up Nelson Haley in his work of
modernizing the school.
"Of course you'll make it one of the best schools in the state--I know
you will, Nelson," declared Janice, when he walked home with her after
the exercises.
"If _you_ say so--of course!" replied the young man, with a smile.
CHAPTER XXV
THROUGH THE SECOND WINTER
During the summer, matters at the reading-room and library had been
allowed to drift along to a great extent. Marty and one of his
particular chums had kept the reading-room open evenings during Mr.
Haley's absence; but now Janice knew that the school-teacher would have
his hands quite full without giving any time to the reading-room.
She set about making a second campaign for the advancement of the
institution and the broadening of its work. She found five girls beside
herself willing to keep the reading-room open one afternoon a week, and
to exchange books for the members of the library association. The
institution had proved its value in the community and Janice privately
went to several people who were well able to help, and collected a fund
for the payment of a regular librarian in the evening.
One of the boys who had shown most advancement during the spring in
school work was glad to earn a small wage as librarian and caretaker of
the reading-room evenings. An effort was made, too, to increase the
number of volumes in the library so as to obtain a share of the State
Library Appropriation for the next year.
Janice was not alone interested in the reading-room's affairs. There was
the matter of a new piano for the Sunday-school room. The instrument in
use had been a second-hand one when the Sunday School obtained it; and
it was forever out of tune.
"However can you expect the children to sing in unison, and sing well,
Mr. Scribner," Janice said to the Sunday-school superintendent, "when
there isn't an octave in harmony on the old piano? Come on! let's see
what we can do about getting a brand-new, first-class instrument?"
"Oh, my dear girl! Impossible! quite impossible!" declared the
superintendent, who was a bald, hopeless little man, who kept books for
the biggest store in town, and was imbued with the prevailing Poketown
spirit of "letting well enough alone."
"How do you know it is impossible till you try?" demanded the girl,
laughing. "How much would you give, yourself, toward a new instrument?"
Mr. Scribner winked hard, swallowed, and burst out with: "Ten dollars!
Yes, ma'am! I'd go without a new winter overcoat for the sake of having
a decent piano."
"That's a beginning," Janice said, gravely, seizing paper and pad. "And
I can spare five. Now, don't you see, if we can interest everybody else
in town proportionately, we'd have enough to buy _two_ pianos, let alone
one.
"But let us start the subscription papers with our own offerings. You
take one, and I'll take the other. You can ask everybody who comes into
the store, and I'll go out into the highways and hedges and see what I
can gather."
Janice interested the young people's society in the project, too; and
her own enthusiasm, plus that of the other young folks, brought the
thing about. At the usual Sunday-school entertainment on Christmas night
the new piano was used for the first time, and Mrs. Ebbie Stewart, who
played it, fairly cried into her score book, she was so glad.
"I was _so_ sick of pounding on that old tin-panny thing!" she sobbed.
"A real piano seems too good to be true."
The old Town Hall standing at the head of High Street--just where the
street forked to become two country highways--had a fine stick of spruce
in front of it for a flagpole; but on holidays the flag that was raised
(if the janitor didn't forget it) was tattered like a battle-banner,
and, in addition, was of the vintage of a score of years before. Our
flag has changed some during the last two decades as to the number of
stars and their arrangement on the azure field.
Of a sudden people began to notice the need of a new flag. Who mentioned
it first? Why, that Day girl!
And she kept right on mentioning it until some people began to see that
it was really a disgrace to Poketown--and almost an insult to the flag
itself--to raise such a tattered banner. A grand silk flag, with new
halyards and all, was finally obtained, the Congressman of the district
having been interested in the affair. And on Washington's Birthday the
Congressman himself visited the village and made an address when the
flag was raised for the first time.
Gradually, other improvements and changes had taken place in Poketown.
There was the steamboat dock. It had been falling to pieces for years.
It had originally been built by the town; but the various storekeepers
were most benefited by the wharf, for their freight came by water for
more than half of the year.
Walky Dexter started the subscription among the merchants for the dock
repairs. He subscribed a fair sum himself, too, for he was the principal
teamster in Poketown.
"But who d'you s'pose started Walky?" demanded Mr. Cross Moore,
shrewdly. "Trace it all back to one 'live wire'--that's what! If that
Day gal didn't put the idee into Walky's head for a new dock, I'll eat
my hat!"
And nobody asked Mr. Moore to try that gastronomic feat.
The selectman, himself, seemed to get into line during that winter. He
stopped sneering at Walky Dexter and for some inexplicable reason he
began agitating for better health ordinances.
There was an unreasonable warm spell in February; people in Poketown had
always had open garbage piles during the winter. From this cause, Dr.
Poole, the Health Officer, declared, a diphtheria epidemic started which
caused several deaths and necessitated the closing of a part of the
school for four weeks.
Cross Moore put through a garbage-collection ordinance and a certain
farmer out of town was glad of the chance to make a daily collection,
the year around, for the value of the garbage and the small bonus the
town allowed him. If the truth were known Mr. Moore's ordinance was
copied almost word for word from the printed pamphlet of ordinances in
force in a certain town of the Middle West called Greensboro. Now, how
did the selectman obtain that pamphlet, do you suppose?
Yet Poketown, as a whole, looked about as forlorn and unsightly as it
had when Janice Day first saw it. The improvement was not general. The
malady--general neglect--had only been treated in spots.
There were still stores with their windows heaped with flyspecked
goods. The horses still gnawed the boles of the shade trees along High
Street. The flagstone sidewalks were still broken and the gutters
unsightly. High street itself was rutted and muddy all through the early
spring, after the snow had gone.
A few of the merchants patterned after Hopewell Drugg, brightened up
their stores, and exposed only fresh goods for sale. But these few
changes only made the general run of Poketown institutions appear more
slovenly. The contrast was that of a new pair of shoes, or a glossy hat,
on a ragged beggar!
With Janice on one side to spur him, and Miss 'Rill's unbounded faith in
him on the other hand, how _could_ Hopewell Drugg fall back into the old
aimless existence which had cursed him when first Janice had taken an
interest in his little Lottie, his store, and himself?
But, of course, Hopewell could not _make_ trade. He had gained his full
share of the Poketown patronage, and held all his old customers. But the
profits of the business accumulated slowly. As this second winter drew
to a close the storekeeper confessed to Janice that he had only saved a
little over three hundred dollars altogether towards the betterment of
Lottie's condition.
Janice began secretly to complain. Her heart bled for the child, shut
away in the dark and silence. If only Daddy would grow suddenly very
wealthy out of the mine! Or if some fairy godmother would come to little
Lottie's help!
The person who seemed nearest like a fairy godmother to the child was
Miss 'Rill. She spent a great deal of her spare time with the
storekeeper's daughter. Sometimes she went to Mr. Drugg's cottage alone;
but oftener she had Lottie around to the rooms she occupied with her
mother on High Street.
"I declare for't, 'Rill," sputtered old Mrs. Scattergood, one day when
Janice happened to be present, "you'll have the hull town talkin' abeout
you. You're in an' aout of Hopewell Drugg's jest as though you belonged
there."
"I'm surely doing no harm, mother," said the little spinster, mildly.
"Everyone knows how this poor child needs somebody's care."
"Wal! let the 'somebody' be somebody else," snapped the old lady. "I
sh'd think you'd be ashamed."
"Ashamed of what, mother?" asked Miss 'Rill, with more spirit than she
usually displayed.
"You know well enough what I mean. Folks will say you're flingin'
yourself at Hopewell Drugg's head. An' after all these years, too.
I----"
"Mother!" exclaimed her daughter, in a low voice, but earnestly. "Don't
you think you did harm enough long, long ago, without beginning on that
tack now?"
"There! that's the thanks one gets when one keeps a gal from makin' a
perfect _fule_ of herself," cried the old lady, bridling. "S'pose you'd
been jest a drudge for Hopewell all these years, Amarilla Scattergood?"
"I might not have been a drudge," said Miss 'Rill, softly, flushing over
her needlework. "At least my life--and his--would have been different."
"Ye don't know how lucky you be," snapped her mother. "And this is all
the thanks I git for tellin' Hopewell Drugg that he'd brought his pigs
to the wrong market."
"At least," said the spinster, with a sigh, "he will never worry you on
that score again, mother--he nor any other man. When a woman gets near
to forty, with more silver than gold in her hair, and the best of her
useless life is behind her, she need expect no change in her estate,
that's sure."
"Ye might be a good deal wuss off," sniffed her mother.
"Perhaps that is so," agreed Miss 'Rill, with a sudden hard little
laugh. "But don't you take pattern by me, Janice, no matter what folks
tell you. Mrs. Beasely is better off than I am. She has the memory of
doing for somebody whom she loved and who loved her. While I----Well,
I'm just an old maid, and when you say that about a woman, you say the
worst!"
"Why, the idee!" exclaimed her mother, with wrath. "I call that flyin'
right in the face of Providence."
"I don't believe that God ever had old maids in the original scheme of
things."
"Humph! didn't He?" snapped Mrs. Scattergood. "Then why is there so many
more women than men in the world? Will you please tell me _that_,
Amarilla?" and this unanswerable argument closed what Janice realized
was not the first discussion of the unpleasant topic, between the
ex-schoolteacher and her sharp-tongued mother.
CHAPTER XXVI
JUST HOW IT ALL BEGAN
It was one of those soft, irresponsible days of April. The heavens
clouded up and wept like a naughty child upon the least pretext; yet
between the showers the sun warmed the glad earth, and coaxed the
catkins into bloom, and even expanded the first buds of the huge lilac
bush at the corner of the Day house.
This was a special occasion; one could easily guess that from the bustle
manifest about the place. Aunt 'Mira and Janice had been busy since
light. Mrs. Day was not in the habit of "givin' things a lick and a
promise" nowadays when she cleaned house. No, indeed! They gave the
house a "thorough riddin' up," and were scarcely through at dinner-time.
Then they hurried the dinner dishes out of the way, drove Marty and his
father out of the house and hurried to change into fresh frocks; for
company was expected.
The ladies' sewing circle of the Union Church was to meet with Mrs.
Day. These meetings of late had become more like social gatherings than
formerly. The afternoon session was better attended; then came a hearty
supper to which the ladies' husbands, brothers, or sweethearts were
invited; and everything wound up with a social evening.
Aunt 'Mira and Janice had made many extra preparations for the occasion
in the line of cooked food; there were two gallon pots of beans in the
oven cooking slowly; and every lady, as she arrived, handed to Janice
some parcel or package containing cooked food for the supper.
The girl was busy looking after these donations when once the members of
the sewing circle began to arrive; and Aunt 'Mira's pantry had never
before been so stacked with food. Marty stole in to gaze at the goodies,
and whispered:
"Hi tunket! Just you go away for half an hour, Janice, and lemme be
here. I could do something to that tuck right now."
"And so soon after dinner?" cried his cousin. "I wonder if boys _are_
hollow all the way down to their heels, as they say they are?"
"It ain't that," grinned Marty. "But a feller runs so many chances in
this world of going hungry, that he ought ter fill up while he can. You
just turn your back for a while and I'll show you, Janice."
But his cousin turned the key in the pantry door and slipped it into her
pocket for safety. "We'll have no larks like _that_, Master Marty," she
declared.
Mrs. Scattergood and 'Rill were among the first to arrive; and then came
Mrs. Middler, the minister's wife. Mrs. Beasely was there, and Walky
Dexter's wife, and the druggist's sister, who kept house for him; and
Mrs. Poole, the doctor's wife; and Mrs. Marvin Petrie, who had married
children living in Boston and always spent her winters with them, and
had just come back to Poketown again for the season.
Many of the ladies of Poketown never thought of making up their spring
frocks, or having Mrs. Link, the milliner, trim their Easter bonnets,
until Mrs. Marvin Petrie came from Boston. She was supposed to bring
with her the newest ideas for female apparel, and her taste and advice
was sought on all sides when the ladies sat down to their sewing in the
big sitting-room of the old Day house.
Mrs. Marvin Petrie, however, was one of those persons who seem never to
absorb any helpful ideas. Her forte was mostly criticism. She could see
the faults of her home town, and her home people, in comparison with the
Hub; but she had never, thus far, led in any benefit to Poketown.
"You can't none of you understand how glad I am to git to my daughter
Mabel's in the winter; and then how glad I am to shake the mud of
Boston off my gaiters when it comes spring," declared the traveled lady,
who had a shrill voice of great "carrying" quality. When Mrs. Marvin
Petrie was talking there was little other conversation at the sewing
circle. Her comments upon people she had met and things she had seen,
were in the line of a monologue.
"I do sartainly grow tired of Poketown when it comes fall, and things is
dead, and the wind gets cold, and all. I'm sartain sure glad to git shet
of it!" she pursued on this particular afternoon. "And then the first
sight of Boston--and the mud--and the Common and Public Library,--and
the shops, and all, make me feel like I was livin' again.
"Mabel says to me: 'How kin you live, Maw, most all the year in
Poketown! Why, I was so glad to git away from it, that I'd walk the
streets and beg before I'd go back to it again!' An' she would; Mabel's
lively yet, if she has been married ten years and got three children.
"But by this time o' year--arter bein' three months or more in the
hurly-burly of Boston, I'm _de_-lighted to git into the country. Ye see,
city folks keep dancin' about so. They're always on the go. They ain't
no rest for a body."
"But you ain't got ter go because other folks dooes, Miz' Petrie,"
suggested old lady Scattergood. "Now, when I go ter see my son-in-law at
Skunk's Holler, I jest sit down an' fold my hands, an' _rest_."
"Skunk's Holler!" murmured one of the other women. "To hear Miz'
Scattergood talk, one 'ud think she was traveled, too. An' she ain't
never been out o' sight o' this lake, I do believe."
"If ye don't go yourself, you feel's though you had," said Mrs. Petrie,
with good nature. "So much bustle around you--yes. An' so I tell my
daughters. I git enough of it b'fore spring begins."
"But," said the minister's wife, timidly, "after all, there isn't so
much difference between Poketown and Boston, excepting that Boston is so
very much bigger. People are about the same everywhere. And one house is
like another, only one's bigger----"
"Now, that's right foolish talk, Miz' Middler!" exclaimed the lady so
recently from the Hub. "The people's just as different as chalk is from
cheese; and there ain't a church in Boston--and there's hundreds of
'em--that don't make our Union Church look silly."
"But, Miz' Petrie," cried one inquiring body. "Just what is it that
makes Boston so different from Poketown? After all, folks is folks--and
houses is houses--and streets is streets. Ain't that so?"
"Wa-al!" The traveled lady was stumped for a moment. Then she burst out
with: "There! I'll tell ye. It's 'cause there's some order in the city;
ev'rything here is haphazard. Course, there's poor sections--reg'lar
_slums_, as they call 'em--in Boston. But the poor, dirty buildings and
the poor, dirty streets, are in sort of a bunch together. They're in
spots; they ain't dribbled all through the town, mixed up with fine
houses, and elegant squares, and boulevards. Nope. Cities know how to
hide their poor spots in some ways. Boston puts its best foot forward,
as the sayin' is.
"But take it right here in Poketown. Now, ain't the good and the bad all
shoveled together? Take Colonel Pa'tridge's fine house on High Street,
stuck in right between Miner's meat shop and old Bill Jones' drygoods
an' groceries--an' I don't know which is the commonest lookin' of the
two."
"There you air right, Miz' Petrie," agreed the Widow Beasely. "Miner's
got so dirty--around his shop I mean--that I hate to buy a piece of meat
there."
"But the other butcher ain't much better," cried another troubled
housewife. "And the flies!"
"Oh, the awful flies!" chorused several.
"Them critters is a pest, an' that's a fac'," declared Mrs. Scattergood.
"Talk abeout the plagues o' Egypt----"
"But Miz' Petrie was tellin' us how Boston was different----"
"My soul and body!" gasped Mrs. Beasely. "I reckon she's told us
enough. It's a fac'. Poketown is all cluttered up--what ain't right down
filthy. An' I don't see as there's anything can be done abeout it."
"Why--Mrs. Beasely--do you believe there is anything so bad that it
can't be helped?" queried Janice, slowly and thoughtfully. It was the
first time her voice had been heard amid the general clatter, since she
had come to sit down. Her nimble fingers were just as busy as any other
ten in the room; but her tongue had been idle.
"They say it's never too late to mend," quote 'Rill Scattergood; "but I
am afraid that Mr. Miner, and Mr. Jones, and some of the rest of the
storekeepers are too old to mend--or be mended!"
"Ain't you right, now, Amarilla!" sniffed her mother.
"'Tain't only the storekeepers," declared Mrs. Petrie, taking up the
tale again. "How many of us--us housekeepers, I mean--insist upon having
things as clean as they should be right around our own back doors?"
"Wa-al," groaned Aunt 'Mira, "it takes suthin' like an airthquake to
start some of the men-folks----"
"Why wait for _them_?" interposed the demure Janice again, knowing that
her aunt would not object if she interrupted her. "Can't we do something
ourselves?"
"I'd like to know what you'd _do_?" exclaimed the helpless Mrs. Middler.
"Why, we could have a regular 'Clean-Up Day' in Poketown, same as they
do in other places."
"Good Land o' Goshen!" ejaculated Mrs. Scattergood. "What's _that_, I'd
like to know, Janice Day? You _do_ have the greatest idees! I never
heard of no 'Clean-Up Day' in Skunk's Holler."
"Perhaps they didn't need any there," laughed Janice, for she was used
to the old lady's sharp tongue and did not mind it.
"Seems to me I--I've heard of such things," said Mrs. Petrie, rather
feebly. She did not wish to be left behind in anything novel.
"Why, a 'Clean-Up Day'," explained Janice, "is justly exactly what it
_is_. Everybody cleans up--yard, cellar, attic, streets, and all. You
get out all your old rubbish, of whatsoever kind, and get it ready to be
carted away; and the town pays for the stuff's being removed to some
place where it can be burned or buried."
"My soul and body!" ejaculated Aunt 'Mira. "Jest the same as though the
town was cleanin' house."
"That's it--exactly," said Janice, nodding. "And all at the same time,
so that the whole town can be made neat at once."
"Now," declared Mrs. Petrie, giving her decided and unqualified
approval, "I call that a right sensible idea. I'm for that scheme,
hammer and tongs! This here Day girl, that I ain't never had the
pleasure of meetin' before, has sartainly got a head on her. I vote we
do it!"
CHAPTER XXVII
POKETOWN IN A NEW DRESS
That is just how it all began. If you had asked any of those sewing
circle ladies about it, they would have said--"to a man!"--that Mrs.
Marvin Petrie suggested Poketown's "Clean-Up Day." And they would have
been honest in their belief.
For Janice Day was no strident-voiced reformer. What she did toward the
work of giving Poketown a new spring dress, was done so quietly that
only those who knew her well, and had watched her since she had come to
Poketown, realized that she had exerted more influence than a girl of
her age was supposed to be entitled to!
It was Janice who spoke with Mr. Cross Moore that very night, after the
women had loudly discussed the new idea with their husbands and other
male relatives at the supper table. Mr. Moore was to put the ordinance
through at the next meeting of the Board of Selectmen, covering the date
of the Clean-Up Day, and the amount of money to be appropriated for the
removal of rubbish by hired teams.
"Put a paragraph into the motion, Mr. Moore, making it a fifty-dollar
fine for any taxpayer, or tenant, who puts rubbish out on the curb on
any other day save the two mentioned in the main ordinance," Janice
whispered to the selectman; "otherwise you will set a bad precedent with
your Clean-Up Day, instead of doing lasting good."
"Now, ain't that gal got brains?" Moore wanted to know of Walky Dexter.
"Huh! Mary Ann can't tell me that the Widder Petrie started this idea.
It was that Day gal, as sure as aigs is aigs!" and Walky nodded a solemn
agreement.
There was more to it, however, than the giving notice to the people of
Poketown that they had a chance to get rid of the collection of rubbish
every family finds in cellar, shed, and yard in the spring. People in
general had to be stirred up about it. Clean-Up Day was so far ahead
that the apostles of neatness and order--those who were thoroughly
imbued with the spirit of the thing and realized Poketown's need--had
time to preach to most of the delinquents.
There were cards printed, too, announcing the date of Clean-Up Day and
its purposes, and these were hung in every store and other public place.
Janice urged the young people's society of the church into the work of
getting the storekeepers to promise to clean up back rooms, cellars,
sheds, and the awful yards behind their ancient shops.
There were a few--like Mr. Bill Jones--who at first refused to fall in
with the plans of those who had at heart the welfare of the old town.
Mr. Jones had been particularly "sore" ever since he had been ousted
from the school committee the year before. Now he declared he wouldn't
"be driv" by no "passel of wimmen" into changing the order of affairs in
the gloomy old store where he had made a good living for so many years.
But Bill Jones reckoned without the new spirit that was gradually taking
hold upon Poketown people. One of his ungracious statements, when his
store was well filled with customers, brought about the retort pointed
from none less that Mrs. Marvin Petrie herself.
"Well, Bill Jones," declared that plain-spoken old lady, "we wimmen have
made up our minds to clean out the flies, an' all other dirt, if we can.
Poketown is unsanitary--so Dr. Poole says--and we know it's always been
slovenly. There ain't a place, I'll be bound, in the whole town, that
needs cleaning up more'n this, your store!"
"I ain't no dirtier than anybody else!" roared Jones, very red-faced.
"But you aim to be. So you say. When other folks all about you are goin'
to clean up, you say you won't be driv' to it. Wa-al! I'll tell you
what's going to happen to you, Bill Jones: We wimmen air goin' to trade
at stores that are decently clean. Anyway, they're cleaner than this
hovel of your'n. Don't expect me in it ag'in till I see a change."
Mrs. Marvin Petrie marched out of the shop without buying. Several other
ladies followed her and distributed their patronage among the other
shops. Old Bill hung out for a few days, "breathing threatenings and
slaughter." Then the steady decrease in his custom was too much for the
old man's pocketbook. He began to bleed _there_. So he signified his
intention of falling in with the new movement.
There were householders, too, who had to be urged to join in the general
clean-up of Poketown. Dr. Poole wrote a brief pamphlet upon the
house-fly and the dangers of that pest, and this was printed and
scattered broadcast about the town. To the amazement of a good many of
the older members, like Elder Concannon, Mr. Middler read this short
treatise from the pulpit and urged his hearers to screen their pantries,
at least, to "swat the fly" with vigor, and to remove barns and stables
so far away from the dwellings that it would be, at least, a longer trip
for Mr. Fly from the barnyard to the dining-table and back again!
The Board of Selectmen, stirred by Mr. Cross Moore and others, cleaned
the gutters of High Street and used the scraper on the drive itself
fully two months earlier than usual. Sidewalks were rebuilt, and many
painted tree boxes appeared along the main street to save the remainder
of the tree trunks from the teeth of crib-biting horses.
Before most of the shops--the general stores particularly--were
hitch-rails. Many of these were renewed; some even painted. Store
fronts, too, were treated to a coat or two of paint. Show windows were
cleaned and almost every store redressed its display of goods.
Trees were trimmed, and some of the tottering ones cut down entirely.
There were still plenty of shade trees on the steep High Street.
It was Janice who urged Hopewell Drugg to refurbish his store--painting
it inside and out, rebuilding the porch, and erecting a long hitch-rail
to attract farmers' trade.
"Of course you cannot afford it, Mr. Drugg," said the girl. "That is, it
seems as though every dollar you spend is putting Lottie back. But
'nothing ventured, nothing gained.' You must throw out sprats to catch
herring. To get together the money that specialist demands to treat
Lottie's eyes, you must endeavor to increase your trade. Make the store
just as attractive as possible. That's business, I believe. Daddy would
say so, I am sure."
Hopewell allowed himself to be convinced. There was not a store in town
as attractive as Drugg's, after Clean-Up Day. The whole of Poketown,
indeed, was in a new dress. The trees were just budding out nicely,
there was a breath of lilac in the air, and the lawns were raked clean
and showed a velvety, green sheen that was delightful to the eye.
The old Town Hall had been repainted. Had it not been for the opposition
of Elder Concannon, the young folks would have collected money for the
repainting of the Union Church. However, they cleaned everything around
it--yard and all--till it was as spick and span as it could be. And the
burial ground in the rear of the church was made beautiful, too. The
edges of the paths were trimmed, the paths themselves raked, and all the
tottering headstones were set up straight.
Gates were rehung and fences straightened all over town. A smell of
fresh paint rivaled the scent of the bursting lilac blooms. Never had
Poketown been so busy.
The cleaning-up process went on inside the houses as well as out. Of
course, among pure-blooded New English housewives, such as the majority
of Poketown matrons were, there were few drones. They prided themselves
on their housekeeping.
Earlier than usual the carpets went out on the lines, the curtains at
chamber and sitting-room windows were renewed, there was a smell of soap
and water in every entry, as one pushed the door open, and altogether
Poketown was generally turned out of doors, aired, dusted, and brought
back again into thoroughly clean rooms.
The old Day house had its "ridding up," too. Janice gave her aunt
considerable help; but Mrs. Day was not the slovenly housekeeper she had
been when first the girl had come to Poketown. Even Uncle Jason kept
himself more neatly than ever before. And he went to the barber's at
frequent intervals.
Janice once went down to the dock to see the _Constance Colfax_ come in.
There was the usual crowd of loafers waiting for the boat--all perched
along the stringpiece of the wharf.
"But I declare!" thought Janice, her eyes dancing, "somebody certainly
_has_ 'slicked 'em up,' as Mrs. Scattergood would say. Whoever would
believe it! Walky has got a new shirt on--and straw cuffs, too--and a
necktie! My goodness me! And the hotel keeper really looks as though his
wife cared a little about his appearance. And Ben Hutchins wears whole
boots now, and has washed his face, and had a shave.
"I must admit they don't look so much like a delegation from the
poorfarm as they did the day. I came in on the _Constance Colfax_. There
has been a change in Poketown--there most certainly _has_ been a
change!" and the girl laughed delightedly.
It was marked everywhere. It even seemed to Janice as though people whom
she met on the street stepped quicker than they once had!
Janice knew she had given her own folks--Uncle Jason, and Aunt 'Mira,
and Cousin Marty--a push or two in the right direction. She had helped
Hopewell Drugg, too; and maybe she had instigated the waking up of
several other people. But not for a moment did she realize--healthy,
thoughtless girl that she was--how much Poketown owed to her on Clean-Up
Day.
That was one great occasion in the old town. Although the selectmen had
allowed two days in which the farmers' wagons were to cart away the
rubbish for the householders, the removal men had hard work to fill
their contract.
Some curbs were piled shoulder high with boxes of ashes, old bedsprings,
broken furniture, decayed mattresses, yard rakings, unsightly pots and
pans hidden away for decades in mouldy cellars--débris of so many kinds
that it would be impossible to catalogue it!
For two days, also, hundreds of rubbish fires burned, and the taint of
the smoke seemed to saturate every part of Poketown. Janice declared
that all the food on the supper table at the Day house seemed to have
been "slightly scorched."
"By jinks!" declared Marty, gobbling his supper with an appetite that
never seemed to lag. "I bet I burned three wagon-loads of stuff 'sides
what I set outside on the street for 'em to take away. No use talkin',
Dad, you got ter build a new pen and yard for the shoats."
"Whuffor?" demanded his father, eyeing him slowly.
"'Cause the old boards and rails was so rotten that I jest burned 'em
up," declared his son. "You know folks could see it from the street, an'
it looked untidy."
"Wa-al," drawled Uncle Jason, with only half a sigh.
Janice could scarcely keep from clapping her hands, this so delighted
her. She compared this with some of the conversation at the Day table
soon after the time she had arrived in Poketown!
CHAPTER XXVIII
"NO ODOR OF GASOLINE!"
During the winter now passed, Janice had watched the progress of the new
school under Nelson Haley's administration with growing confidence in
that young man. Nelson was advancing, as well as his pupils and the
school discipline. Educators from other towns in the state--even in
neighboring states--had come to visit Poketown's school.
Janice could not help having a thrill of pride when she learned of these
visitations and the appreciation shown by other educators of Nelson
Haley's work. She did not so often see the young man in a situation
where they could talk these wonders over; for Nelson was very, very busy
and gave both his days and evenings to the work he had set for himself
the fall before.
The girl might no longer honestly complain of Nelson's lack of purpose.
He had "struck his gait" it seemed; it was as though he had suddenly
seen a mark before him and was pressing onward to that goal at top
speed.
When he and Janice met as they did, of course, at church and
occasionally at evening parties, the teacher and the girl were the very
best of friends But tête-à-têtes were barred. Was it by Janice herself?
Or had Nelson deliberately changed his attitude toward her?
Sometimes she tried to unravel this mystery; but then, before she had
gone far in her ruminations, she began to wonder if she _wanted_ Nelson
to change toward her? That question frightened her, and she would at
once refuse to face the situation at all!
Once Nelson told her that a small college in middle Massachusetts
offered a line of work that he believed he would like to take up--if he
was "doomed to the profession of teaching, after all."
"And does the doom seem so very terrible?" she asked him, laughingly.
"I admit that I can _do_ things with the scholars," he said, gravely. "I
have just begun to realize it. It seems easy for me to make them
understand. But the profession doesn't give one the freedom that the law
does, for instance."
Janice had made no further comment, nor did Nelson advance anything more
regarding the work offered by the college in question.
She had her own intense interests, now and then. Clean-Up Day was past
but its effect in Poketown was ineradicable. Janice was satisfied that
there were enough people finally awake in the town to surely, if slowly,
revolutionize the place.
How could one householder drop back into the old, shiftless, careless
manner of living when his neighbors' places on either hand were so trim?
The carelessly-kept shop showed up a hundred per cent. worse than it had
before Clean-Up Day. Even old Bill Jones kept in some trim, and the meat
markets began to rival each other in cleanliness.
The taxpayers began to speak with pride of Poketown. When they visited
Middletown, or other villages that had previously looked down on the
hillside hamlet above the lake, they were apt to say:
"Just come over and see our town. What? You ain't been in Poketown in
two years? No wonder you don't know what you're talking about! Why, we
put it all over you fellows here for clean streets, and shops, and
nice-lookin' lawns and all that--and our school!"
Poketownites were proud of the reading-room, too, although Mr. Massey's
store was becoming a cramped place for it now. The shelves devoted to
the circulating library were well crowded. The state appropriation had
been spent carefully, and the new, well-bound books looked "mighty
handsome" when visitors came into the place.
But the original intention for the place had never been lost sight of.
It had been made for the boys and young men of Poketown. They had fully
appreciated it, and, Elder Concannon's prophecy to the contrary
notwithstanding, the reading-room was never the scene of disorderly
conduct.
Janice hoped the day would come when the reading-room association should
have a building of its own,--not an expensive, ornate structure for
which the taxpayers would be burdened, and the upkeep of which would
keep the association poor for years; but a snug, warm, cheerful place
which would actually be a club for the boys, and offer all the other
benefits of a free library.
She knew already just where the building ought to stand. There was a
certain empty lot on High Street which would give a library a prominent
site. This lot was owned by old Elder Concannon.
"There've been miracles happened here in Poketown during the last year
or so; if I have patience and wait to strike when the iron's hot, maybe
_that_ miracle will come to pass," Janice told herself.
Elder Concannon had already begun to treat Janice in a much more
friendly way than he had at one time. She believed that secretly he was
interested in the library and reading-room. Sometimes he spent an hour
or so there of an evening--especially if one of the boys would play
checkers with him.
"He's an old nuisance," growled Marty to his cousin, on one occasion.
"He keeps some of the fellers out; they see him in there, with his
grizzly old head and flapping cape-coat, and they stay out till he goes
home. And, by jinks! I'm gittin' tired of being the goat and playin'
draughts with him."
"Marty," she said to him, with some solemnity, "if you saw that through
the Elder's coming there and your entertaining him a bit, the
institution would in the end be vastly benefited, wouldn't you be _glad_
to play the goat?"
Marty's eyes snapped at her. He drew a long breath, and exclaimed: "Hi
tunket! You don't mean that you've got the old Elder 'on the string' for
us, Janice?"
"It's very rude of you to talk that way," said Janice, smiling. "I don't
know what you mean by having the dear old gentleman 'on a string.' But I
tell you in secret, Marty, that I _do_ hope he will be so much
interested in the reading-room and library that some day he will give
the association something very much worth while. He can afford it, for
he hasn't chick nor child in the world."
"Ye don't mean it?" gasped Marty.
"But I _do_ mean it. Why not? Do you suppose the old gentleman comes
into the reading-room without being interested in it?"
"Say!" drawled her cousin. "I'll be the goat all right, all right!"
Janice was indeed cultivating the old Elder's acquaintance. She would
not have done it to benefit herself in any way; but to help the
library----
"You young folks need a balance wheel," Elder Concannon once said to
Janice. "Youthful enthusiasm is all very well; but where's your
balance?"
"Then why don't you come in with us and supply the balance?" she
rejoined, briskly. "Goodness knows, Elder, we'd be glad to have you!"
Then came a red-letter day for Janice Day. She had almost lost hope of
getting her "heart's desire"--the little motor car that Daddy had spoken
of. Although his letters had been particularly cheerful of late, he had
said nothing more about his promise.
Marty brought her home a thick letter from the post office and gave it
to her at the dinner table. When she eagerly slit the flap of the
envelope and pulled out the contents, there was flirted out upon the
tablecloth a queer-looking certificate.
"Hullo! what's this?" demanded Marty, with all the impudence of a boy.
"Put that down, Marty," commanded his mother.
"By jinks! What's this in the corner?" he yelled. "A thousand dollars?
_A thousand dollars!_ Janice Day! you're as rich as cream!"
"Hi tunket, boy!" ejaculated his father. "Le's see that? It can't be!"
"It is!" shrieked Janice, jumping up and dancing around the room. "It's
for my gasoline runabout! I'm going to have it--I certainly _am_!
Hurray! hurray!" and she kissed her aunt heartily and then danced
another war dance with Marty around the table.
"Wal, I snum!" exclaimed Uncle Jason, still staring at the bit of paper,
which was a Wells-Fargo express check for the sum named.
Janice could scarcely eat any dinner, she was so excited. What was mere
eating to the possession of this check and the knowledge that all was
going well once more with dear Daddy? Her most particular friends must
share the joy with her.
She hurried into her jacket and hat, and ran across town to see Miss
'Rill; for, after all, the little spinster was her dearest and closest
friend in Poketown.
But was this Miss 'Rill--this frantic, wild-eyed creature, hatless and
with her hair flying, who came running down High Street just as Janice
reached the corner of the street on which Hopewell Drugg's store was
situated? _Could_ it be 'Rill Scattergood?
"Oh, Janice! Janice! have you heard about it? They just sent for me,"
gasped the little spinster lady.
"What do you mean, 'Rill? _Who_ sent for you?" Janice demanded.
"It's poor little Lottie!" cried the other, dragging Janice along with
her. "She's fallen. I've been expecting it. She moves so quickly, you
know, in spite of her blindness. And now she's fallen into the
cellar----"
"Whose cellar? Oh! is she very, very badly hurt?" cried Janice, equally
anxious.
"Hopewell had the trap door open. She came running into the shop and
went straight down on her poor little head! Oh! she's all cut and
bruised----"
Miss 'Rill could say no more. Nor did Janice need to ask, for they were
at the store and pushing through the little group of helpless but
sympathizing neighbors. Dr. Poole was already there. They had Lottie in
bed, all bandaged and white.
"Just a bad cut over the forehead--right across the crown," Dr. Poole
assured the waiting neighbors. "She's had a bad shock, but she's in no
particular danger. Only----"
He looked at Janice and shook his head. Then he whispered to her: "It's
a terrible shame Hopewell can't send the poor little thing to a
specialist and have her eyes fixed up. My soul and body, girl! If I'd
only been able to go in for surgery myself--If I'd only learned to use
the knife!" and he groaned, shook his head, did this old-school family
practitioner, and departed.
Janice did not remain long. Miss 'Rill would sit by the child for the
remainder of the afternoon; and even her mother was anxious to help and
promised to come over and stay all night at Hopewell's.
"I ain't got nothin' ag'in the poor child, that's sure," Mrs.
Scattergood told Janice. "It's only Hopewell that's so triflin'--he an'
his fiddle. Jest like his father before him!"
But the storekeeper's fiddle was silent a good deal of the time now;
only when Miss 'Rill or Janice urged him did the man take up the
instrument that had once been so much his comfort--and little Lottie's
delight.
But now, on this sorrowful afternoon, Janice went back slowly toward
home with a very serious mind indeed. On the way she met Nelson Haley
coming from school.
"Congratulations--and then some!" he cried, shaking hands with Janice.
"Whatever are you talking about?" she asked, puzzled.
"Marty has been telling everybody the great and good news!" he said,
staring at her. "Why! what makes you so solemn? Do you mean to say that
you can't decide what kind of an auto to buy, and that is what has
soured our Janice's usually sweet disposition?"
"Oh, Nelson!" gasped the girl, suddenly clinging to his arm, for she
really felt a weakness in her knees.
"Hold on! hold on! bear up! What's the matter?"
"I forgot about poor Daddy's check. Of course--that's the way out."
"What's the way out?" he demanded.
"Haven't you heard about poor little Lottie?"
"What's happened to her?" he asked, anxiously.
She told him swiftly. Then stopped. He demanded:
"What's that got to do with the auto, Janice?"
"Don't you see it has _everything_ to do with it, Nelson?" she returned,
gravely. "Of course, I could not buy a car when Lottie needs some of my
money so much. She shall start for Boston just as soon as she is well
enough to go--and of course Miss 'Rill will go with her. Hopewell cannot
leave the store. Lottie shall go to the specialist, Nelson."
For a minute the school-teacher was silent. He looked at the girl's
shining, earnest face in a way she had never noticed before. But at last
he only smiled a little queerly, and said:
"Why--Well, Janice Day, there's no odor of gasoline about _that_!"
CHAPTER XXIX
JANICE DAY'S FIRST LOVE LETTER
In a week, although little Lottie's head was still bandaged, she was
driven over to Middletown with Miss 'Rill, Walky Dexter being the
driver, of course, and took a train for Boston.
Before the day of departure Janice Day had a good deal to contend with.
It _did_ seem too bad that one could not spend one's own money without
everybody trying to talk one out of it!
Not every one, however! Nelson Haley never said a word to discourage the
girl's generosity. But, beginning with Hopewell Drugg himself, almost
everybody else had something to say against it.
"I can never in this world pay you back, Miss Janice," said the
storekeeper, faintly, after the girl had told him her plans fully.
"Who wants you to? I am giving it to Lottie," Janice declared. "Would
you refuse to let her take it from me, when it means a new life to
Lottie? You can't be so cruel!"
"Had you _ought_ to do it, dear Janice?" asked Miss 'Rill, herself. "It
seems too much for one person to do----"
"You're going to pay your own expenses, aren't you?" demanded Janice.
"Why should you do _that_? Just because you love Lottie, isn't it?"
"Ye-es," admitted the other, but with a little blush.
"Well, let _me_ show some love for her, too."
"Good Land o' Goshen!" cried old Mrs. Scattergood. "Somebody ought to
take and shake you, Janice Day! I don't see what your folks can be
thinking of. All that money just thrown away--for like enough the man
can't help the poor little thing at all. It is wicked!"
"We sha'n't pay for the operation if it is not successful. That is the
agreement Dr. Sharpless always makes," said Janice, firmly. "But, oh! I
hope he _is_ successful, and that the money will do him a lot of good."
"I declare for't! you are the strangest child!" muttered Mrs.
Scattergood. "I thought you was one o' these new-fashioned gals when I
first seen ye--all for excitement, and fashions, and things like that.
I've been wonderfully mistaken in you, Janice Day."
Oddly enough the old lady made small objection to her daughter's going
to Boston with the child. "Anyhow," she grumbled to Janice, "she won't
be runnin' into Hopewell's all the time if she ain't here."
"There will be no need of _that_, mother, if little Lottie is away,"
Miss 'Rill said, gently.
At home----Ah! that is where Janice had the greatest opposition to meet.
"I declare to goodness!" snarled Marty Day. "If you ain't the very
craziest girl there ever was, Janice! Givin' all that good money away!
And goin' without that buzz-wagon you've been talking about so long!"
"Well, I've only been _talking_ about it, Marty," laughed Janice. "I
couldn't really believe it was coming true----"
"And it ain't come true, it seems," snapped her cousin.
"No-o. Not exactly. But I had the surprise of getting Daddy's check, and
it was just _dear_ of him to send me such a lot of money."
"What do you suppose Broxton will say, girl, when he learns how you've
frittered that thousand dollars away?" demanded Uncle Jason, sternly.
"He'll never say a word--in objection," she cried. "You can read right
here in his letter how I am to use the money in just any way I
please--and no questions asked!"
"But you've talked so much about your automobile, deary," said Aunt
'Mira, faintly. "Ain't you most disappointed to death, child?"
"Oh, no, Aunty," returned Janice, cheerfully. "You know, I could be just
awfully selfish, _in my mind!_ But when it came to running about the
country in an automobile, with poor Lottie blind and helpless because of
my selfishness----No, no! I could not have done it."
"I don't suppose you could, child," sighed the large lady, shaking her
head. "But whatever am I goin' to do with that auto coat and them veils
I bought? They don't seem jest the thing to wear out, jogging behind old
Sam and Lightfoot."
However, Mr. Day had a chance to trade the two old farm horses off that
spring for a handsome pair of sorrels. They were good work horses as
well as drivers. An old double-seated buckboard which had been under one
of the Day sheds for a decade, was hauled out and repaired, painted and
varnished, new cushions made, and on occasion the family went to drive
about the country.
"For it does seem," Mrs. Day, with wondering satisfaction, more than
once declared, "it does seem as though your Pa, Marty, has a whole lot
more time to gad abeout now than he use ter--yet we're gettin' along
better. I don't understand it."
"Huh!" grunted Marty. "See all the work _I_ do. Don't ye s'pose that
counts none?"
Janice merely smiled quietly as she heard this conversation. Uncle Jason
was up and out to work now by daybreak, like other farmers. He smoked
his after-dinner pipe by the back door; but it was only one pipe. He
often declared that "his wimmen folk" made such a bustle inside the
kitchen after dinner that he couldn't even think. He just _had_ to go
back to work "to get shet of 'em."
The bacilli of _work_ had taken hold of the Day family. Uncle Jason had
begun to take pride in his fields and in his crops. Nobody in all
Poketown, or thereabout, had such a garden as the Days this spring.
Janice and Mrs. Day attended to it after it was planted. Mr. Day had
bought a man-weight hoe and seeding machine, and the garden mould was so
fine and free from filth that the "women folks" could use the machine
with ease.
Yes, the Jason Days were more prosperous than ever before. And all their
prosperity did not arise from that twenty dollars a month that came
regularly for Janice's board.
"Sometimes I feel downright ashamed to take that money, Jason," Aunt
'Mira admitted to her spouse. "Janice is sech a help to me. She is jest
like a darter. I shall hate to ever haf ter give her up. And some day
soon, now, Broxton will be comin' home."
"Wal, don't ye worry. If Broxton is makin' money like he says he
is--so's he kin give that gal a thousand dollars to throw to the birdies
like she's done--why should we worry? I ain't sayin' but what she's been
a lot of help to us."
"In more ways than one," whispered his wife.
"Right, by jinks!" admitted the farmer.
"Look what this old place looked like when she come!"
"She sartainly has stirred us all up."
"An' look at Marty!"
"I got to give her credit," admitted Mr. Day. "She's made a man of
Marty. Done more for him than the school done."
"But it was her started him to goin' to school ag'in."
"So I tell ye," agreed Mr. Day again. "Janice is at the bottom of
everything good that's happened in Poketown for two years. I dunno as
people realize it; but I'm proud of her!"
"Then, I tell you what, Jason. I'm going to save the board money for
her," declared Aunt 'Mira, with a little catch in her breath. "You won't
mind? Marty'll have the place an' all you kin save, when we are gone;
but that dear little thing----Givin' her money to that blind child, and
all----"
Mrs. Day broke down and "sniveled." At least, that is what her husband
would have called it under some circumstances, and crying did not
beautify Mrs. Day's fat face. But for some reason the old man came close
to her and put his arms about her bulbous shoulders.
"There, there, 'Mira! don't you cry about it. You sartainly have got a
good heart. An' I won't say nothin' agin' your savin' for the gal.
Mebbe she'll need your savin's, too. Broxton Day is too free-handed,
and he'll have his ups and downs again, p'r'aps. Anyhow, whatever you
say is right, _is_ right, 'Mira," and he kissed her suddenly in a shamed
faced sort of way, and then hurried out.
The good woman sat there in her kitchen, with shining eyes, blushing
like a girl. She touched tenderly her wet cheek where her husband had
laid his lips.
"He--he wouldn't ha' done that two year ago, I don't believe!" she
murmured.
She picked up the ever-present story paper; but her mind was not attuned
to imaginary romance that morning. And there were the breakfast dishes
waiting----
She went about her work briskly, and singing. Somehow it seemed as
though _real_ romance had come into the old Day house, and into Aunt
'Mira's life!
The weeks rolled on toward summer. A fortnight after little Lottie and
Miss 'Rill had gone to Boston a letter came from the specialist to
Hopewell Drugg. The operation on the child's eyes had been performed
almost as soon as she had arrived at the sanitarium; now he could
announce that it was successful. Lottie could see and, barring some
accident, would be a bright-eyed girl and woman.
Already, the doctor urged, she was fit to go into the school for the
deaf and dumb in which such wonderful miracles were achieved for the
afflicted. The good surgeon, learning from Miss 'Rill the circumstances
of the child's being brought to him, had subscribed two hundred dollars
toward Lottie's tuition and board in the school for the deaf and dumb.
It was joyful news for both Hopewell and Janice. That evening the
storekeeper got out his violin and played his old tunes over and
over--especially "Silver Threads Among the Gold."
"But it sounds more like a hymn of praise to-night," Nelson Haley
whispered in Janice's ear, as they sat on the front porch of the little
shop and listened to the violin.
A week later the little spinster came home. Her visit in Boston seemed
to have done her a world of good. She brought a great trunk packed full
of things to wear, or goods to be made up into pretty dresses and the
like.
"I declare for't!" ejaculated her mother. "Looks like you had been
buyin' your trossoo--an' old maid like you, too!"
But Miss 'Rill was unruffled, and parried her mother's suspicion.
When the lake boat, the _Constance Colfax_, began to run on her summer
schedule after Decoration Day, many more summer tourists than usual got
off the boat at Poketown to look about. The dock was so neat, and the
surroundings of the landing so attractive, that these visitors were led
to go further up into the town.
There was the pleasant, rambling, old Lake View Inn, freshened with
paint that spring, and with a green grass plot before it, and wide,
screened verandas.
"Why, it's only its name that is against it!" cried the wondering
tourists. "It's not _poky_ at all."
These remarks, repeated as they were, made the merchants of the village
stop and think. Ere this a board of trade had been formed, and the
welfare of the town was eagerly discussed at the meetings of the board.
Mr. Massey, the druggist, who was active, of course, got another idea
from Janice.
He began to delve into the past history of Poketown. He learned how and
when it had been settled--and by whom. People had mostly forgotten (if
they ever had known) the true history of the town.
A pioneer named Cyrus Polk had first built his cabin on the heights
overlooking this little bay. He had been the first smith in this region,
too, and gradually around "Polk's Smithy" had been reared the nucleus of
the present town.
Through the years the silent "l" in the original settler's name had been
lost entirely. But the post office agreed to put it back into the name,
and a big signboard was painted and set up at the dock:
"POLKTOWN."
"It sartain sure looks a hull lot diff'rent, even if ye _do_ pernounce
it the same," admitted Walky Dexter.
So much was happening these balmy June days! The school year--the first
in the new schoolhouse--was going to end in a blaze of glory for Nelson
Haley, Janice was sure. Elder Concannon had promised in writing to give
his lot upon High Street for the site of a library building, whenever
the association should have subscribed twelve hundred dollars toward the
building itself.
Then came the first love letter that Janice Day had ever received! Such
a letter was it that she treasures it yet and will always do so. It was
one that she could proudly show to anybody she chose, without betraying
that intimacy that the ordinary love letter is supposed to contain.
News had come regularly to Hopewell Drugg from the teachers at the
school where little Lottie had taken up her abode. Because the child was
naturally so bright, and because of the fact that before she lost her
eyesight she had learned the alphabet and some primary studies, and had
not forgotten it all, Lottie was making marvelous progress the teachers
declared.
A much-bethumbed envelope, addressed in crooked "printed" characters to
"Mis Janis Day, Pokton," enclosed in a teacher's letter to the
store-keeper, was the cover of Janice's love letter. Inside, the child
said:
"Dear Janis, jus' to think, I can see reel good, and my
techur what I luv says maybe I will heer reel good bymeby.
"Deer Janis, I no I cante spel good yet, and my ritin aint
strate on the paper. But I want you shud be the firs to get
leter from me I luv yu so.
"Deer Janis, you got me the muney for the docker. And he was
soo good himself, he never hardly hurt me a tall.
"Deer Janis, I luv yu mos of all, cos if yu hadn ben yu I
wudn never seen no moar. An it was so dark all times. Thats
wy I feld down cellar. An now I am goin to heer they say.
"Deer Janis, see if my echo is thar. Yu no my echo--that is
the way techur says to spell it. If my echo is waitn tell it
I am comin' to heer it again.
"And I luv you lots and lots, deer Janis. I will show you
how much when I com home to father and Pokton. no moar at
prasens, from your little Lottie."
Janice read the pitiful little scrawl through the first time on the
store porch. Then, tear-blinded, she started down the hill toward the
old wharf at the inlet where she had first seen Hopewell Drugg's
unfortunate child.
She was halfway down the hill before she heard a quick step behind her
and knew, without turning, that it was Nelson Haley.
CHAPTER XXX
WHAT THE ECHO MIGHT HAVE HEARD
"What's your hurry, Janice?" demanded the young teacher, coming to her
side, smiling. Then he saw her wet lashes and exclaimed: "My dear girl!
you are crying?"
"Not--not now," said Janice, shaking her head and her voice catching a
little as she spoke.
"Tell me what is the matter?" begged Nelson. "Who's hurt you?"
"They're not those sort of tears, Nelson!" she cried, with a quivering
little smile. "Oh, I ought to be just the very happiest girl alive!"
"And in tears?"
"Tears of joy, I tell you," she declared.
"Not weeping over the lost motor car, then?"
"Oh, my goodness! No! How could one be so foolish with such a dear, dear
letter as I've got here. A regular _love_ letter, Nelson Haley!"
The young man's face changed suddenly. It looked very grim, and he
caught at her hand which held little Lottie's letter.
"What's that?" he demanded, so gruffly that Janice was quite astonished.
"Why, Nelson Haley! What's the matter?" she asked, looking at him with
wide-open eyes.
"Who's been writing to you, Janice?" he asked, huskily.
"I will show it to you. It is too, too dear!" exclaimed the girl, again
half sobbing. "Read it!"
The teacher spread out the crumpled page. The look of relief that came
into his face when he saw Lottie's straggling pen-tracks was not at all
understood by Janice.
He read the child's letter appreciatively. She saw the tears flood into
his own eyes as he gently folded the letter and handed it back.
"Why, Janice," he said, at last. "What's a motor car to _that_?"
"That's what I say," she cried, and laughed. "Come on! let's tell it to
Lottie's echo. We'll see if it is still lurking in the dark old spruce
trees over yonder on the point."
She darted ahead of him and reached the ruined wharf where Lottie had
stood when first Janice had seen her. In imitation of the child she
raised her voice in that weird cry:
"He-a! he-a! he-a!"
Back came the imitation, shot out of the wood by the nymph:
"'E-a! 'e-a! 'e-a!"
"Ha, ha!" laughed the girl. "There's Lottie's echo."
"'A!" laughed the echo. "'Ere's Lottie's echo!"
Nelson, flushed and breathing rather heavily, reached the old dock.
"What a girl you are, Janice!" he said.
"And what a very, very old person you are getting to be, Nelson Haley,"
she told him. "Principal of the Polktown School! I saw your article in
the State School Register. Theories! You write just as though you know
what you were writing about."
"Oh--well," he said, rather taken aback by her joking.
"And it wasn't much more than a year ago that you turned up your nose at
the profession of teaching."
"Aw--now!" he said, pleadingly.
"And _you_ were the young man who wanted to get through life without
hard work--or, so you said."
"Don't you know that it is only the fool who doesn't change his
opinion--and change it frequently, too?" he bantered back at her.
"You must have changed a whole lot, Nelson Haley," she declared, with
sudden gravity. "Don't--don't you feel awfully _funny_ inside? It's a
terrible shock, I should think, for one to turn right square
around----"
"I don't feel humorous--not a little bit," he interposed, seriously. "I
have been working toward an end. I expect my reward."
"Oh, Nelson! The college? Are they really going to invite you to go
there to teach?"
"That isn't the reward I mean," he said, shaking his head.
"For pity's sake! something bigger than _that_? My!" Janice cried, all
dimpling again, "but you _are_ a person with great expectations, aren't
you?"
"I certainly am," he said, bowing gravely. "I have a great goal in view.
Let me tell you----"
But suddenly she jumped up and walked along the edge of the inlet away
from the dock. "Oh, do come along, Nelson. We don't want to sit there
all day."
Nelson, flushed and only half rose. Then he settled back again and said,
with some doggedness:
"I've got something to tell you myself. This is a good place to talk."
"Why, how serious!"
"It is serious business--for me," declared the young man.
"And you're a trifle ungallant," she accused, looking at him from under
lowered lashes.
"This is no time for gallantry. This is _business_."
"What business?" she asked, tentatively approaching.
"The business of living. The business of finding out what's going to
happen to me--to _us_."
"My goodness!" murmured Janice. "You talk almost like a soothsayer."
"Come and hear what the astrologer has to say," urged Nelson, yet
without his customary lightness of speech and look. He was still very
serious.
"I don't know," she said, slowly, hesitating in her approach. "I am
almost afraid of you in this mood. Daddy says when a young man begins to
act like he was really seriously grappling with life, look out for him!"
"Your father is right. I am not to be trifled with, Miss Janice Day."
"Why, Nelson! is something really wrong?" she asked him, and came a step
nearer.
"As far as my future is concerned," said he, quietly, "it seems to be
quite all right."
"Then the college----?"
"I have a letter, too," he said, pulling it out of his pocket.
This bait brought her to him. He thrust the letter into her hand, but he
held onto that hand, too, and she could not easily pull away from him.
"What--what is it, Nelson?" she asked, looking at him for only a moment,
and then dropping her gaze before his intense look.
"I've had a committee come to see me and look over my work at the
Polktown School."
[Illustration: She just _had_ to raise her eyes and look into his
earnest ones. (See page 307.)]
"Oh, Nelson!"
"Now the secretary of the college faculty writes me the nicest kind of a
letter. I've made good with them, Janice."
"I--I'm so glad!" she murmured, eyes still down, and trying ever so
faintly to wriggle her hand out of his.
Suddenly Nelson Haley caught her other hand, too. He held them firmly
and--for some reason--she just _had_ to raise her eyes and look straight
into his earnest ones.
"I've made good with them, Janice!" he cried--he almost shouted it. "But
that's nothing--just nothing! The big thing with me now--the reward I
want--is to hear you say that I've won out with you. Is it so,
Janice--have I won out with _you_?"
The long lashes screened the hazel eyes again. She looked on the one
hand and on the other. There really seemed no escape, this greatly
metamorphosed Nelson Haley was _so_ insistent.
So she raised her lashes again and looked straight into his eyes. What
she whispered the echo might have heard; and she nodded her head
quickly, several times.
* * * * *
They came up through the grassy lane in the gloaming. Mrs. Beasely would
be waiting supper for her boarder; but Nelson scouted the idea that he
should not see Janice home first.
Lights had begun to twinkle in the sitting-rooms of the various houses
along the street. But there was a moon. Indeed, that was the excuse they
had for remaining so late on the shore of the inlet. They had stopped to
see it rise.
Through the thick trees the moonlight searched out the side porch of
Hopewell Drugg's store. The plaintive notes of the storekeeper's violin
breathed tenderly out upon the evening air:
"Darling, I am growing old--
Silver threads among the gold"
sighed Janice, happily. "And that is Miss 'Rill beside him there on the
porch--don't you see her?"
"I see," said Nelson. "Mrs. Beasely is helping 'Rill make her wedding
gown. Little Lottie is going to have a new mamma."
"And--and Hopewell's been playing that old song to her all these years!"
murmured Janice. "They are just as happy----"
"Aren't they!" agreed Nelson, with a thrill in his voice. "I hope that
when we're as old as they are, we'll be as happy, too. Do you
suppose----"
Nobody but Janice heard the rest of his question--not even the echo!
THE END
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