"Why, you see," said the excited boy. "I ran's hard as I could and I overbrook that girl at the took"
"What? What?" gasped Janice. "Say that again, Gummy."
"Oh—I—"
His sister went off into a gale of laughter. "Oh, Gummy!" she cried, "you 'overbrook' her at the 'took,' did you? Your tongue's twisted again."
"Oh, pshaw!" exclaimed Gummy. "Of course, I mean I overtook her at the brook."
"That's better," giggled Amy. "But you did get awfully 'gummed up,' Gummy, didn't you?"
"Huh!" he snorted.
"He's the most awful boy you ever saw, Janice. He is always getting twisted in his talk."
"Like the young man in church who asked the girl if he could 'occupew a seat in this pie?'"
"Even worse than that," cried Amy, much to her brother's disgust. "Why, years ago when we lived in Napsburg, where the twins were born, he made an awful mistake—and to our minister, too."
"Aw," objected Gummy, "can't you keep anything to yourself?"
"Go on," urged Janice.
"Now, I say!" again protested the boy.
"Listen, Janice!" giggled Amy. "It's awfully funny. The minister met Gummy on the street and asked him what we had decided to call the twins.
"'You know, I expect to christen them, Gumswith,' he said to Gummy, 'and I want to be sure to get the names right. What are they?'
"And what do you suppose Gummy said?"
"I am sure I couldn't guess," Janice declared. "Let's see: the twins are Sydney and Kate, aren't they?
"That is right," giggled Amy. "But Gummy told the minister we had decided to call them 'Kidney and Steak'!"
Janice herself was convulsed with laughter at this. Gummy was annoyed about it.
"Why don't you keep something to yourself once in a while, Amy?" he growled to his sister. "Janice will think I'm a perfect chump."
"Come on now, Gummy," Janice interrupted cheerily. "You are keeping something to yourself that I very much want to know."
"Oh! About that Swede! Amy knocked it clear out of my head," declared the boy.
"Well, let us hear about it," urged Janice.
"Why, I overtook the girl at the brook," said Gummy, getting the statement right this time. "She might be just the girl you are looking for, from what you told me about her looks. I saw her face plainly when I passed her."
"Where did she go?"
"To that little house at the end of the farm road, just where it opens into the turnpike. Oh, I've seen the place before. I drove out past there the other day for Mr. Harriman."
"That must be the Johnson's house," Janice said. "That is what
Stella said the tenant's name was."
"Well, she went in there," said Gummy. "She seemed in a dreadful hurry. She pounded on the door, and she called to them in Swedish. I waited behind the hedge until she got in and the family was quieted down again."
"That's good! It's 'most sure to be Olga, Janice, and you can see her to-morrow and get your box back—at least, find out where it is," said Amy encouragingly.
"Well, I'll tell daddy," sighed Janice. "It may be the same
Olga. I hope so. And if she has got my box of treasures—well!
I'll forgive her anything if I only get back mother's picture and
daddy's letters."
CHAPTER XV. THE LOST TRAIL
Mr. Day had not yet gone to bed when the young folks reached the house; but Mrs. Watkins had long since retired. The light in the living room assured Janice that her father awaited her return, and bidding Amy and Gummy good-night at the gate, she ran into the house in great excitement.
"Oh, Daddy! Daddy! Guess!" she cried to him. "Just think! She broke a big cutglass dish, and I'm 'most sure it's Olga—"
"Wait!" exclaimed Mr. Day, putting up both hands. "Mercy, I pray, my dear. I don't know what you are talking about."
"But you know Olga, Daddy."
"To my sorrow," he groaned, "It can't be that you have found out anything about that Swedish girl? I have been searching Pickletown again this evening."
"Oh, Daddy!" she cried, "maybe Olga is just where you can find her to-morrow. And she did break one of Mrs. Latham's very best dishes, and—"
"Let us hear all about this in due order," laughed Broxton Day. "I can see that you are far too much excited to go promptly to bed. Explain yourself, my dear."
When he had heard it all, he did not appear to be as much impressed as Janice expected him to be. It was a small chance, in his opinion, that the girl who had broken Mrs. Latham's dish was the same Olga who had for two months held sway in the Day kitchen.
"But we will make a pilgrimage to the cottage on the back of the Latham farm," Daddy promised. "If I can get away from the bank early to-morrow afternoon, we will go. I know the place, and there is a family of Swedish people living there. Of course, by chance, it might be Olga your friend Gummy followed home."
"Oh, no! It would be providential, Daddy," Janice declared, smiling. "You say yourself that Providence is not chance."
"True," he agreed, with gravity. "If we get back the treasure-box, with all in it, I shall be very, very thankful indeed, and shall consider it a Providential happening."
"Daddy, dear!" whispered Janice.
It was at these times, when they spoke of the lost treasures, that Janice was so heart-stricken because of daddy's expression of countenance. Those letters from her dear, dead mother, which her father prized so highly, were continually in Broxton Day's mind. She realized it was a loss that time would hardly mend.
"And all my fault! All my fault!" she sobbed when she was alone in her bedroom. "Had I not been so dreadfully careless Olga would never have got hold of that box when she was mad and run off with it. And suppose she doesn't think the things in it are worth much? She might throw them away!"
So, despite the good time they had had at Stella Latham's party,
Janice went to bed in no happy frame of mind.
Saturday was bound to be a very busy day; and Janice did not wake up early. Daddy left a note for her on the table saying he would be at home with some kind of a conveyance not long after the bank closed at one o'clock.
She knew what that meant. They were to ride out to the Johnson house and make inquiries for the girl, Olga. Janice was sorry she had slept so late, for Mrs. Watkins expected her to do what she termed "her share" of the work.
"If your pa lets you sit up till all hours, so that you're not fit for anything in the morning, should I be blamed?" complained the faded-out lady. "I'm sure I have enough to do every day, and all day. I have got to have some help on Saturdays and that is all there is to it."
Janice knew well enough that the reason the work piled up so upon the last day of the week was because it was allowed to accumulate through the other days. But the kitchen floor did have to be scrubbed. It was a sight!
If the woman would only mop it every other day it would not be so bad; but it seemed to Janice that Mrs. Watkins would just wade through dirt to her knees in the kitchen before she would use either mop or scrubbing brush.
It was true that daddy did not often look into the kitchen, now that there was somebody supposedly capable of keeping the room, as well as the rest of the house, in order. And Janice was glad he did not look around the house much.
Such training as she had enjoyed under her mother's eye had made Janice thorough. Mrs. Day had been a thoroughly good housekeeper.
And she had always kept so well up with her housework that there were never any difficult jobs left to haunt one, and her house looked always neat. Nor was she obliged to keep half her prettily furnished rooms shut up to keep them clean!
Janice did all she could on this short Saturday morning. She had first of all to he sure that daddy's room was dusted—every bit. Then there were the halls and stairs to do. After those, the porches must be swept.
"For you know," sighed Mrs. Watkins, "it looks so much better for a child like you to be out sweeping the porch and paths than what it would me."
Janice could not quite understand this reasoning. But she knew it must be a deal easier for Mrs. Watkins to rock in a chair in the house than to wield the broom. That went without saying.
She did not think of lunch, although the faded-out lady did not neglect her own. Janice was down on her hands and knees, with scrubbing brush and pail, when the housekeeper carried some savory dish or other into the dining room.
"I presume since you had your breakfast so late you will not care to eat now," said the woman. To tell the truth, a tear or two dropped into the strong soda water in the pail.
"Though I don't believe salt will help start the grease-spots on this floor," Janice thought, rubbing her eyes with the wrist of one hand. "There! I am a regular cry-baby. I said I would do something to relieve daddy of bothering about the housework. And if scrubbing a floor is the best I can do—"
Suddenly a shadow appeared at the door. Janice looked up and squealed. There was daddy himself—at least an hour and a half too early.
"Well, well!" exclaimed Broxton Day, rather sternly, "what is the meaning of this?"
"Dirt on the floor boards—scrubbing brush—elbow grease," retorted his daughter, making vigorous explanatory motions. "Didn't you ever see a 'scrub lady' before, Daddy?"
"Humph! so there is a Cinderella in the house is there?" he said.
Mrs. Watkins opened the dining-room door. She was swallowing a mouthful which seemed to go down hard. Mr. Day's unexpected appearance disturbed her.
"Oh, Mr. Day," she cried, feebly, "have—have you had your lunch?"
"I have, Mrs. Watkins," he replied. Then to Janice: "No matter how much you may like to scrub floors, my dear, you will have to leave this one for Mrs. Watkins to finish. There is a car at the door. I have borrowed it for a couple of hours, and you must make haste and put on something different and come with me to look for Olga."
"Well," Janice got up from her knees slowly.
"Hurry," said daddy sternly. And he stood and waited until
Janice went out of the room.
"So you will not have lunch, Mr. Day?" asked Mrs. Watkins coolly.
"No. But there is one thing I will have, Mrs. Watkins," he said sternly. "I will have you attend to your work, and not put it on Janice, while you remain here!"
"I do not understand you, sir," said the woman, her nose in the air.
"Let me make myself plain then," said Broxton Day. "I will not pay you wages to shift such work as this," pointing to the scrub-pail, "upon my daughter. I want that understood here and now. I can no longer give you carte blanche at the grocery and provision store. I will do the marketing myself hereafter. You will furnish the lists."
"Sir?" ejaculated Mrs. Watkins haughtily.
"I have kept tabs on the accounts this last week. In no seven days since I was married have the expenses for the table been half what they have been this week."
"I am not used to a poverty-stricken household, Mr. Day!" sneered
Mrs. Watkins.
"But you soon will be," Broxton Day told her grimly, "if I let you have a free hand in this way. I am not a rich man, and I soon will be a poor one at this rate."
"I want you to understand, Mr. Day, that no lady can demean herself."
"Wait a moment," said the man, still grimly. "I did not hire you to be a lady. I hired you to do the housework. I can't have you here unless you keep your share of the contract. Please remember that, Mrs. Watkins."
He left her abruptly and walked through to the front of the house. He saw that at her place on the dining table was the remains of a broiled squab-chicken—a very tasty bit for a hard working woman like Mrs. Watkins.
"Are you ready, daughter?" he called up the stairway.
"Just a minute or two, Daddy," replied Janice.
She felt that they were in trouble again. All she had tried to do to keep him from knowing just how badly things about the house were going had been for naught.
But she winked back the tears and "practised a smile" in her looking glass before she ran down to join daddy on the porch. There was a big touring car out in front. Janice knew it belonged to the vice-president of the Farmers ad Merchants Bank.
"Oh, what a fine car, Daddy!" she whispered, clinging to his hand. "Let's play it is ours—while we are in it, of course."
"Would you like to have a car my dear?" he asked her, as they settled themselves in the tonneau, and the driver started the machine.
"Oh!" she cried. "I could just jump out of my skin when I think of it! Every time I ride with Stella
Latham I'm just as covetous as I can be. I guess I am real wicked, Daddy."
"I shouldn't be surprised," he returned, smiling. "It would be nice to have all the comforts and the luxuries of the rich—without their troubles."
"M-mm!" said Janice. "But even their troubles can't be so bad.
Not as bad as poor people's troubles."
"Like ours?" he returned, smiling down at her.
"It is a fact that we cannot keep a hired girl. We're not as lucky as the man I heard of who was boasting of having kept a cook a whole month. But it seemed that this month his house was quarantined for scarlet fever."
"Oh, Daddy!" giggled Janice. "Let's get a yellow, or a red, card from the Board of Health, and tack it up outside the door."
"And so keep Mrs. Watkins, whether or no? I am not sure that we can stand her, my dear."
"We-ell, there are worse," Janice confessed. "And we have had them," commented her father rather grimly. "Ah, that's the little house where the Johnsons live!"
"Oh, dear me! If it should be our Olga!"
"We'll know about that pretty soon," said Mr. Day comfortingly.
"Stop here, Harry."
The car was halted, and Mr. Day jumped out and went up to the house. When he knocked a tall, pale woman, with a little baby in her arms, opened the narrow door. It took but a glance to reveal her nationality.
"You bane want my hoosban'?" asked the Swedish woman.
"No, Mrs. Johnson," replied Mr. Day. "I came to inquire about a young woman that I believe is staying here."
"No vooman here but me," declared the other, shaking her head vigorously.
"What? Haven't you a friend here named Olga?"
"Olga bane gone," declared the woman sullenly.
"Gone away? exclaimed Mr. Day. "Since last evening?"
"She bane gone."
"Are you Mrs. Johnson?" asked the man, earnestly.
"My name bane Yonson—yes," she agreed. "I don't know nottin' 'bout Olga. She bane gone. She did not mane to break dish, anyway."
"Oh!" exclaimed Mr. Day, remembering what Janice had told him about the accident at the Latham's the evening before. "We have not come about the dish. It is for another matter entirely that we wish to find Olga."
"I not know where Olga bane go," pursued Mrs. Johnson, shaking her head vigorously.
"She went away this morning, then?"
"Yah. She bane go dis mornin'."
"Is her name Olga Cedarstrom?".
"No! No!" exclaimed Mrs. Johnson, shaking her head vigorously.
"You not b'know dis Olga. She 'nudder girl."
"Where is your husband?" asked Mr. Day hopelessly. "Perhaps he can tell me more about her."
"Yon Yonson gone to Dover," declared his wife, suddenly shutting the door and leaving Mr. Broxton Day outside on the step.
CHAPTER XVI. A LETTER FROM POKETOWN
"It looks as though we had come upon a fool's errand," said Mr. Day, coming back to the car and his daughter. "Mrs. Johnson says that girl was not named Cedarstrom, and that she has already gone away."
"Do you suppose it is the truth, Daddy?" asked the anxious
Janice.
"Well, it is probably the truth. All Olgas are not named 'Cedarstrom,' of course. And I fancy the girl was frightened because of the broken cutglass dish and escaped early this morning."
"Why? Would Mrs. Latham try to make her pay for it?"
"Perhaps. At least, this mysterious Olga thought she would be
made to pay for the dish. Or perhaps she feared arrest.
Sometimes these foreigners are very ignorant regarding our laws.
She might easily have been frightened away."
"But if she is our Olga—"
"This woman here is stubborn. She will probably tell us nothing more about her friend. And she said flatly that the name was not Cedarstrom."
"Oh, dear!" sighed Janice, "it is too, too bad."
"It is too bad that the trail seems lost. I will try to see Mr. Johnson himself. We will make sure that the girl was not the one we are after. But, you see, we are inquiring for Olga for a reason that is likely to frighten her and her friends. I think some of those people over in Pickletown might tell me more than they do about Olga and that Willie Sangreen."
"It is just too bad!" half sobbed Janice. "I hoped we should find the treasure-box this time."
"Have patience. Rome was not built in a day," said her father.
"We're not building Rome," the girl retorted, but trying to smile again. "I guess even that was an easier job than finding a lost Swedish girl." "Don't worry, honey."
"But I can't help worrying," said Janice, sobbing again.
"You are overwrought, my dear. Don't let your mind run upon unpleasant things. That treasure-box. " "Will never be found, Daddy!" cried his little daughter. "I am sure! And if it isn't found I don't —don't—know—what I—shall—do."
He put his arm about her and hugged Janice tight against his side. "Don't lose hope so easily. And see here! Here is something new I forgot to tell you."
"What is it, Daddy?" she asked, as he began to search an inner pocket of his coat.
"A letter. From your Aunt Almira. Just listen to it."
"Oh, Daddy! From Aunt Almira in—in Poketown?"
"Yes. My half-brother's wife—and a good soul she is."
He drew the letter from its envelope and unfolded it. He began to read the epistle with a smile wreathing his lips, for Aunt Almira's communication was unintentionally funny:
"'Dear Brocky:
"'Jase won't never get around to writing you, far as I see, so I had better do so before you get the suspicion that we are all dead. We might as well be and buried, too, here in Poketown—for it is right next door to a cemetery for deadness, I do believe. You know what it was when you was lucky enough to get out of it twenty years ago. Well, it is worse now. There has been nothing new in Poketown since you went away, excepting the town pump's been painted once.
"That time you came to see us with Laura, when Janice was a little girl—"
"Why, Daddy!" interrupted Janice, her eyes round with wonder, "I don't remember Poketown at all."
"You were too little to recall that visit. I have only been back there once since you and your dear mother and I visited Jase and Almira." Then he went on, reading aloud:
"'You remember the house needed painting and the front gate hung by one hinge. Well, it still needs painting and that one hinge has give up the ghost now. So you see, there hasn't been many changes. You're the only Day, I guess, that ever had any "get up and get" to them.
"'But my heart has been full of thoughts of you since we heard of poor Laura's death. We often speak of you and wonder how you and that little girl get on all stark alone. I know how I should feel if Jase and Marty was left as you and Janice be.'"
"Oh," gasped Janice, "she'd be dead!"
"Well," mused her father, "Almira, living in such a dead place as Poketown, evidently considers that she knows about how she would feel in her grave."
"Is it such an awful place, Daddy?" Janice asked seriously.
"What do you mean?" he inquired, in surprise. "Oh, Poketown, I mean, of course. "It is a lovely place. But it must be confessed that it is a good deal behind the times. It is not as bad as Aunt 'Mira makes it out to be, I guess. Only, the old Day house has pretty well gone to rack and ruin."
"Well. Let's hear the rest," urged Janice.
"'Jase says to be mighty careful if you should have to go down to that Mexico place. He reads in his Ledger that sometimes there is shooting down there and that the Mexicaners don't care who they shoot.'"
"Oh, Daddy!" cried Janice, "you don't mean you are going to
Mexico?"
"I wrote them when I thought it might be necessary," he confessed.
"And you would send me East if you went? Oh, Daddy, please!"
"Well, my dear, that seemed the wisest thing to do."
"Oh, Daddy!"
"Don't worry now. We have engaged a new superintendent at the mines, and I guess things will go on all right. Listen to what your Aunt 'Mira says:
"'Of course, if you have to go down there on business, you send Janice right to us. I'm speaking for Jase as well as myself. We ain't rich, of course; but there's enough to fill another mouth yet awhile, so don't be bashful.
"'Hoping this finds you and Janice in health, it leaving us all the same, I will close,
"'Your, sister-in-law and Janice's aunt, "'ALMIRA DAY.'"
"I hope you won't have to go, and that I won't have to go,
Daddy!" exclaimed the girl anxiously.
"She's a good soul—Almira. She'd do her best by you."
"I don't want anybody to do their best by me—only you, Daddy."
"But you see, my dear, I couldn't leave you alone at home here.
Certainly not with a woman like Mrs. Watkins."
"We-ell!"
"Why, she would be imposing upon you all the time. No, indeed.
I feel that she is not the woman for our house, after all."
"Oh, dear, Daddy! isn't it funny how many people there are in the world who don't just fit?"
"Right you are, my dear," he agreed, laughing again. "'Round pegs in square holes.' The woods are full of them."
"That Mrs. Watkins never should have gone out to work.'
"I guess not."
"And people like Mrs. Carringford have got their own families and their own troubles. So we can't get them."
"What put Amy's mother in your mind?"
"I wish you could see their house, Daddy."
"I have," he said, rather grimly. "And it is sight!"
"Not inside! Oh, not at all, Daddy!" she cried. "It is as neat as wax. Mrs. Carringford is just a love of a housekeeper. I wish you could see how neat everything is kept," and she sighed.
The automobile soon brought them to the house at Eight Hundred and Forty-five Knight Street. Mr. Day had become serious again as they came in sight of the cottage in which so much of a disturbing nature had happened of late.
For a few days, it was true, Broxton Day had hoped the new housekeeper would prove an efficient and trustworthy employee, but what he had seen on coming unexpectedly home this Saturday noon, had caused doubt to rise in his mind.
Experience had taught him that domestic servants are the most independent of laborers. To dare call one to account—especially one like Mrs. Watkins—was to court disaster.
He had felt this to be the case at the time, yet he was unwilling to see Janice made a drudge of by the too ladylike Mrs. Watkins. If the kitchen floor had to be scrubbed, and the houseworker would not scrub it, he would do it himself!
In this mood he entered his home. All was quiet. There was nobody in the living room or dining room. On the table in the latter room were the dirty dishes and the remains of Mrs. Watkins' lunch.
"Oh! where is she?" gasped Janice, following her father through the rooms.
Mr. Day led the way to the kitchen. The pail stood where Janice had left it, the scrubbing brush beside it. The fire in the range had gone out.
With a smothered cry Janice darted upstairs. In a moment her voice reached his expectant ear:
"Oh, Daddy, she's gone!" she cried.
CHAPTER XVII. MISS PECKHAM WASHES HER HANDS
"It seemed that Mrs. Sophronia Watkins had never sent for her trunk; so all she had to do was to pack her bag and walk out of the house. And she had done that very thing.
"'What can't be cured, must be endured,'" quoted Daddy. "Here is a nice little island of clean floor where you scrubbed, Janice. I will build the fire, heat water, and finish the job."
'"Oh, no, Daddy! Let me. Your poor knees—" "My knees are not poor, I'd have you know," he retorted, laughing. "You dust around and make the house presentable for Sunday. 'Thus endeth the lesson.' No more 'lady' housekeepers, Janice, for us."
"No-o. I s'pose not. But who shall we get?"
"That is on the knees of the gods, my child," answered Daddy, who often used quotations that Janice did not altogether understand, but which she thought were very fine, just the same. "I guess you mean that nobody knows unless he's omniscient," she said now. "That's a big word, Daddy, but we had it in our lesson the other day. And I guess only somebody who knows everything could guess who will work for us next. Oh, dear!"
"These three weeks have been an expensive experience," said her father, ruefully enough. "Besides the addition to our household bills, Mrs. Watkins asked me the other evening for her month's wages. 'Salary,' she called it. She was about ten days ahead of time; but I gave it to her.
"So we can figure that our month's expenses have been about doubled. We could not stand that for long, Janice. Perhaps it is a blessing that Mrs. Watkins has taken herself off."
"Just the same, Daddy, I'm sorry you came home and caught me scrubbing the floor," Janice sighed. "We were getting along without your being bothered—after a fashion."
"At your cost," he said grimly. "No; we'll hobble along somehow."
"But it's such a hobble, Daddy! It seems to me that I'm not much of a 'do something' girl or I'd manage better than I do." And Janice sighed.
"You do wonders, daughter, for a girl of your age. Maybe it is daddy who fails."
"Oh, Daddy, never!"
Janice hurried to do the things Mrs. Watkins had left undone. And so she forgot some little purchases that had to be made, until it was almost dark.
Remembering these, she put on her hat and jacket in haste, and telling her father where she was going, ran out to the street. There were the "Weeks' tribe," Junior in the lead, with most of the other children of the neighborhood, running through Love Street in a noisy and excited throng.
"What can be the matter now? A fire?" wondered Janice.
Her errand took her in an opposite direction. But she saw people standing at their gates and chatting to each other as though there was some neighborhood interest that she did not know about.
"What is the matter with everybody?" Janice asked one girl whom she met.
"Why, didn't you see it?" was the surprised answer.
"Maybe I did, only I didn't know what it was," laughed Janice.
"A dancing bear. A great, big, brown fellow. You never saw the like," said her acquaintance.
"Well," thought Janice, "we cannot hire a dancing bear to do our housework, that is sure. So I don't believe he interests me."
She did the errand and hastened home, for daddy and she had not yet had supper. She ran in at the side door, and as she did so she heard voices in the kitchen. She halted, listening; for one of the voices she recognized as Miss Peckham's and it was high-pitched and angry.
"I wash my hands of you both—I can tell you that? exclaimed the spinster from next door. "I don't know why I should have put myself out to help you, Broxton Day, in any case."
"I do not see why you should," Daddy replied rapidly. "Yet I believe you meant well, and I thank you."
"'Meant well'?" sniffed the visitor. "I don't know what that's got to do with it. I gave you both—both Sophrony and you—the chance of your lives. And neither of you appreciate it. I wash my hands of you . Janice pushed open the door quietly and stepped in, closing it after her. Miss Peckham, with flashing black eyes and more color in her face than usual, had drawn herself up commandingly in the middle of the kitchen floor and was staring at Mr. Day angrily.
"There's that gal!" exclaimed the spinster. "She's the one to blame."
"I assure you to the contrary, Janice was doing her best to hide Mrs. Watkins' shortcomings from me," said Mr. Day, smiling warmly at his daughter.
"It don't matter. 'Twas over her you and Sophrony quarreled.
You admit it."
"I certainly do not admit that I quarreled with Mrs. Watkins," he said firmly. "She evidently took offense
at what I said to her, and she left. Now she cannot come back. Under no circumstances would I consider it."
"Well, I wash my hands of you both!" exclaimed Miss Peckham again, and she turned sharply toward the back door—the door opposite the one by which Janice had just entered.
The matter of washing her hands seemed important, if only a figure of speech. She repeated it angrily as she jerked open the kitchen door. And then she uttered a strange, squeaking cry that startled Janice and her father before they caught sight of what had caused the woman's fright.
Miss Peckham seemed transfixed with terror. She threw up her hands stiffly and toppled over backward. She fell just as though she had not a joint in her body, and she fell so hard that her feet sprang up into the air when her shoulders and the back of her head struck the floor.
Standing upright, framed by the doorframe, was a huge, shaggy, ragged looking bear, and he was snuffling and whining as bears do when they want something. Really the bear was begging, but none of those in the kitchen for a moment realized that fact.
Mr. Day grabbed the poker. Janice squealed and hid behind him. But her single affrighted cry was all the sound Miss Peckham made. She really had collapsed in what Janice thought was a faint.
Before Mr. Day could attack the creature, a whining voice from the darkness behind the bear said:
"Bread-butter, please, Signore—Signora. Pietro no bite. He gooda bear. Give supper, please. Pietro lika bread-butter."
The bear came down upon his forepaws, still whining. They could see, then, the chain by which a very dark man, with little gold rings in his ears, held the animal in leash. The trainer smiled very broadly while Pietro snuffed curiously at the soles of Miss Peckham's shoes.
And Miss Peckham kicked the harmless Pietro on the nose.
CHAPTER XVIII. ALL IN THE DAY'S WORK
The huge brown bear whined again and seemed grieved that his innocent attentions should be so ungratefully received. The hysterical Miss Peckham kicked again and Pietro backed away and left space for his suavely smiling master in the doorway of the Day's kitchen.
"I—I wash my hands of you!" moaned the prostrate spinster.
"What—How did you come to bring that bear into my yard?" demanded Mr. Day, finally recovering his voice.
"Boy tella me you give Pietro supper," said the man with the very engaging smile. "Bread-butter. Pietro lika heem."
"That Arlo Weeks Junior!" cried Janice suddenly. "Oh, Daddy, there he is outside."
There was a loud explosion of laughter back of the bear and his trainer, on the dark porch, and then the clatter of running feet. Junior's proclivity for practical jokes was too well known for the Days to doubt his connivance in this most surprising happening.
"No maka troub', Signore," whined the Italian master of the bear in about the same tone Bruin himself had begged.
Mr. Day was helping the overwrought Miss Peckham to her feet.
"Of all things!" he muttered, "Take her out the other way,
Janice—do."
"I wash my hands of you!" repeated the spinster, scarcely aware yet of what had happened. Then she suddenly descried the bear again. She shrieked in a most ear-piercing tone:
"There it is! I know Janice Day did that! Don't talk
to me! She's the plague of the neighborhood. No wonder Sophrony couldn't stand it here. Bringing bears into the house!"
"Oh! Oh, Miss Peckham! I never!" cried Janice.
"Don't deny it. You—you horrid child!" declared the spinster; and repeating again that she "washed her hands" of them all, she ran out of the house by the other door and quickly disappeared in the direction of her own cottage.
"Well, I never!" exclaimed Mr. Day, falling into a chair. Then he burst into uproarious laughter.
The Italian, who had been about to withdraw, and was tugging on the bear's chain, began to smile again. He foresaw leniency when the master of the house could laugh like this.
Janice gave way to merriment, too. It was funny. Much as she was sorry for Miss Peckham's fright, the situation altogether was one to amuse her.
Pietro waddled into the kitchen and sat up like a dog to beg. A bear is a foolish looking beast at best, unless it becomes ill-tempered; and this big brown thing, so his smiling master said, "had the heart of a child."
"And the stomach of an ostrich!" declared Janice, after almost every cold scrap in the house had followed several slices of "bread-butter" down Pietro's cavernous maw.
The old fellow was as good-natured as he could be. After the feast he went through his little repertoire of tricks with little urging.
He "played soldier" and went through his own particular manual of arms with his master's stick as a gun. He "played dead," but with his little pig-like eyes twinkling all the time.
Finally he danced with his master, and with such abandon, if not grace, that the dishes rattled on the shelves in the kitchen cupboard.
"There, that will do. He's paid for his supper. Next thing he'll have the house down about our ears," declared Mr. Broxton Day.
"Grazias, Signore; grazias, Signora," said the bear trainer, over and over again, and bowing deeply as he jerked Pietro by the chain toward the door.
His eyes, his teeth, and the little gold rings in his ears, all twinkled together. Janice thought he was a very polite man.
"And I hope he is always kind to Pietro," she said, when the foreigner and his strange pet were gone. "But, Daddy! Don't we have the greatest happenings in our house?"
"Right you are, my dear. An aristocratic lady has left us flat; the neighborhood censor has washed her hands of us; and we have entertained a highly educated bear, all in a single day. As you might say, all these astonishing happenings are 'all in the Days' work.' The Days certainly do entertain the most astonishing adventures."
"Oh, my! Don't we?" giggled his daughter.
"And now, if Pietro the bear has left us anything in the house to eat, let us have supper, Janice. I expect that hereafter Miss Peckham's opinion of us will be too acrimonious for speech."
"Oh, she never did like me much," sighed Janice. "And now Arlo Junior has made it worse again. Just think! The bear on top of the cats—"
"Scarcely that, my dear," laughed her father. "But if she really believes you introduced that bear for the praise of scaring her, her poor Sam's getting hurt over here will be a small incident compared with this ursine hold-up. The neighbors are going to hear about this, I feel sure."
Nor was he mistaken on that point. Before forty-eight
hours had elapsed it was noised around the neighborhood that "that very ladylike person, Mrs. Watkins" had been obliged to leave the Days and had returned to Marietteville, because of the treatment accorded her in "that house, which she had entered only as a favor."
It was told that Janice had invited a tramp with a dancing bear into the house and that "no lady who deemed herself such" could endure rudeness of that character. Somehow, the neighborhood censor did not figure in the story of the dancing bear; perhaps she feared to be ridiculed.
But Janice told Mrs. Carringford all about it. That good woman had serious troubles of her own; but she was not so selfish that she could not sympathize with Janice.
"I do wish I could do something to help you and your father, my dear," said the woman. "When people have as nice a house as you have Amy has told me all about it —it does seem too bad that it can't be kept as a home should be kept."
"Like yours, Mrs. Carringford," said Janice.
"My dear," sighed Mrs. Carringford, "I don't know how long we'll have our home, poor as it is. We owe a lot of money on it. I am afraid I did wrong in trying to buy this place," and she shook her head sadly.
Janice did not feel like asking the friendly woman pointblank what she meant; but Amy afterward explained.
"You see, Janice, Mr. Abel Strout, of Napsburg, owned this house.
It was he who advised mother strongly to
buy a home with father's insurance money. We didn't know how much it cost to keep up a house after you get possession of it.
"Mr. Strout took part of our money in payment and mother gave a mortgage to him for the balance of the price. And that mortgage is troubling mother greatly."
"I guess mortgages are bad things," Janice observed, with a wise nod of her head.
"They are when poor folks have 'em, anyway. You see, mother held back some money to live on. But taxes and repairs and assessments have to come out of that, as well as the interest on the mortgage that comes due half-yearly. And that isn't all."
"No?" asked Janice, interested.
"Now it seems that Mr. Strout only wrote that mortgage
for a year and he can do what he calls 'call it in' a month from now. Of course, mother can't pay the mortgage; it is hard enough to pay the interest on it. And so Mr. Strout says he will just take the house back and we—we'll lose our money, and all," finished Amy with almost a sob.
"Why, I think that is too mean for anything!" cried her friend.
"Can't he be stopped?"
"I don't know how. And I guess mother doesn't. He says he would accept a payment on the principal—that's the mortgage, you know. But mother doesn't dare give up any more of our money. There is nobody earning any but Gummy. And how far do you suppose his three dollars a week goes in buying food for all us children, for instance?"
Janice had no answer for this; but she determined to tell daddy the particulars of Mrs. Carringford's trouble. Besides, she had in her mind, and had had for a long time, a desire to bring her father and Amy's mother together. She wanted them to know each other, and for a very definite reason.
CHAPTER XIX. A FLARE-UP
At school the first of that week there was little talked about, of course, save the glories of Stella's party. No girl in the grammar grade had ever celebrated her birthday with such magnificence. The commendation she heard on all sides made Stella very proud.
Because so many of the girls tried to show her their appreciation of the nice time they had had at the Latham farm, Stella began to feel quite puffed up. She considered herself to be the most important person in her grade, at least, if not in the whole school.
It was a privilege to be taken up by the Latham car after school and set down at one's door; and Stella distributed such favors with no lack of shrewdness. She meant such rides to bring her popularity. Janice had often been the recipient of these kindnesses, and as she had told her father, it did delight her to ride in an automobile.
But since she had become so friendly with Amy Carringford, Janice had frequently walked home with her, or Amy had accompanied her to the Day house after school.
Stella was shallow enough when it came to displaying her own friendship for another girl; but suddenly it struck the farmer's daughter that a girl who had once been much in her company was showing a preference for somebody else.
"That Janice Day is sly," she muttered to herself, passing Janice and Amy as they wended their chattering way homeward. "She thinks I don't notice what she's doing. I'll give it to her to-morrow, see if I don't!"
This threat she proceeded to put into practice. And it came most unexpectedly both to Janice and Amy.
Janice, of course, was perfectly innocent and quite unsuspicious of any attack, and Amy did not dream that Stella did not like her. Had not the farmer's daughter invited Amy to her party? In fact Amy was liked by almost everybody, teachers and pupils included.
In arithmetic Stella always was dull, and on this particular morning she was more than ordinarily careless in recitation. Miss Marble gave her a sharp word and propounded the same question to Amy Carringford. The latter returned the correct answer, and then gave the red-faced Stella a deprecatory smile.
"Don't you grin at me, you pauper!" hissed Stella, and so loudly that several of the girls near by heard her words.
Even Miss Marble took notice of Stella's speech, although she could not overhear what she said.
"No communicating during recitations, Stella," she said sharply.
Amy had paled to her very lips and the tears sprang to her eyes. Janice was too far away to understand; but she was interested—she could not fail to be.
None who heard the unkind remark of Stella Latham but felt sorry that one of their mates should be so rude and ungracious.
"Of course, we all know Amy Carringford is poor—just as poor as poverty," one of them said at recess. "But that is no reason for telling her so!"
This girl was quite energetic in saying this—and more—to the offending Stella.
"Just because you ride in an automobile, and your father owns a farm, you need not think that you are better than anybody else in our class—for you're not, Stella Latham! Amy Carringford is every whit as good as you are."
"Is that so?" snapped Stella. "She's a poverty stricken thing.
She hasn't got a decent thing to wear—"
"What nonsense, Stella," drawled another and older girl, shrugging her shoulders. "I noticed particularly the other night. Amy had as pretty a frock on as anybody at your party."
"Yes! And where did she get it?" flared out Stella.
"Her mother made it, I fancy," said the same girl, laughing.
"That dress was given her by Janice Day. Amy couldn't have come to my party otherwise—so now! You just ask Janice if what I say isn't so," cried Stella, stamping her foot.
"I don't believe it," said the first speaker shortly.
"So I'm a story-teller, am I?" almost shrieked Stella. "You just ask Janice."
Just then Janice strolled into the room where the girls were gathered at this lunch hour. Amy, of course, had run home for her lunch—and run home in tears, Janice knew. The latter knew that Stella was the cause of Amy's trouble, but up to this point she had not discovered the exact reason for the flare-up.
"You think I don't tell the truth," pursued Stella, in a loud and angry voice. "I suppose you'll believe what Janice Day says. You just ask her who gave that nasty Amy Carringford the dress she wore to my party."
Janice stopped stock still for a moment. Her schoolmate's statement was like a blow in the face. Mean of disposition as she knew Stella Latham to be, she had not thought the girl would tell the secret of Amy's pretty dress.
After the ban of silence Janice had put upon the farmer's daughter, and the latter's promise to obey that mandate and tell nobody about the pink and white frock, this deliberate breaking of Stella's word astounded Janice Day. Her face flushed, then paled, and she looked as though she were the person guilty of the outrage, rather than Stella.
"What nonsense!" exclaimed the older girl, but looking at Janice curiously. "Why put it on Janice, Stella? You are saying something you do not know anything about."
"Oh! I don't?" exclaimed the farmer's daughter. "You just ask
Janice, I tell you."
"Do your own asking," said another. "Janice doesn't look very pleasant," and she laughed.
"You tell 'em!" commanded Stella, starting toward Janice threateningly. "Didn't you give Amy that dress so she could come to my party? Didn't you?"
Janice had begun to recover her confidence—and her good sense, too. She could not deny the accusation; but she determined to put Stella before her fellow schoolmates in just the right light.
"I do not know that it is a crime for one girl to help another," Janice said quietly, and still very pale. "If I did what Stella claims I did, it was nothing shameful I am sure—either for Amy or for me."
"Of course it wasn't!" murmured one of the other girls.
"Bully for you, Janice!" said another, in commendation.
"It really was only our business—Amy's and mine. But Stella knew about it. In fact, Stella came to me about Amy in the first place. She wanted to invite Amy and she feared—so she said—that Amy would not have a party dress. I undertook to find her one, and hard enough time I had getting Amy and her mother to agree to use the dress.
"But that," said Janice scornfully, "is a purely personal matter between them and me. I want to ask you girls, though, what you think of a person who, after having given her word to keep the matter a secret, deliberately taunts Amy with the fact that she took the dress from me? That is what I want to know."
The other girls were silent for the moment. Janice Day's scornful question was too pointed to be ignored. Stella broke out again in anger, her voice high and shrill:
"I don't care! So there! She is a dowdy little thing, and she had no business to come to my party, anyway."
"Stella," said the older girl grimly, "you're making yourself awfully ridiculous. And worse. You can't keep a secret. And you don't keep your word. I guess there will be more than Amy Carringford who will be sorry that they ever went to your old party. Now, stop yelling. Here comes Miss Marble."
The flare-up was only the beginning of a very unhappy time at school for Amy Carringford. Nor could Janice escape being unhappy, too, with her new friend.
That Stella was unable to raise any cabal against Janice and Amy, but quite the contrary, made the situation only a degree more bearable for the two friends. Although the other girls did not join Stella Latham in mourning the poor girl who lived in Mullen Lane, the latter felt deeply the fact that she was considered different from her schoolmates.
"Oh, I wish mother would let me go to work," Amy sighed, on more than one occasion, and to Janice's sympathetic ear. "I declare! I'd go out as a servant in somebody's home, if mother would let me. We need the money so."
"Goodness! Don't say such things," pleaded Janice. "We need a servant right now, bad enough. But you would not want to come and scrub and sweep and wash and iron even for daddy and me—you know you wouldn't."
"I don't care. Mother says she must go to work somewhere. I'll then have to come to school on part time only. Somebody must look after the twins and Edna May."
"Oh, Amy! what will your mother do?"
"She doesn't know. She has tried to get work to do at home. But all the sewing machine work she can obtain is so heavy. And so poorly paid! What do you suppose she gets for stitching those great, heavy motorman's coats—putting them all together except making buttonholes and sewing on buttons, which is done in the factory?"
"I have no idea," said Janice.
"Thir-ty-sev-en-cents!" exclaimed Amy, tragically. "Think of it!
And they almost kill her, they are so heavy to handle."
"Oh, my dear! I wouldn't let her do them."
"I guess we wouldn't—Gummy and I—if we could help it," sobbed Amy. "But something must be done by the Carringford family to help out. When Mr. Strout comes over from Napsburg next week he will make us pay off something on that mortgage, or turn us out of the house —such as it is."
"Dear Amy, I wish I could do something for you," sighed Janice.
She said nothing more than that at the time. But that very evening she did not at once open her schoolbooks when she and her father sat down finally in the living room, the supper dishes washed and put away and the kitchen swept.
They had remained without any help since the departure of Mrs. Sophronia Watkins. Mr. Day had gone every day to the intelligence offices and brought back the most discouraging reports.
"But, Daddy, isn't there any person in the whole of Greensboro or in the county any more who has to work for her living?" asked Janice.
"That man, Murphy, at whose office I engaged Delia, says that there are no good houseworkers any more. He says the girls who come to him for situations are all 'specialists,'" said daddy, gloomily enough.
"Special dunces, I guess," Janice rejoined rather tartly, "if
Delia was a sample."
"But she wasn't," said daddy, with a smile. "At any rate, he tells me he has good cooks, and good chambermaids, and good laundresses; but he has no combinations of those trades."
"Oh!"
"Girls do not like to go out to service in families where 'general housework' is expected. It seems," he added grimly, "that to get good help we should engage two or three girls, and then have a lady, like Mrs. Watkins, to superintend."
"I guess we'll have to give up and go to boarding, then," sighed
Janice. "Only I am sure I should just detest a boarding house,
Daddy."
"I am afraid we should both dislike such a life as that. Your dear mother gave us too good and comfortable a home."
"But we ought to be used to the discomforts of housekeeping by this time," said Janice. "But, oh, Daddy! There are other folks who have worse times than we do."
"So I believe," he agreed, nodding, as he unfolded his paper.
"Wait, Daddy?' she begged. "I want to tell you."
"About other people's troubles?" he asked, with a quizzical smile.
"Yes, I do. It's about the Carringfords."
"Ah-ha! You were saying once that they were in trouble over their home, were you not? I looked that place up. A fellow named Strout—"
"And he's so mean!" declared Janice with vigor.
"Yes. That seems to be his middle name," agreed her father quietly. "I am afraid Mrs. Carringford got into the hands of a sharper when she undertook to buy that cottage in Mullen Lane of Abel Strout."
"Oh, dear, Daddy! isn't there any way of helping them out of their trouble?" Janice asked disappointedly.
"I cannot tell that until I know all the particulars."
"Oh! Let me tell you—"
"Do you know them, my dear?" he asked, interrupting her.
"Well, I know some of them," she confessed, with less vehemence.
"I think you had better ask Mrs. Carringford to come to see me. If she will tell me about it, I may be able to advise her, at least. I know Strout is a sharper."
"Oh, my dear! That is so good of you," Janice cried. "I'll tell her."
"She can bring her papers here, instead of to the bank," added
Mr. Day on second thought. "Perhaps she will like that better.
Any evening that she chooses, my dear."
Janice could scarcely wait until the next day to tell her friend,
Amy what her father had said.
CHAPTER XX. STELLA KEEPS ONE SECRET
It was on this evening, too, that Daddy told Janice he had made a point of seeing and talking with Johnson, Mr. Latham's tenant. The man had a small account in the Farmers and Merchants Bank, for, like most of his nation, "Yon Yonson," as his wife had called him, was a frugal man.
"He came into the bank and I inquired about the girl who visited his wife and who broke Mrs. Latham's cutglass dish," said Mr. Day. "Johnson says he knows little about the girl—not even where she lives, or really who she is. Only he told me her last name was not Cedarstrom."
"So that, I fear," added Mr. Day, shaking his head, "is another lost trail. It does seem that the mystery of the disappearance of our treasure-box, Janice, is likely to remain a mystery.
"At least, that girl at the Latham's was another girl than our Olga. Johnson says she was only visiting his wife for a day or two. She was a friend of has wife's. I think they believe Latham wants to find the girl to make her pay for that broken dish, so they are less willing to talk about her than might otherwise be the case."
"Just the same," sighed Janice, "I do wish Gummy had known just how our Olga looked."
"How is that?"
"Then he would have known for sure whether it was Olga Cedarstrom or not. Just his seeing that her hair was strained back from her face doesn't prove anything."
"I should say it did not," laughed her father. "That manner of wearing the hair seems to be a common failing with these Swedish women. Besides, didn't I tell you that Johnson says that girl is not named 'Cedarstrom?'"
"We-ell, it is awfully funny, Daddy. It doesn't seem as though a girl could disappear so completely—wiped right off the map—"
"Vigorously expressed, I admit," her father interrupted. "But we must not begin to doubt everybody's word about it. I guess Johnson is honest."
"And those other people who knew her in Pickletown?"
"They simply don't know what has become of her. Or of Willie Sangreen, either," Daddy admitted. "That does seem strange. Of course the two have gone off somewhere to be married and have not told their friends."
"It proves that Olga did take dear mother's miniature —and—and those letters," said Janice excitedly. "Or she would not hide herself."
"Yes. I thought we had already agreed on that," her father said.
It was evident that he did not wish uselessly to discuss the matter of the lost keepsakes. Janice, young as she was, realized that her father was growing more grave and more serious every day. She did not believe that this change was altogether due to business anxieties, or even to their household vexations.
At night, after she was supposed to be in bed and sound asleep, the girl heard him walking back and forth the length of the living room; or, sometimes, now that the weather was so mild, he tramped up and down the front porch until very, very late.
There was surely some trouble on his mind that he did not care to confide to his little daughter. Broxton Day sighed more often than had been his wont even during those hard, hard days immediately following the death of Janice's mother. His hearty laugh was not so spontaneous nor heard as often as before.
Janice could not speak about this change in her father. She believed she knew why he was so grave and why some of his nights were sleepless.
Broxton Day had loved his wife with a passionate devotion. He must miss her presence more and more as the days went on. In spite of all the companionship Janice could give him, the man's existence was a lonely one.
"And, too, her heart told her that she had been the unwitting cause of this new burden which had come upon daddy's mind. Those letters which Janice had never seen—the presence of which she had not even suspected in the secret compartment of the lost treasure-box—had been Broxton Day's most precious possession. Janice had lost them! Her carelessness had given the angry Olga the opportunity to take the box away with her.
The letters had been written at a time when Janice's father and mother were very close together in spirit, if not in actual contact. Even Janice could understand that Laura Day must have revealed her very soul to her husband in those epistles.
Oh, if she could only bring them back!
So sorrow began to be entertained in the Day house on Knight Street, as a continual guest. It did seem, too, that Janice could do very little to relieve her father of any of the embarrassments of their situation. She
worked as hard as she could before she went to school and after she came home, but she could not begin to do all that was needed to be done. And she was so tired sometimes after supper that she fell asleep over her homework.
Their meals became, too, a mere round of bacon-and-egg breakfasts and delicatessen suppers. Shop-cooked meats and potato salads were on the bill of fare too often to tempt the appetite of either Mr. Day or his daughter, and the latter began to depend a good deal upon "baker's stuff" for her lunch.
With the unfortunate experiences they had had with help, however, Janice did not wonder that daddy found nobody to suit him at the agencies. Olga, Delia, Mrs. Watkins—and all those who had come and gone before —were enough to fill the mind of any person with despair.
Janice did not forget to tell Mrs. Carringford what Mr. Day had said regarding her trouble, and that on the very next day.
"He'll be sure to see some way out for you, Mrs. Carringford," the girl assured her friend's mother, with much confidence. "Daddy is always doing things for folks. He doesn't just advise; he is sure to do something."
"Yes, I should not be surprised if Mr. Broxton Day was a do-something man," said Mrs. Carringford, smiling. "He must be when he has such a do-something daughter."
"And you really will come up to see him this evening?" urged
Janice, blushing rosily at what she considered a compliment.
"I—I—well, my dear, I could not accept any financial favor from your father. I would not have a right to do so. The Carringfords must be independent."
"But, Mrs Carringford, you mustn't feel that way! I have no idea Daddy could give you much money, even if you, would let him. But, you see, he knows so much more about such things as mortgages, and loans, and real estate, that he can give you good advice. And he says that Mr. Abel Strout's middle name is 'Mean'!"
Mrs. Carringford laughingly agreed to that, and in the evening she came to the house with Gummy, Amy being left at home to take care of the little ones.
Mr. Day had already met and quite approved of Mrs. Carringford's two older children, Gummy and Amy, for he had seen them both at the house. But he had had no idea, in spite of Janice's enthusiastic praise, that Mrs, Carringford was quite the woman she was.
He saw now a very gentle, pretty woman whose soft, wavy hair was becoming prematurely gray, with an intelligent countenance and eyes that fixed one's attention almost immediately. Here, Mr. Day saw, was a capable, energetic spirit—a woman who would carry through whatever she undertook could it be carried through at all, yet who was not objectionably self-assertive-like Miss Peckham, for instance.
If Mrs. Carringford had made a mistake in her purchase of the property in Mullen Lane, it was because she had been badly advised, if not actually cheated, by the sly old fellow who had for years owned the property which he had taken for a bad debt.
Abel Strout had doubtless been glad to get rid of the Mullen Lane place, and for the first payment made upon it by Mrs. Carringford. But he had been foxy enough to make a hard and fast bargain with the widow. He had her tied up in a contract that, if she failed to meet her obligations in a small way, even, would enable him to walk in and take the place away from her.
And he had done more than that. For some reason best known to himself he had first transferred the property to one John Jamison—a farm hand of that section— and had then had this Jamison transfer the property to Mrs. Carringford, he paying the difference represented by the mortgage he held.
"He said Jamison had grown tired of his bargain a week after he bought it," Mrs. Carringford explained. "He wanted Mr. Strout to take it back. Strout said by making the transfer he would be aiding both Mr. Jamison and me."
And now a change was coming. Since the transfer Mullen Lane property had begun to look up. A factory was going to be built in the vicinity, and that part of Greensboro was likely to offer a better field for real estate operations.
Broxton Day knew all this, which Mrs. Carringford did not. He saw that what Strout wanted was to get the property back into his own hands again. He would refuse to renew the mortgage and frighten Mrs. Carringford into giving up her home.