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—debris 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 up-keep 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 run-about! 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 how; 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 ev'rything 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 shamedfaced 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 tonight," 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 storekeeper, 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 there 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."
"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!