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 Mics 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_-lectmen 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.
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 bird-like 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 layout 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 schoolteacher.
"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 schoolteacher, 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 fly-specks—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, upraised 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 hob-nobbing 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.