The way the matter figured out, the expense of paying interest and taxes on the Mullen Lane property was no greater than rental would be elsewhere for the Carringford family. In the end, if the widow held on, the place might really be more valuable than it now was, and would sell for considerably more than she had agreed to pay Abel Strout for it.
"I tell you what you do," Broxton Day finally said, having thought the matter over. "Strout has told you he will accept a small payment on the mortgage, and will then renew the balance for another year."
"Yes. But ought I to spend any more of the little sum I have left in that way, when my children may need it for food?" asked the anxious widow.
"You show me by these papers that you are fixed fairly well for another year. You and your son will both earn something, of course, during the next twelve months. So if I were you, I would throw a sprat to catch a herring, and he smiled.
"You mean?" the widow asked doubtfully.
"I mean for you to offer him fifty dollars against the principal of the mortgage. No matter of whom you would get money, you would have to pay the same interest you pay Strout now and no matter whom I might get money from for you, so that you could pay off Strout and get rid of him, there would be the additional expense of making the new mortgage, and all that."
"But is he to be trusted?"
"Not at all. At the end of the year he will want more money, if he thinks you will have difficulty in getting it and there is a chance of your having to give up your home."
"Oh!"
"But a year from now I prophesy," said Mr. Day, "that your little house will be worth much more than it is to-day. At least it will be worth no less. It will be easier a year from now to raise another mortgage than it is right now. Just toll Strout along a little," and he laughed.
"Do you think I can do this, Mr. Day?" asked Mrs. Carringford doubtfully.
"You can to it for your children's sake, I have no doubt. And remember, in any case, if Strout demands the entire mortgage paid at once, within three days I will try to obtain for you a new mortgagee. You shall not lose your home, or what money you have already put into it, if I can help it."
"Oh, Mr. Day! exclaimed the woman, warmly. "If I can go home with this confident feeling—"
"You may. Of course, you are in debt. It is going to be a hard struggle for you to get along. But your children are growing up and in time will be able to shoulder a part of the burden which you have assumed for their sake. Take courage, Mrs. Carringford. Everything will turn out right in the end, I am sure."
It was plain that Mrs. Carringford was greatly comforted. When she left, Janice whispered to her father: "I'm awfully proud of you, Daddy. You do have such a way with you!"
But helping other people out of their troubles was not helping the Days out of their particular Slough of Despond. So many difficulties seemed reaching out to clutch at Janice and Daddy! The girl thought it was like walking through a briar-patch. Every step they took, trouble retarded them.
First and foremost the disappearance of that strange Olga Cedarstrom, and the loss of the box of heirlooms, was continually in Janice's mind. The girls at school knew about it, although only Amy knew just how serious the loss was to the Days.
The puzzle regarding the girl named Olga who had helped in the Latham's kitchen the night of Stella's birthday party, had been noised abroad among Janice's school friends, and more or less comment was made upon it.
"Say, Janice, did you ever find out what became of that Swede who broke Mrs. Latham's dish the night we were all there?" asked one of the girls one day. "Didn't you say she might be the very girl who ran away from your house?"
"Yes! I did think so. But it was not the same. Her friends said this girl was not named Cedarstrom."
"Well, who'd want such a name, anyway?" laughed another of the party.
Stella was herself one of those present; but at this time she was not speaking to Janice. She laughed maliciously when Janice Day had gone.
"What's the matter with you, Stella?" asked Bertha Warring.
"Your 'ha, ha' is like that of the villain in the melodrama.
What is the matter?"
"Oh, never mind," returned Stella, apparently very much enjoying her own secret thoughts.
"Tell us, Stella; then we'll all laugh," urged another.
"Oh, no. You girls say I can't keep a secret. But I'll
show you—and that Janice Day—that I can. I know something about the Olga-girl that she'd like to know; but Janice shall never learn it from me," and Stella laughed again maliciously.
CHAPTER XXI. THE CLOSING OF SCHOOL
Janice heard from Gummy and Amy just how Abel Strout acted and what he said when he came to see their mother about the renewal of the mortgage and the payment of the half year's interest. Gummy was very much excited over it.
"You strought to see that Stout man, anyway—"
"Oh, dear, me, Gummy, there you go again!" gasped Janice, with laughter, while the boy's sister giggled desperately, too.
"What's the matter now?" he demanded, in some surprise.
"Another lapsus linguae—I looked it up, and that is what they
call it," said Janice.
"Say! Why don't you talk so people can understand you?" Gummy
demanded. "Don't talk Latin to a fellow."
"And you sounded as though you were using 'pig-Latin,'" laughed
Amy. "You said we "strought' to see Mr. 'Stout'."
"Oh! Jicksy! Did I?" exclaimed the boy. I'm always saying one thing and meaning another, aren't I? Is that a lapsus linguae?
"It is in this case, Gummy. But go on—do."
"Well, Mr. Strout looks just like a piece of that green-speckled cheese Mr. Hardman has in his showcase —in the face, I mean."
"In the face of the showcase?" giggled Amy.
"Or the face of the cheese?" asked Janice demurely.
"Now, say, you girls go too far," complained Gummy, yet good-naturedly. "I mean Strout's face. It looks like the cheese, for he's all speckled. And the cheese is called Rockyford and tastes funnier than it looks."
"Oh, oh!" cried Janice, "you've got your cheese mixed with melons this time. It is Rockyford melons and Roquefort cheese."
"Jicksy! They sound pretty near the same," grumbled Gummy.
"Anyhow, that is how Abel Strout looks in the face—speckled.
And he came in, in that yellow dust-coat of his, looking like a
peeled sapling—so long and lean."
"My, what a wealth of description you have at your tongue's end," cried Janice, still in a gale of laughter. "A face like Roquefort cheese with a figure like a peeled sapling. Well!"
"You keep on you girls, and I won't ever get anywhere," complained Gummy.
"Go on, Gummy," urged Janice.
"Well, he was just as nasty-mean as he always is. The only time I ever saw him pleasant was when he was wheedling mother out of her money before she bought the house. But he started in real bossy this time."
"I should say he did," agreed Amy, feelingly.
"'Well, Mrs. Carringford,' said Strout, 'I hope you are ready to take up that mortgage right now, without no hanging back.' He knew of course that mother didn't have a whole thousand dollars left—no, sir! He knows all right just what she had in the beginning, and that we've been living off it for more than a year," said Gummy.
"So mother told him she could not take up the mortgage. That she did not dare put any more money into the place —except the interest and the taxes—until prospects were brighter.
"'Well,' he said—mean old hunks!—'money is dreadful tight right now, and I don't see how I can let you have a thousand any longer. 'Tain't in the bill of agreement.'
"Mother said: 'Mr. Strout, when you sold me the place you said I could have plenty of time to pay for it. You knew my children were small and that I could not do much toward paying the mortgage until they grew bigger and could help.'
"'You got anything like that writ into your contract?' asked Mr.
Strout.
"'It was verbally understood,' said mother.
"'That don't mean nothin' in business,' said Strout. 'I might tell you the moon was made o' green cheese, but I wouldn't guarantee it. Talk's one thing; a written guarantee is another. That mortgage is writ for a year, and the year is up.'
"Oh!" exclaimed Gummy hotly, "I could have hit him for speaking so mean to my mother."
"I don't blame you," Janice said sympathetically. "But never mind. Tell the rest."
"Why, all mother could say was what your father told' her to say. She said: 'You said when you were here several weeks ago that you would let me pay off some of the principal and let the mortgage stand.'
"'How much?' he snapped at her—just like a hungry dog at a bone, you know," continued Gummy.
"'I will spare fifty dollars,' said mother.
"'Fifty fiddlestrings!' shouted Strout. 'Won't hear to it!
Won't listen to it!'
"But already, you see," chuckled Gummy, "mother had pushed the interest money toward him across the table. He grabbed it. He couldn't keep his hands off real money, I guess—his own or anybody else's."
"Oh, Gummy!" murmured Amy.
"Well, didn't he just act so?" cried the boy. "Why, he counted that interest money just as hungrily! And he folded it and put it in his wallet."
"You tell it just as it was," sighed Amy. "Of course I do. Well, mother said: 'You can give me my receipt for that, Mr. Strout, if you don't mind.' And then he did go off the handle!" chortled Gummy. "You see, he had tricked himself."
"How was that, Gummy?" Janice asked wonderingly.
"He made mother pay interest on the note six months in advance. When he accepted that interest he—what do you call it?—Oh! He tacitly renewed the note, which runs what they call concurrently with the mortgage. So the mortgage is good for another year."
"Oh! Is that what daddy told your mother to do?" cried Janice.
"Now I understand." exclaimed the delighted
Gummy.
"Oh! Daddy didn't mean it as a trick—"
"Not a tricky trick," explained Gummy volubly. "Of course not. But mother just let Mr. Strout trick himself. When he saw what he had done he tried to hand the money back; but mother said:
"'Oh, no, sir!, You can give me the written receipt or not, just as you please. Both of these children'— that's Amy and me—'saw me give you the money and know its purpose. Their testimony is good in court.
You have refused any payment on the principal of the mortgage; but you have accepted interest for the ensuing six months. You have therefore renewed the note for a year, as it is written for a year.'
"Oh, wasn't Strout mad!" chuckled Gummy.
"And I was proud of mamma," added Amy.
"You bet! Strout said to mother: 'Somebody's been talking to you—I can see that.'
"'Yes, they have,' she told him. 'And somebody who knows you very well, Mr. Strout.' Meaning your father, Janice, of course.
"'So you think you will hold on to this shack and make something on it, do you?' he remarked.
"'At least,' mother answered, 'I hope to keep it for a shelter for my children and not lose what I have put in it.'
"'Well,' said he, in such a nasty tone! 'You just wait!' And then he stamped out of the house."
"Oh, but I am afraid of him," sighed Amy. "He spoke so threateningly."
"Yes, Momsy and Amy think he has something up his sleeve," said
Gummy, carelessly. "But I think Abel Strout is licked, thanks to
Mr. Day."
Janice was very careful to repeat the particulars of this scene
Gummy had so vividly related to her father in the evening.
"Maybe he has something 'up his sleeve,' as Gummy says," Janice observed. "Can that be possible, do you think, Daddy?"
"Well, it is hard to say. Now that I have gone into this thing for Mrs. Carringford, I suppose I might go a little deeper. Do you know if she had the title to that property searched before she bought it?"
"I'll ask her, Daddy."
"Don't ask in a way to frighten her," advised Mr. Day, on second thought. "It may be all right. Just ask her who looked up the title. Tell her I will have the money ready for her to take up Strout's mortgage when it becomes due next time; but that meanwhile I shall have to have the title searched if that was not done before."
"Oh, Daddy! do you believe there could be some—some—"
"Some flaw in it?" asked her father, supplying the word that
Janice had heard but could not remember.
"Yes."
"There might be. This is an old part of Greensboro, and some of the old titles conflicted."
"But then Mrs. Carringford would not have to lose, would she?
Wouldn't Mr. Strout have to give her back her money?"
"Perhaps not. Not if he could prove that he knew nothing about the flaw in the title. Or rather, not if Mrs. Carringford could not prove that Strout did know his title was fraudulent. Besides, the place might have been sold for taxes some time. That would invalidate the title in this state, unless the original owner, or his heirs, who owed the taxes, had quitclaimed."
"Dear me, Daddy Day? she cried, "it sounds awfully complicated."
"It is, for little girls. But we will see what we shall see," which to say the least, was not a very comforting statement.
Janice had found a colored woman who lived at the end of Love Street to take the washing home each week and who did it very satisfactorily. But the woman had small children and so could not go out to work.
Besides, such women as they had hired to come in to work by the day had been very unsatisfactory. Nobody seemed to take any interest in the work.
"Why," Janice thought, "we haven't even cleaned house properly this spring. And here it is June—and school almost closing!"
It was a fact that the last few days of the spring term were at hand. Janice was so busy that she did not know what to do. When she went to see Mrs. Carringford to ask her the question Daddy had told her to put, she broke down and cried, telling Amy's mother how bad she felt about the house.
"I got down the curtains and put them to soak; but I can't starch them and put them on the stretcher and hang them again," confessed Janice "The house looks so bare! And every inch of paint needs scrubbing—even in the rooms that Mrs. Watkins shut up so tight. She did not clean the paint."
"Can't you hire somebody to help you?" asked Mrs. Carringford.
"If you mean can daddy pay for it—he'd be glad to!" cried
Janice. "But I just can't find anybody at all."
"I might come over and help you a couple of days, Janice," said
Mrs. Carringford, doubtfully.
"Oh! Could you?"
"I can't come very early in the morning; but Amy can get supper for the children, so that I could stay until after your dinner at night, Janice."
"Mrs. Carringford! if you'll come and help us," gasped Janice, "I think I'll just cry for joy."
"Don't do that, my dear. Of course, this is only a stop-gap. But I will try to do what I can for you toward cleaning house and putting everything to rights again."
And a single day's work made such a difference Daddy came into the house toward evening without knowing what Janice had arranged with Mrs. Carringford, and began to "snuff" at once.
"Why, Janice, how clean everything smells!" he cried when the girl ran to meet him. "What is happening?"
"We are cleaning house. At least, she is."
"'She'? Who?" he cried.
"You'll never guess."
"I—I—Surely none of the neighbors has taken pity on us and come in to clean?"
"That is exactly what has happened," Janice said. "Mrs.
Carringford, Daddy!"
"Mrs Carringford!" he repeated. "Not come to work for us?"
"Oh, dear! I wish she was going to work for us all the time," confessed the girl with a sigh. "But she is going to put us all straight once more, at least. The children don't want her to go out to work; but she will do this for us."
"Well, 'small mercies thankfully received; larger ones in proportion,'" murmured daddy. "The whole house to be cleaned once more? And without my Janice to be dragging herself to death?"
"Oh, Daddy!"
"Well, I have been worried, dear," he confessed. "I wrote your Aunt Almira, half promising that you should go to see them after school closed."
"Oh, Daddy!" shrieked Janice again. "To Poketown?"
"You won't find it so bad. And you need a rest, I believe. This old house—"
"Oh! you sha'n't talk so about our beautiful home," gasped
Janice.
"If it is going to be such a burden to you, my dear—"
"It isn't! It isn't " she cried excitedly, and actually stamping her feet. "You don't mean to shut up our home, Daddy? I won't hear to it," and she burst into a flood of tears.
Mrs. Carringford came into the living-room, neat, smiling, and very, very good to look upon, the man thought. It was a blessing to have a real housekeeper, and homemaker as well, in the house.
"Quite overwrought, Mr. Day," she said putting her arms about the sobbing Janice. "She works too hard and tries to do too much."
"I know it," he said, shaking his head.
"And, besides," said the good woman, "Janice is growing up. She is growing too fast, perhaps. And she does need, Mr. Day, something that no father—no matter how willing and thoughtful he may be—can give her."
"That is—?" asked the man, paling a little.
"The companionship of a woman, Mr. Day," said Mrs. Carringford. "She should be more with some woman whom you can trust. Not the women you have had here to work for you."
Janice had run away to bathe her eyes and make herself tidy. Broxton Day listened to this woman's advise with a serious countenance.
"I was just suggesting her going to spend a part of the summer with her aunt in Vermont. And she doesn't want to," he explained.
"That would take her a long way from you and from her home. She loves her home, Mr. Day. Janice is a born homemaker, I believe."
"What can I do, then?" exclaimed the man, at his wit's end.
"Were any people ever situated so unfortunately as Janice and I?"
"There have been thousands like you and your daughter," said Mrs. Carringford. "Janice will be all right after school closes, for she will not have so much to do. Let her books rest this summer. See that she plays instead of works. If you will, let her be a good deal with other girls."
"I would be willing to have her fill the house with them. Only that, too, adds to the work."
"Well, we'll see," sighed Mrs. Carringford, preparing to go back to the kitchen. "She can run over and see my Amy, and Amy can come here. They are about the same age, and like kittens they should play more than work. I will gladly do what I can for you, Mr. Day. You have been very kind to me and mine."
He wanted to tell her that that was not so. That he had really done nothing, and the favor was on the other side. But she hurried away to attend to dinner.
And it was a nice dinner that was served at the Day table that evening. Like the faded-out lady, Mrs.
Carringford sat down to eat with them. But there was a different air about Mrs. Carringford. She was really a gentlewoman.
Janice recovered her spirits and chattered like a magpie; and Mr. Day himself found that for the first time in many months, he had really enjoyed a well-cooked meal and a social meal at his own table.
Mrs. Carringford came day after day until the entire house was cleaned. Daddy found a man to clean up the yard, cart away ashes, smooth the walks and dig over the flowerbeds. The local florist supplied growing plants for out of doors, and the Day place bloomed again as it was wont to do when Mrs. Day was alive.
Meanwhile Janice and her mates were just as busy as bees concluding the spring term at school. There were the final examinations which were now close at hand. Janice really trembled over these.
"My sakes, Amy! what if I shouldn't pass? I'm awfully shaky on physiology, especially."
"Goodness, Janice! you'll pass, of course. Anybody as bright and quick as you are!"
"It's awfully nice of you to say that. But my recitations have gone off like anything lately and I really am afraid of these exams."
Amy tried to comfort her friend, but with little success.
Then there were many outside pleasures, and Janice, in a happier mood this time, remarked that school really did interfere with the real business of life—such as the picnics that the beautiful spring days made so thoroughly pleasurable.
"Dear me, I'd like to go to a picnic every day," she sighed happily to Amy one Saturday afternoon, after jolly hours spent with the boys and girls of her circle of closest friends in the woods, now white with dogwood.
Some of the girls were going away for a part of the summer vacation. But Janice would not admit that she even contemplated such a change.
Stella Latham was one of those who expected to migrate. She was going to some relatives who had a summer place on the shore of one of the Great Lakes, and she talked a good deal about it.
But she did not talk to Janice. All she said in the latter's hearing was something that only puzzled and annoyed Daddy's daughter. "I guess if somebody who thinks she is so smart only knew what I know about that Swedish girl, Olga, she'd give her very eyes to have me tell her—so now!"
"I don't even know what she means," confessed Janice, wearily, to
Amy.
"She just means to be mean—that's all!" said the practical Amy.
CHAPTER XXII. SOMETHING DOES HAPPEN
"I hope something will happen so I can't go to Poketown," was the thought continually rising to the surface of the troubled pool of Janice Day's mind.
She did not know what Mrs. Carringford had said to daddy, nor how much he had been influenced by that wise woman's observations regarding this very matter. So, as the days went by, Janice continued to fear the worst.
For the very worst that could happen, Janice thought, was for her to be separated from her father and from her home. When the possibility of his having to go to Mexico was first talked about, the thought of their separation had made a very deep impression on the girl's mind. She had never recovered—how could she? —from the going away of her mother. If her father went out of her life too, it seemed to Janice as though she would be an orphan indeed.
So, without knowing anything personally about her Aunt Almira or Uncle Jason or Marty, her cousin, the girl felt that their association could in no way replace that of daddy.
"I just wish something would happen so that I couldn't go to
Poketown," was repeated over and over in her thought.
"Perhaps that is wicked," Janice told herself. "But wicked, or not, it does seem as though it would just kill me to leave home."
After Mrs. Carringford had finished cleaning house, the home seemed so much better and brighter that Janice loved it more than ever. She did not want to leave Eight Hundred and Forty-five Knight Street, even for a day.
"I don't care if Arlo Junior does toll cats into our back kitchen and we entertain dancing bears and that half-crazy Delia and folks like Mrs. Watkins or Olga Cedarstrom," she said to daddy. "This is just the nicest house in all the world. Don't you think so yourself, Daddy?"
"I never expect to have so much happiness in another house as I have had in this one, my dear," Mr. Day said. "And we will hope for more happiness here in the future. But my little girl must not try to do everything. It is all right to be a homemaker; but you must not try to do it all yourself. We must find somebody to help, regularly."
Secretly Janice was urging Mrs. Carringford to come every day to the house and keep it in that "neat as a new pin" condition in which the sweet-natured woman had left it when the extra cleaning was finished.
"But my dear child, how will my own house get along without me?
Amy cannot do it all, even if it is vacation-time."
"But, dear Mrs. Carringford, just think!" begged Janice. "Kate and Sydney are both big enough to help Amy."
"And they are a team!" sighed Mrs. Carringford.
"They'll be good. They will do a good deal for me," said Janice frankly.
"You bribe the twins."
"Oh, they are only teeny, weeny bribes, and of course children expect pay when they do things for you. Look how eagerly Gummy works for his pay," for Gummy was working every day for Mr. Harriman now, and his wages had been doubled.
"Don't let him hear you catalogue him as a child," said the boy's mother, smiling. "I must do nothing to neglect my own brood. Yet I feel that I must earn money. Gummy's wages will not even feed us. And it will last only until September. He must go back to school again then."
"Then come and see daddy," urged Janice. "You know he'll be more than glad to have you. Why, it would be just heavenly for us.
"I must think about it," said the over-urged woman. "If I could get work in a store downtown I would have more regular hours perhaps. For a home cannot be kept on an eight-hour-a-day schedule."
But Janice hoped. To do something to bring about peace and comfort for daddy and herself had been her determination for weeks. If only Mrs. Carringford could be coaxed to agree, Janice foresaw plain sailing.
This had been her hope ever since she had seen how perfectly
Amy's mother kept her own poor cottage. It had been her hope
when she had first brought Mrs. Carringford and Mr. Day together.
But would her hope come to fruition?
Nevertheless, she was happier now that she did not have to go to school. She had time to work out of doors in the flowerbeds and to get dainty little suppers, sometimes, for daddy.
Yet, at other times she was very tired. She showed daddy a cheerful countenance almost always. But there were occasions when Janice Day felt anything but cheerful "inside," as she expressed it.
Somehow daddy seemed to guess, however, when she was not quite herself during these sultry days, for often at breakfast he said:
"Daughter, dress yourself in your best bib and tucker and meet me at the corner of Joyce Street at four-thirty. I'll be on the Maplewood car and will save a seat for you. We will go out to the Branch Inn for supper."
Such excursions delighted Janice, especially with daddy. It made her feel positively grown up to be taken about by such a well-groomed and handsome man as Broxton Day.
And almost everywhere they went people seemed to know daddy. Even the managers and waiters at the inns and restaurants knew him, for Mr. Day often attended business conferences and luncheons with the bank's customers, at these places.
Sometimes very well dressed men came and sat down at their table and talked business with Broxton Day. They were always very kind and polite to Janice.
But whenever she heard Mexico and the Mexican mines mentioned, the girl was worried and listened attentively. She knew that those properties down beyond the Rio Grande in which her father was interested so deeply, were still in a very uncertain state. As yet dividends from her father's investment, she knew, had been very small.
She thought daddy watched her very closely at times. His keen glance seemed almost like that of a person "lying in wait" for one. That was the way Janice expressed it to herself.
She did not understand what these looks meant. Did he doubt that she was really quite as cheerful and happy as she would appear?
On her own part, after she had gone to bed, Janice Day listened often for his step, to and fro, hour after hour, on the honeysuckle-sheltered porch. Was he thinking about the lost letters? Would neither he nor his daughter ever be able to get over—to forget— the mementoes of dear mother, and their disappearance with Olga Cedarstrom?
Janice often cried herself to sleep thinking of this loss. But she cried quietly so that daddy should not hear her; and she was always very careful in the morning to remove all traces of tears or sleeplessness before appearing in his presence at the breakfast table.
"What's been done to-day, daughter?" was often daddy's question at night, accompanied by one of his keenly interrogating glances.
When she catalogued the day's industries sometimes he shook his head.
"But where is the fun? When do you play? What have you been doing to celebrate your freedom from the scholastic yoke?" he would demand.
"We-ell, you know, Daddy, I can't be a gadabout all the time—and with Miss Peckham watching me from behind her blinds every time I go out," and she giggled.
"Miss Peckham be eternally— Hem! I don't suppose I can use strong language in regard to the lady who has washed her hands of us, can I?"
"Not very strong language, Daddy," she rejoined, laughing aloud now.
"Well, in that case, we'll merely ignore our neighbor. That means you, too, Janice; and you must play a little more in spite of Miss Peckham."
"But, Daddy, I do play, as you call it. There was the picnic in
Emmon's Woods, and the straw ride to Clewitt—"
"And the picnic on the Latham farm to which I found you did not go," interrupted daddy. "How about that, daughter?"
"Oh—oh—well, you know, Daddy, I—I—"
"What's all this stammering about, honey," asked daddy, putting his arm about his daughter.
"Daddy, Amy and I just couldn't go to that picnic. Of course, it was not given by Stella, but by all the boys and girls of our crowd, but it was on Stella's farm. And— Well, Daddy, Stella doesn't really like Amy and me just now. It's nothing—just about that dress Amy wore to Stella's party. I told you all about that. Stella promised not to tell, you know, and then she did. I'm not mad at Stella—I was, though, for a while—but she's still mad at me. She'll be all right in a little while, though, Daddy."
"I trust so, daughter. Do your best to make friends again. You will all be happier if you are on a friendly footing with your companions."
These first days of the long vacation were not really happy ones for Janice, although she tried to make believe they were. All the time she was hoping to herself that daddy would not insist on her visiting his relatives in the East.
He had not really said that he contemplated sending her willy-nilly, to Aunt Almira. Yet the girl felt that daddy believed her health called for a change. And that was not what she needed. She was sure that the air of Poketown would never in this world make her feel any happier or healthier than she felt right here at home in Greensboro.
"I just hope something will happen to keep me from going to Poketown—or anywhere else," Janice repeated, over and over again.
And then, it did happen. Nothing that she had imagined, of course.
And this happening shocked Janice Day almost as much as anything could. It came in the afternoon, when she was getting dinner for daddy. She heard the clang of a gong, and an automobile stopped before the house. She ran to the window. It was a white painted ambulance— not from the City Hospital, but a private ambulance. And two men in white uniforms were preparing to take somebody on a stretcher out of the car.
CHAPTER XXIII. THE SILVER LINING TO A VERY BLACK CLOUD
Janice dropped the mixing spoon and the dishcloth and ran out upon the side porch, and from thence down the steps and the walk to the gate. Her heart beat so that she could scarcely get her breath.
The white uniformed men were drawing the stretcher out of the ambulance, and Janice, horrified and all but breathless, suddenly saw her father sitting up on the stretcher.
"Don't be scared, Janice. Be a brave girl," he cried. "It is only my leg."
"But—but what have they done to your leg, Daddy?" she cried, wringing her hands.
One of the uniformed men laughed. It was a cheerful laugh, and he was a jolly looking man. But Janice thought it was very easy indeed for him to laugh.
"It isn't his leg—or any of his relations" she thought.
"I tell you what they have done to him," he said, taking hold of both handles at the foot of the stretcher. "They have just set a compound fracture below the knee and put it into splints. Your daddy is going to have a glass leg for some time to come, and you must take good care of it. Where shall we carry him?"
While he spoke and the other man was taking hold of the other handles of the stretcher, Mr. Day lay down again. He did not groan, but he was very white. He gave Janice's hand a strong grip, however, when she got to him.
"Pluck up your courage, dear," he said. "This is no killing matter."
But now neighbors began to hurry to them. Children, of course,
for Knight Street was well supplied with them. But Mrs. Arlo
Weeks and Mrs. Peckinpaw came from across the street, while Miss
Peckham appeared from her cottage.
"Dear me! Was he picked up that way?" asked Mrs. Weeks, in her high, strident tone. "My Arlo had a fit once—"
"Tain't a fit," said Mrs. Peckinpaw, who was a very old woman and who never spoke to Miss Peckham because of some neighborhood squabble which had happened so long before that neither of them remembered what it was about.
"Tain't a fit," she said acidly; "for then they foam at the mouth, or drool. I never knew he had anything the matter with him, chronic."
The jolly looking man laughed. Miss Peckham on the other side of the stretcher, and without looking at the other women, asked:
"Oughtn't he be took to the hospital? There's nobody here to take care of him but that fly-away young one."
"I won't have him taken to a hospital!" cried Janice stormily.
"You bring him right into the house—"
"Well, 'tain't fittin'," said Miss Peckham decidedly.
"I guess both Mr. Day and his daughter know what they want," said the cheerful looking man, decidedly. "He wanted to be brought home. Now, my little lady, where shall we put him? All ready, Bill?"
"All ready," said Bill, who had the handles at the head of the stretcher.
"But what's the matter with him?" demanded Mrs. Peckinpaw again.
"Is it ketchin'?"
"He has a compound fracture of the tibia," declared the cheerful man.
"Oh! My mercy!" ejaculated Mrs. Peckinpaw, shrinking away from the stretcher. "I—I didn't kmow Mr. Day drank!"
She had evidently heard alcoholism called by so many queer sounding terms that anything she not understand she set down to that dread trouble. But Miss Peckham had run ahead into the house.
"Take him right up to his bedroom," she said commandingly to the men with the stretcher.
"Well, if that woman's goin' to take hold, they don't need me," said Mrs. Peckinpaw, snappishly, and she retained her stand upon the strictly neutral ground of the sidewalk.
Mrs. Arlo Weeks was "all of a quiver," as she herself said. She followed the men as far as the steps and there sank to a seat.
"My, my! I feel just like fainting," she murmured.
Meanwhile the two uniformed men were carrying Mr. Day into the house.
"Right up here!" cried Miss Peckham from the stairway.
"No," said Mr. Day, "put me on the couch in the living room. Fix it, Janice."
At this Janice awoke from her apathy. She rushed in ahead and fixed the pillows on the couch, and got a warm cover to put over him.
"I'm to be laid up some weeks," Mr. Day said courageously. "I don't want to be put upstairs where I don't know a thing about what's going on in the house. I'll stay downstairs."
"That couch ought to be made up like a bed for you, Mr. Day," said the cheerful man, as Janice dropped down the back which made it into a bed-lounge.
"Do that later," said Mr. Day. "Here! Where's Mrs. Weeks?"
Janice ran to call her. Miss Peckham was descending the stairs, her nose in the air. She seemed offended that she could not rule the proceedings.
"Mrs. Weeks," said Janice to the woman from across the street, "will you come in? Father wants to speak to you."
"I—I don't know as my legs will carry me," sighed Mrs. Weeks.
"Have they put him to bed? Has he got his clo'es off?"
"He just wishes to speak to you," explained Janice. "Right in here."
She led the way into the living room. Miss Peckham was still "sniffing" in the doorway. The two ambulance men were preparing to depart.
"When Arlo Weeks comes home from business, tell him I want to see him," said Mr. Day to the woman. "He'll help me off with my clothes and get me into bed here. I shall be all right."
He spoke quite cheerfully now, and even Janice was recovering her self-possession.
"Oh, well, I'll telI him," murmured Mrs. Weeks. "I'm sick o' shock, myself. But we have to sacrifice when our neighbors needs us. Yes, Mr. Day, I'll send Arlo over."
She trailed out after the two men. Mrs. Peckham sniffed after her, too.
"Well," the spinster said, "I can make him some broth. He'll need nourishing victuals. And he ain't been gettin' anything of late, I guess, but what that child's messed up."
She departed kitchenward. Janice and daddy looked at each other hopelessly. Then together, and in chorus, they murmured:
"But I thought she had washed her hands of us!"
"I don't want broth," grumbled Broxton Day, after a minute. "I want my dinner. What have you got that's good, Janice?"
"Stew—lamb stew. Nice," she groaned. "And plenty of vegetables like you like."
"'Like you like' is almost as good as the stew will be," chuckled her father faintly. "We must get that woman out of the house, Janice. She will be an Old Man of the Sea."
"No, no!" giggled the girl. "An 'Old Maid of the Sea,' you mean."
"Maybe I do. But how to get rid of her—"
"I know! Wait!" Janice dashed out of the room and out of the house. A crowd of children was still at the gate.
"Arlo Junior!" she called into the dusk, "Come here! I want you."
"You want my pa. He ain't home yet," said Junior, drawing near slowly.
"I want you to do an errand for me," said Janice hastily. "Come here—close. I'll tell you. Your mother won't mind."
"All right," said Junior, offering an attentive ear.
"You know where Gummy Carringford lives?"
"Course I do."
"Well, you run there, and see his mother; and you tell her—"
Janice in whispers told the boy just what to say to Mrs. Carringford, and he repeated it before he darted off on the errand. Arlo Junior was a great boy to play tricks, but he would not play them at such a time as this.
Janice went back to her father's side and left Miss Peckham, whom she heard moving about the kitchen, strictly alone. Daddy told her all about the accident.
It seemed, when he came down the stairs from the Chamber of Commerce, where he had gone on an errand, a scrubwoman had left a cake of soap on the next to the top step."
"Of course, it was just my luck to find it for her," said Broxton
Day, with rather a grim laugh. "Maybe she wanted that soap. But
I did not. I kicked right up, Janice, and it is a wonder I did
not break my back as well as my leg."
"Oh, Daddy!"
"I landed so hard at the bottom of the flight that I was unconscious for a few minutes. Luckily Dr. Bowles, the surgeon, has offices in that very building. They picked me up and carried me to him and he fixed up the leg. It will be as good as new, he says, after a while."
"Oh, dear, Daddy! you might have been killed," cried Janice, suddenly sobbing.
"Well, it's all over now—but the shouting," muttered Mr. Day, his face suddenly contorted with pain. "Don't fuss, my dear. This is something that can be mended, I am sure. Don't give way to tears."
"Oh, but, Daddy! I know! I know!" sobbed the girl, hiding her face in his shoulder. "But something did happen—and I—I wished for it!"
"Wished for me to break my leg?" gasped daddy.
"Oh, no! Oh, no! But I wished something would happen so that I would not have to go to live at Poketown this summer. And—now—something—has—happened."
"Quite true, my dear," said Mr. Day, after a moment's silence. "You got your wish. But as usual, you did not get it just as you wished it. Still, the very blackest cloud has its silver lining."
Janice could not imagine a silver lining to this cloud —not just at that moment. She only realized that daddy was suffering from an accident that it did seem her wish had brought to him. It was a very serious and disturbing thought for the girl
Janice did not want to go out into the kitchen to see what Miss Peckham was about. She had left the tender breast and shoulder of lamb for the stew simmering on the back of the stove, and the vegetables were all ready to put in it. What the spinster would do toward making broth Janice did not know. And daddy did not want broth.
Just now, however, the girl felt too much disturbed to entertain an argument with Miss Martha Peckham. Things would have to go on as they would, until—
Suddenly Janice heard voices in the kitchen— Miss Peckham's high-pitched voice and another. Janice saw that her father was quiet and did not notice, so she got up from his side and stole to the kitchen door to listen.
"Well, ma'am? exclaimed Miss Peckham, don't see as it's any more of your business than 'tis mine. I'm makin' this gruel—"
"And I will finish preparing the dinner, if you do not mind, Miss
Peckham," said the soft voice Mrs. Carringford. "I see that
Janice has it almost ready. Do you think, Miss Peckham, that a
man with a broken leg needs gruel?"
"Well, I couldn't find nothing to make broth out of—"
"Or broth?" pursued Mrs. Carringford. "I know Mr. Day's appetite, and I do not believe that broken leg
has made it any the less hearty."
"Seems to me you know a good deal!" snapped Miss Peckham.
"Specially about this kitchen."
"You know, I have been working here for some time," Mrs.
Carringford said. "Thank you, Miss Peckham. You need not stay.
If there is anything we need you for, I will let you know.
Good-night."
The spinster banged out at the kitchen door without even coming into the front part of the house.
"Not even to 'wash her hands of us' again!" giggled Janice, who ran out into the kitchen with a cry of joy.
"Oh, Mrs. Carringford!" she said, throwing her arms about the woman's neck, "have you really come to stay?"
"I guess I shall have to, my dear. Daytimes, anyway," said Amy's mother, kissing her. "You'd soon go to rack and ruin here with the neighbors coming in and littering everything up. Yes, tell your father I will accept the offer he made me. And now, we'll have dinner just as soon as possible. How is he?"
"He says he is all right," gasped Janice, catching her breath. "And he says there is always a silver lining to the very blackest cloud. Now I know he's right. You are the silver lining to this cloud, Mrs. Carringford—you really, truly are!"
CHAPTER XXIV. "WHERE THERE'S SMOKE THERE'S FIRE."
If it had not been for Mrs. Carringford's presence in the house, this experience certainly would have been a very hard one for Janice Day. For although the trials of housekeeping had been serious for the young girl, they were not all that had so vexed her and weighted her mind with sorrow.
But her father's injury shocked her out of the mental rut which she had been following. She had to wait on him, hand and foot; and it gave her so many new thoughts and new things to do, that for a time at least Janice Day's old troubles were pretty much sloughed away.
They had managed to make Mr. Day comfortable on the living-room couch, and it was easier to care for him there than it would have been were he in his bedroom. Besides, he very much objected to "being invalided to the upper story" while he was tied down with a broken leg.
Mr. Arlo Weeks came in night and morning to help turn the injured man, and remake his bed. Mr. Weeks was, after all, a good neighbor; he was more helpful than anybody else who came to the Day house, save Mrs. Carringford.
The surgeon came now and then to restrap the broken leg. Some of Mr. Day's business associates called to see how he was getting on. The injured man was not hard to take care of. He could read, propped up on the couch, and although he suffered considerable pain he did not allow Janice to discover that he was uncomfortable.
But at first he did net sleep well at night, and he had some fever. Mrs. Carringford was careful in his diet; and she never seemed to contradict him or to thwart his wishes. She had a way with her that Janice could but admire and pattern after.
The girl saw that even daddy was not quite his very sensible self when he was an invalid. He had to be humored at times; and they did all that was possible to keep him from fretting.
Broxton Day had been a very active man. Business affairs of which he had sole charge were bound to go wrong when he could not wield power as he was wont. And these things all bothered him when the nagging pain of the broken leg increased, as it sometimes did, at night.
"Oh, what should I have done without you, Mrs. Carringford?" breathed Janice, often taking comfort in the kindly woman's arms for a momentary hug. I do think Amy and Gummy and the little ones are awfully nice not to make any more objection than they do to your being up here."
"Oh, they quarrel enough with me about it at times," laughed Mrs. Carringford. "But I tell them if it was not here, it would have to be somewhere else. I have got to work, my dear. I can see that plainly. Every day the appetites of my little family increase and their needs grow. The rate at which Kate and Edna May and Syd wear out shoes— Well!"
"Let them go barefooted," giggled Janice. "I know they are teasing you all the time about it"
"No!" cried Mrs. Carringford, with warmth. "I know we live in Mullen Lane and it is not always possible for me to dress my children as nicely as I wish; but they shall not run barefoot like the little hoodlums that live about us. And Syd bothers me to death about it."
But Janice could only laugh a bit at this. She herself sometimes ran barefooted around the house and yard, though she was growing too big for that now, and she did not blame the little Carringfords for wanting to do so.
At any rate, she was very, very grateful to Mrs. Carringford for stepping into the breach at this time and helping them—and grateful to Amy and Gummy, as well.
Amy was a smart little housewife, and she had a gentle but firm way with the smaller children that kept them well in hand when their mother was out of the way.
Gummy, driving Mr. Harriman's delivery wagon, was at the Day house once or twice a day to see his mother, and of course Mrs. Carringford was always at home by seven or eight o'clock at night. The Days had set forward their dinner hour while Mr. Day was held in the house.
Janice would not sleep upstairs herself at first, while her father so often needed her. She made up a bed on another couch that was drawn in from the dining room, and slept there. Often in the night daddy grew restless and was thankful for a glass of fresh water or for some other small comfort.
There was one night Janice knew she should never forget, no matter to what age she lived. It was soon after her father was brought home "an invalid," as he laughingly called it. He had been in much pain all day, and Janice new it well enough, although he smothered his groans when she was within hearing.
But he could not smother his mutterings at night. Toward dark he grew feverish and very restless. And when one has a "glass leg," as the ambulance man had called it and cannot twist and toss to relieve that restless feeling, one's situation is, indeed, pitiful.
Janice put out the living-room light early. The light only made the night flying insects buzz and blunder at the window screens. And how is it that moth millers will get into the most closely screened house? This was a vexing mystery to Janice.
After it was dark and the insects went to buzz elsewhere daddy dropped to sleep. Janice had been upstairs to remove her clothing, and had come down again with a thin negligee over her nightgown.
She listened to her father's uneven breathing and to his restless murmurs. Before creeping into her own cot across the room, she went softly to daddy's side and knelt on the floor. His face was flushed and his thick hair wet with perspiration. The barber had not been to shave him for two days, and Janice just knew the "prickles" on his face must feed very uncomfortable.
His head rolled from side to side upon the pillow. She wished she could do something to relieve him. She did not want to wake him up; but if she could only lave his face and hands with cool water—
Suddenly his mutterings became intelligible. Janice was held there on her knees—absorbed and almost breathless.
"Laura!"
The name was uttered so passionately—so reverently —that Janice found the tears spring unbidden to her eyes. Daddy had spoken her dead mother's name in his sleep. Indeed, it seemed as though he called to the loved one who had gone from them never to return.
"Laura!"
"Daddy!" breathed the girl. "It's me, not mamma! I— I'm all that's left to you!"
He seemed, even in his sleep, to have heard Janice's murmured words.
"All that was left to me," Broxton Day sighed, repeating, as Janice thought, what she had said. Or did he repeat Janice's words? "Your dear thoughts— and gone! gone! If I could only find them again. The box—Olga." His mutterings trailed off into unrecognizable delirium. He muttered, and his inflamed face moved from side to side upon the pillow. He did not know her at all this heartsick, sobbing little daughter!
For Janice could understand at last what went on in his poor, troubled brain. He was dreaming of the packet of letters—the letters that were so precious to Broxton Day. In the secret compartment of the lost treasure-box. In the fever of the man's brain nothing else seemed so important to him as his lost wife's letters!
Of course, all of Janice Day's school friends did not go away from Greensboro for the summer vacation; or, if they did go away for a little visit, they were soon back again.
And when the girls heard that Janice's father had broken his leg and that Janice was tied to the house with him, they began to come to see her, and inquire about daddy, and cheer her up.
None of them realized that, with Mrs. Carringford at the head of housekeeping affairs, Janice had not felt so free and cheerful for some months as she did at this time.
Daddy soon grew better, and he began to sleep peacefully at night. The surgeon, Dr. Bowles, who came occasionally, said the bones were knitting all right. Mr. Weeks and Janice even got the patient up into a wheel chair which had an arrangement that made it possible for the broken leg to rest stiffly before daddy, and he could wheel himself out on the front
porch.
There was just the one thing to trouble the girl; that was the mystery of the lost treasure-box and the secret sorrow she felt because she had been careless with it. Without her carelessness, she told herself, Olga Cedarstrom would never have taken it out of the house —if that was really how the keepsakes had come to disappear.
It was Bertha Warring who chanced, when she first came to see Janice after her return from an exciting trip to Chicago, to mention that girl, Olga. At least she spoke of the "Olga" who had been at the Latham house and had broken Mrs. Lantham's glass dish the night of Stella's party.
"I meant to speak to you about what Stella said, Bertha remarked, "before I went away. But we went in such a hurry. You know, Stella can be awfully mean."
"Why, she's not always nice," admitted Janice whose opinion of the farmer's daughter had changed a good deal during the past few months.
"I must say you let Stella down easy when you say that," laughed
Bertha.
"Oh, she gets mad, and says mean things. But I don't think—"
"Now, stop it, Janice Day!" exclaimed the other girl "You know very wall that Stella is just as mean as a girl can be. See how she spoke of Amy Carringford. And Amy is an awfully nice girl."
"Yes, Amy is nice," admitted Janice, happily.
"Well, now, look here," said Bertha, earnestly. "Stella said something you did not hear once about that Swedish girl."
"Oh, I guess I am not particularly interested in that girl," Janice said slowly. "My father asked the Johnsons about her. You know that girl was staying with them at the time of the party. She ran away, I guess, because she was afraid Mrs. Latham would make trouble about the broken dish. But the Johnsons said her name was not Cedarstrom."
"Mercy, what a name!" laughed Bertha. "Just the same, there is something about that girl that Stella knows, and that she said you would give a good deal to know."
"Why, I can't imagine—"
"That's just it," said Bertha, quickly. "It sounded so mysterious. I ought to have told you about it there and then. But you know how jumbled up everything was, just the last days of school."
"That is so," admitted the puzzled Janice.
"But, you know, Stella and I went away on the same train together."
"No! Did you?"
"Yes. She changed cars before we got to Chicago; but she sat in the chair car with me for a long way. And I pumped her about what she meant when she spoke the way she did regarding that Swede."
"Yes?"
"Why, she giggled, and made fun, and wouldn't say anything much at first. But I hammered at her," said Bertha, "until I got her mad. You know Stella loses her temper and then—well, it's all off!" and Bertha laughed gaily.
"Oh, Bert!" admonished Janice warmly, "I don't think we ought to get her mad."
"Oh, she'll get glad again," said Bertha carelessly. "Don't worry about Stella, Miss Fussbudget."
Janice laughed then, herself. She did not mind Bertha Warring's sharp tongue.
"Well, as I was saying, I got her finally to say something more about that Olga. And what do you suppose she did say?"
"I could not guess," said the wondering Janice.
"Why, that it was very true her name was not Cedarstrom now. That is just the way she said it before she got up and flounced out of the car." "Oh, Bert!" gasped Janice.
"Do you see? I was some minutes catching on to it," Bertha said, rather slangily. "But you see, I guess. That girl had been known as 'Olga Cedarstrom' at some time or other, you mark my word. And Stella found it out and would not tell you."
"Then she must be married. Of course her name is not Cedarstrom now," murmured Janice.
"Oh! Is that it? I didn't know but she was a real crook," said
Bertha, "and had what they call an 'alias.'"
"No-o, I don't believe so. The last daddy learned about her over at Pickletown, some of the Swedish people there thought she must have gone off to get married. She was going with a young man who works in one of the pickle factories. His name is Willie Sangreen."
"And what's become of him?" asked the interested Bertha.
"He went away, too."
"They ran off and got married! Of course!" cried the romance-loving Bertha. "And that Stella Latham found it out and wouldn't tell you. Maybe your father— Oh! but he can't go looking for them now that he has a broken leg, can he?"
"I am afraid not. We'll have to wait. But do you really suppose, Bert, that Stella is sure of what she says? Perhaps she doesn't really know for sure about that Olga."
"Where there's so much smoke there must be some fire," Bertha said, with a laugh, as Janice walked out to the front gate with her. "I guess Stella knows— Oh, Janice! Talking about smoke," cried Bertha suddenly, looking back at the Day house and up at the roof, "what is all that smoke coming out of your kitchen chimney?"
Her startled friend looked in the direction indicated. Out of the chimney-mouth, and between the bricks, poured a vomit of black smoke. Then, as the girls looked, red flames darted out with the smoke— spouting four or five feet into the air above the top of the chimney.