Janice Day

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. A New-Fashioned Girl 1

II. Poketown 10

III. "It Jest Rattles" 22

IV. First Impressions 32

V. 'Rill Scattergood and Her School 43

VI. An Afternoon of Adventure 56

VII. The Little Girl Who Lost the Echo 64

VIII. A Bit of Romance 73

IX. Tea, and a Talk with Daddy 84

X. Beginning with a Bedstead 96

XI. A Rainy Day 109

XII. On the Road with Walky Dexter 122

XIII. Nelson Haley 131

XIV. A Time of Trial 139

XV. New Beginnings 149

XVI. "Showing" the Elder 159

XVII. Christmas News 173

XVIII. "The Fly-By-Night" 184

XIX. Christmas, After All! 197

XX. The Trouble with Nelson Haley 210

XXI. A Stir of New Life in Poketown 217

XXII. At the Sugar Camp 226

XXIII. "Do You Mean That?" 235

XXIV. The School Dedication 241

XXV. Through the Second Winter 253

XXVI. Just How It All Began 262

XXVII. Poketown in a New Dress 271

XXVIII. No Odor of Gasoline! 280

XXIX. Janice Day's First Love Letter 290

XXX. What the Echo Might Have Heard 302

ILLUSTRATIONS

The quick eye of Janice Day caught sight of this row of nondescripts. (See page 15.) Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

The old violin wailed out the tune haltingly 72

God's world did look bigger and greater from The Overlook. (See page 155.) 154

She just had to raise her eyes and look into his earnest ones. (See page 307.) 306

JANICE DAY

CHAPTER I

A NEW-FASHIONED GIRL

"Well! this is certainly a relief from the stuffy old cars," said Janice Day, as she reached the upper deck of the lake steamer, dropped her suitcase, and drew in her first full breath of the pure air.

"What a beautiful lake!" she went on. "And how big! Why—I had no idea! I wonder how far Poketown is from here?"

The ancient sidewheel steamer was small and there were few passengers on the upper deck, forward. Janice secured a campstool and sat down near the rail to look off over the water.

The officious man in the blue cap on the dock had shouted "All aboard!" the moment the passengers left the cars of the little narrow-gauge railroad, on which the girl had been riding for more than two hours; but it was some minutes before the wheezy old steamer got under way.

Janice was interested in everything she saw—even in the clumsy warping off of the Constance Colfax, when her hawsers were finally released.

"Goodness me!" thought the girl, chuckling, "what a ridiculous old tub it is! How different everything East here is from Greensboro. There! we're really off!"

The water hissed and splashed, as the wheels of the steamer began to turn rheumatically. The walking-beam heaved up and down with many a painful creak.

"Why! that place is real pretty—when you look at it from the lake," murmured Janice, looking back at the little landing. "I wonder if Poketown will be like it?"

She looked about her, half tempted to ask a question of somebody. There was but a single passenger near her—a little, old lady in an old-fashioned black mantilla with jet trimming, and wearing black lace half-mitts and a little bonnet that had been so long out of date that it was almost in the mode again.

She was seated with her back against the cabin house, and when the steamer rolled a little the ball of knitting-cotton, which she had taken out of her deep, bead-bespangled bag, bounced out of her lap and rolled across the deck almost to the feet of Janice.

Up the girl jumped and secured the runaway ball, winding the cotton as she approached the old lady, who peered up at her, her head on one side and her eyes sparkling, like an inquisitive bird.

"Thank ye, child," she said, briskly. "I ain't as spry as I use ter be, an' ye done me a favor. I guess I don't know ye, do I?"

"I don't believe you do, Ma'am," agreed Janice, smiling, and although she could not be called "pretty" in the sense in which the term is usually written, when Janice smiled her determined, and rather intellectual face became very attractive.

"You don't belong in these parts?" pursued the old lady.

"Oh, no, Ma'am. I come from Greensboro," and the girl named the middle western state in which her home was situated.

"Do tell! You come a long distance, don't ye?" exclaimed her fellow-passenger. "You're one of these new-fashioned gals that travel alone, an' all that sort o' thing, ain't ye? I reckon your folks has got plenty of confidence in ye."

Janice laughed again, and drew her campstool to the old lady's side.

"I was never fifty miles away from home before," she confessed, "and I never was away from my father over night until I started East two days ago."

"Then ye ain't got no mother, child?"

"Mother died when I was a very little girl. Father has been everything to me—just everything!" and for a moment the bright, young face clouded and the hazel eyes swam in unshed tears. But she turned quickly so that her new acquaintance might not see them.

"Where are you goin', my dear?" asked the old lady, more softly.

"To Poketown. And oh! I do hope it will be a nice, lively place, for maybe I'll have to remain there a long time—months and months!"

"For the land's sake!" exclaimed the old lady, nodding her head briskly over the knitting needles. "So be I goin' to Poketown."

"Are you, really?" ejaculated Janice Day, clasping her hands eagerly, and turning to her new acquaintance. "Isn't that nice! Then you can tell me just what Poketown is like. I've got to stay there with my uncle while father is in Mexico——"

"Who's your uncle, child?" demanded the old lady, quickly. "And who's your father?"

Janice naturally answered the last question first, for her heart was full of her father and her separation from him. "Mr. Broxton Day is my father, and he used to live in Poketown. But he came away from there a long, long time ago."

"Yes? I knowed there was Days in Poketown; but I ain't been there myself for goin' on twelve year. I lived there a year, or so, arter my man died, with my darter. She's teached the Poketown school for twenty year."

"Oh!" cried Janice. "Then you can't really tell me what Poketown is like—now?"

"Why, it's quite a town, I b'lieve," said the old lady. "'Rill writes me thet the ho-tel's jest been painted, and there's a new blacksmith shop built. You goin' to school there—What did you say your name was?"

"Janice Day. I don't know whether I shall go to school while I am in Poketown, or not. If there are a whole lot of nice girls—and a few nice boys—who go to your daughter's school, I shall certainly want to go, too," continued Janice, smiling again at the little old lady.

"Wal, 'Rill Scattergood's teached long enough, I tell her," declared the other. "I'm goin' to Poketown now more'n half to git her to give up at the end o' this term. With what she's laid by, and what I've got left, we could live mighty comfertable together. Who's your uncle, child?" pursued Mrs. Scattergood, who had not lost sight of her main inquiry.

"Mr. Jason Day. He's my father's half brother."

"Ya-as. I didn't know them Days very well when I lived there. How long did you say you was goin' to stay in Poketown?"

"I don't know, Ma'am," said Janice, sadly. "Father didn't know how long he'd be in Mexico——"

"Good Land o' Goshen!" ejaculated Mrs. Scattergood, suddenly, "ain't that where there's fightin' goin' on right now?"

"Yes'm. That's why he couldn't take me with him," confessed Janice, eager to talk with a sympathetic listener. "You see, I guess 'most all the money we've got is invested in some mine down there. The fighting came near the mine, and the superintendent ran away and left everything."

"Goodness! why wouldn't he?" exclaimed the old lady, knitting faster than ever in her excitement.

"But then that made it so my father had to go down there and 'tend to things," explained Janice.

"What! right in the middle of the war? Good Land o' Goshen!"

"There wasn't anybody else to go," said Janice, sadly. "The stockholders might lose all they put into it. And our money, too. Why! we had to rent our house furnished. That's why I am coming East to Uncle Jason's while father is away."

"Too bad! too bad!" returned the old lady, shaking her head.

"But you see," Janice hastened to say, with pride, "my father is that kind of a man. The other folks expected him to take hold of the business and straighten it out. He—he's always doing such things, you know."

"I see," agreed Mrs. Scattergood. "He's one o' these 'up an' comin' sort o' men. And you're his darter!" and she cackled a little, shrill laugh. "I kin see that. You're one o' these new-fashioned gals, all right."

"I hope I'm like Daddy," said Janice, quietly. "Everybody loves Daddy—everybody depends on him to go ahead and do things. I hope Uncle Jason will be like him."

With the light breeze fluttering the little crinkles of hair between her hat and her brow, and an expression of bright expectancy upon her face, Janice was worth looking at a second time. So Mrs. Scattergood thought, as she glanced up now and again from her knitting.

"Poketown—Poketown," the girl murmured to herself, trying to spy out the land ahead as the Constance Colfax floundered on. "Oh! I hope Daddy's remembrance of it is all wrong now. I hope it will belie its name."

"What's that, child?" put in the sharp voice of her neighbor.

"Why—why—if it is poky I know I shall just die of homesickness for Greensboro," confessed Janice. "How could the early settlers of these 'New Hampshire Grants' ever dare give such a homely name to a village?"

"Pshaw!" ejaculated Mrs. Scattergood. "What's a name? Prob'bly some man named Poke settled there fust. Or pokeberries grew mighty common there. People weren't so fanciful about names in them days. Why! my son-in-law lives right now in a place in York State called 'Skunk's Hollow' and the city folks that's movin' in there is tryin' to git the post office to change the name to 'Posy Bloom.' No 'countin' for tastes in names. My poor mother called me Mahala Ann—an' me too leetle to fight back. But I made up my mind when I was a mighty leetle gal that if ever I had a baby I'd call it sumthin' pretty. An' I done the right thing by all my children.

"Now here's 'Rill," pursued Mrs. Scattergood, waxing communicative. "Her full name's Amarilla—Amarilla Scattergood. Don't you think that's purty yourself, now?"

Janice politely agreed. But she quickly swung the conversation back to Poketown.

"I suppose, if mills had been built there, or the summer boarders had discovered Poketown, its name would have been changed, too. And you haven't been up there for twelve years?"

"No, child. But that ain't long. Ain't much happens in twelve years back East here."

Janice sighed again; but suddenly she jumped from her stool excitedly, crying: "Oh! what place is that?"

She pointed far ahead. Around a rocky headland the view of a pleasant cove had just opened. The green and blue-ribbed hills rose behind the cove; the water lay sparkling in it. There was a vividly white church with a heaven-pointing spire right among the big green trees.

A brown ribbon of main thoroughfare wound up from the wharf, but was soon lost under the shade of the great trees that interlaced their branches above it—branches which were now lush with the late spring growth of leaves. Here and there a cottage, or larger dwelling, appeared, most of them originally white like the church, but many shabby from the action of wind and weather.

Over all, the warm sun spread a mantle. In the distance this bright mantle softened the rigid lines of the old-fashioned houses, and of the ledges and buttresses of the hills themselves.

Old Mrs. Scattergood stood up, too, looking through her steel-bowed glasses.

"I declare for't!" she said, "that's Poketown itself! That's the spire of the Union Church you see. We'll git there in an hour."

Janice did not sit down again just then, nor did she reply. She rested both trimly-gloved hands on the rail and gazed upon the scene.

"Why, it's beautiful!" she breathed at last "And that is Poketown!"

CHAPTER II

POKETOWN

Some ancient dwellings have the dignity of "homestead" resting upon them like a benediction; others are aureoled by the name of "manor." The original Day in Poketown had built a shingled, gable-ended cottage upon the side-hill which had now, for numberless years, been called "the old Day house"—nothing more.

"Jason! You Jase! I'd give a cent if you'd mend this pump," complained Mrs. Almira Day. "Go git me a pail of water from Mis' Dickerson's and ask how's her rhoumatism this mawnin'. Come on, now! I can't wash the breakfas' dishes till I hev some water."

The grizzled, lanky man who had been sitting comfortably on a bench in the sun, sucking on a corncob pipe and gazing off across the lake, never even turned his head as he asked:

"Where's Marty?"

"The goodness only knows! Ye know he ain't never here when ye want him."

"Why didn't ye tell him about the water at breakfas' time?"

"Would that have done any good?" demanded Mrs. Day, with some scorn. "Ye know Marty's got too big to take orders from his marm. He don't do nothin' but hang about Josiah Pringle's harness shop all day."

"I told him to hoe them 'taters," said Mr. Day, thoughtfully.

"Well, he don't seem ter take orders from his dad, neither. Don't know what that boy's comin' to," and a whine crept into Mrs. Day's voice. "He can't git along with 'Rill Scattergood, so he won't go to school. His fingers is gettin' all stained yaller from suthin'—d'you 'xpect it's them cigarettes, Jase?"

Her husband was rising slowly to his feet. "Gimme the pail," he grunted, without replying to her last question. "I'll git the water for ye this onc't. But that's Marty's job an' he's got to l'arn it, too!"

"Here, Jase! take two pails," urged Mrs. Day. "An' I wish you would git Pringle to cut ye a new pump-leather."

But Mr. Day ignored the second pail. "I don't feel right peart to-day," he said, shambling off down the path. "And there's a deal of heft to a pail of water—uphill, too. An' by-me-by I got ter go down to the dock, I s'pose, when the boat comes in, to meet Broxton's gal. I 'xpect she'll be a great nuisance, 'Mira."

"I'll stand her bein' some nuisance if you give me the twenty dollars a month your brother wrote that he'd send for her board and keep," snapped Mrs. Day. "You understand, Jase. That money's comin' to me, or I don't scrub and slave for no relation of yourn. Remember that!"

Jason shuffled on as though he had not heard her. That was the most exasperating trait of this lazy man—so his wife thought; he was too lazy to quarrel.

He went out at the gate, which hung by one hinge to the gatepost, into the untidy back lane upon which one end of his rocky little farm abutted. Had he glanced back at the premises he would have seen a weed-grown, untidy yard surrounding the old house, with decrepit stables and other outbuildings in the rear, a garden which was almost a jungle now, although in the earlier spring it had given much promise of a summer harvest of vegetables. Poorly tilled fields behind the front premises terraced up the timber-capped hill.

Jason Day always "calkerlated ter farm it" each year, and he started in good season, too. The soil was rich and most of his small fields were warm and early; but somehow his plans always fell through before the season was far advanced. So neither the farm nor the immediate premises of the old Day house were attractive.

The house itself looked like a withered and gnarly apple left hanging upon the tree from the year before. In its forlorn nakedness it actually cried out for a coat of paint. Each individual shingle was curled and cracked. Only the superior workmanship of a former time kept the Day roof tight and defended the family from storms.

Some hours later the Constance Colfax came into view around a distant point in the lake shore. Mr. Day had camped upon the identical bench again and was still sucking at the stem of his corncob pipe.

"Wal," he groaned, "I 'xpect I've got to go down to meet that gal of Broxton's. And the sun's mighty hot this mawnin'."

"You wouldn't feel it so, if ye hadn't been too 'tarnal lazy to change yer seat," sniffed his wife. "Now, you mind, Jase! That board money comes to me, or you can take Broxton's gal to the ho-tel."

Mr. Day shambled out of the front gate without making reply.

"Drat the man!" muttered his wife. "If I could jes' git a rise out o' him onc't——"

It was not far to the dock. Indeed, Poketown was so compactly built on the steep hillside that there was scarcely a house within its borders from which a boy could not have tossed a pebble into the waters of the cove. Jason strolled along in the shade, passing the time of day with such neighbors as were equally disengaged, and spreading the news of his niece's expected arrival.

As he passed along the lane which later debouched upon the main thoroughfare of Poketown, it was evident to the most casual glance that the old Day house was not the only dwelling far along in a state of decay. Poketown was full of such.

On the street leading directly to the dock there were several well-cared-for estates—some of them wedged in between blocks of two-story frame buildings, the first floors of which were occupied by stores of various kinds. The post office had a building to itself. The Lake View Inn was not unattractive, its side piazza overlooking the cove and the lake spread beyond.

But the rutty, dusty road showed that it had been rutty and muddy in the earlier spring. The flagstones of the sidewalks were broken, and the walks themselves ill kept. The gutters were overgrown with grass and weeds. Before the shops the undefended tree trunks were gnawed into grotesque patterns by the farmers' hungry beasts. Hardware was at a premium in Poketown, for a dozen gates along the line were hung with leather hinges, and bits of rope had taken the places of the original latches.

From the water, however, even on closer view, the hillside village made a pretty picture. Near the wharf it was not so romantic, as Janice Day realized, when the coughing, wheezy steamboat came close in.

There were decrepit boats drawn up on the narrow beach; there were several decaying shacks bordering on the dock itself; and along the stringpiece of the wharf roosted a row of "humans" that were the opposite of ornamental. The quick eye of Janice Day caught sight of this row of nondescripts.

"Goodness me, Mrs. Scattergood!" she exclaimed, turning to the old lady who had been in receipt of her confidences. "Is the almshouse near Poketown?"

"There's a poorfarm, child; but there ain't nobody on it but a few old folks an' some orphans. We ain't poor here—not pauper poor. But, goodness me! you mean them men a-settin' there? Why, they ain't poor—no, no, child. I don't suppose there's a man there that don't own his own house. There's Mel Parraday, who owns the ho-tel; and Lem Pinney that owns stock in this very steamboat comp'ny; and Walkworthy Dexter—Walky's done expressin' and stage-drivin' since before my 'Rill come here to Poketown to teach."

"But—but they look so ragged and unshaven," gasped Janice.

"Pshaw! they ain't proud, I reckon," cackled the old lady, gathering up her knitting and dropping it into the beaded bag, which she shut with a snap.

"But isn't there anybody proud of them?" queried Janice. "Haven't they mothers—or wives—or sisters?"

The old lady stared at her. Then she made a sudden clicking in her throat that might have been a chuckle. "I declare for't, child!" she ejaculated. "I dunno as many of us in these parts air proud of our men folks."

Just then the steamboat's bow bumped the wharf. The jar scarcely seemed to awaken the languid line of Poketownites ranged along the other side. The only busy person in sight was the employee of the steamboat company who caught the loop of the hawser thrown him, and dropped it over a pile. The rest of the men just raised their heads and stared, chewing reflectively on either tobacco or straws, until the plank was dropped and the deckhands began trundling the freight and baggage ashore.

There were two or three commercial drummers beside Mrs. Scattergood and Janice, who disembarked on this dock. Mrs. Scattergood bade the girl from the West a brisk good-bye and went directly up the dock, evidently expecting nobody to meet her at this time of day. A lanky man, with grizzled brows and untrimmed beard, got up slowly from the stringpiece of the wharf and slouched forward to meet Janice Day.

"I reckon you be Broxton's gal, eh?" he queried, his eyes twinkling not unkindly. "Ye sort er favor him—an' he favored his mother in more ways than one. You're Janice Day?"

"Oh, yes indeed! And you're my Uncle Jason?" cried the girl, impulsively seizing Mr. Day's hand. There was nothing about this man that at all reminded Janice of her father; yet the thought of their really being so closely related to each other was comforting. "I'm so glad to see you," she continued. "I hope you'll like me, Uncle Jason—and I hope Aunt Almira will like me. And there is a cousin, too, isn't there—a boy? Dear me! I've been looking forward to meeting you all ever since I left Greensboro, and been wondering what sort of people you would be."

"Wal," drawled Uncle Jason, rather staggered by the way Janice "ran on," "we reckon on makin' ye comferble. Looks like we'd have ye with us some spell, too. Broxton writ me that he didn't know how long he'd be gone—down there in Mexico."

"No. Poor Daddy couldn't tell. The business must be 'tended to, I s'pose——"

"Right crazy of him to go there," grunted Uncle Jason. "May git shot any minute. Ain't no money wuth that, I don't believe."

This rather tactless speech made the girl suddenly look grave; but it did not quench her vivacity. She was staring about the dock, interested in everything she saw, when Uncle Jason drawled:

"I s'pose ye got a trunk, Janice?"

"Oh, yes. Here is the check," and she began to skirmish in her purse.

"Wal! there ain't no hurry. Marty'll come down by-me-by with the wheelbarrer and git it for ye."

"But my goodness!" exclaimed the girl from Greensboro. "I haven't anything fit to put on in this bag; everything got rumpled so aboard the train. I'll want to change just as soon as I get to the house, Uncle."

"Wal!" Uncle Jason was staggered. He had given up thinking quickly years before. This was an emergency that floored him.

"Why! isn't that the expressman there? And can't he take my trunk right up to the house?" continued the girl.

"Ya-as; that's Walky Dexter," admitted Mr. Day.

A stout, red-faced man was backing a raw-boned nag in front of a farm wagon, down upon the wharf and toward a little heap of baggage that had been run ashore from the lower deck of the Constance Colfax. Janice, still lugging her suitcase, shot up the dock toward the expressman, leaving Jason, slack-jawed and well-nigh breathless.

"Jefers-pelters! What a flyaway critter she is!" the man muttered. "I don't see whatever we're a-goin' to do with her."

Meanwhile Janice got Mr. Dexter's attention immediately. "There's my trunk right there, Mr. Dexter," she cried. "And here's the check. You see it—the brown trunk with the brass corners?"

"I see it, Miss. All right. I'll git it up to Jason's some time this arternoon."

"Oh, Mr. Dexter!" she cried, shaking her head at him, but smiling, too. "That will not do at all! I want to unpack it at once. I need some of the things in it, for I've been traveling two days. Can't you take it on your first load?"

"Wa-al—I might," confessed Dexter, looking her over with a quizzical smile. "But us'ally the Days ain't in no hurry."

"Then this is one Day who is in a hurry," she said, briefly. "What is your charge for delivering the trunk, sir?"

"Oh—'bout a quarter, Miss. And gimme that suitcase, too. 'Twon't cost ye no more, and I'll git 'em there before Jason and you reach the house. Poketown is a purty slow old place, Miss," the man added, with a wink and a chuckle, "but I kin see the days are going to move faster, now you have arove in town. Don't you fear; your trunk'll be there—'nless Josephus, here, busts a leg!"

Quite stunned, Uncle Jason had not moved from his tracks. "Now we're all right, sir," said the girl, cheerily, taking his arm and by her very touch seeming to galvanize a little life into his scarecrow figure. "Shall we go home?"

"Eh? Wal! Ef ye say so, Janice," replied Mr. Day, weakly.

They started up the main street of Poketown, Janice accommodating her step to that of her uncle. Mr. Day was not one given to idle chatter; but the girl did not notice his silence in her interest in all she saw.

It was a beautiful, shady way, with the hill not too steep for comfort. And some of the dwellings set in the midst of their terraced old lawns, were so beautiful! It was the beauty of age, however; there did not seem to be a single new thing in Poketown.

Even the scant display of goods in the shop windows had lain there until they were dust-covered, sun-burned, and flyspecked. The signs over the store doors were tarnished.

They came to the lane that led up the hill away from High Street, and on which Uncle Jason said he lived. An almost illegible sign at the corner announced it to be "Hillside Avenue." There were not two fences abutting upon the lane that were set in line, while the sidewalks were narrow or broad, according to the taste of the several owners of property along the way.

The beautiful old trees were everywhere, however; only some of them needed trimming badly, and many overhung the roofs, their dripping branches having rotted the shingles and given life to great patches of green moss. There was a sogginess to the grass-grown yards that seemed unhealthful. There were several, picturesque, old wells, with massive sweeps and oaken buckets—quaint breeders of typhoid germs—which showed that the physicians of Poketown had not properly educated their patients to modern sanitary ideas.

Altogether the village in which her father had been born and bred was a dead-and-alive, do-nothing place, and its beauty, for Janice Day, faded before she was halfway up the hill to her uncle's house.

CHAPTER III

"IT JEST RATTLES"

Almira Day was a good-hearted woman. It was not in her to treat her husband's niece otherwise than kindly, despite her threat to the contrary when Jason left the old Day house to meet Janice at the steamboat dock.

She stood smiling in the doorway—a large, pink, lymphatic woman, as shapeless as a half-filled meal-sack with a string tied around its middle, quite as untidy as her husband in dress, but with clean skin and a wholesome look.

Her calico dress was faded and, in places, strained to the bursting-point, showing that it was "store-bought" and had never been fitted to Mrs. Day's bulbous figure. She wore a pair of men's slippers very much down at the heel, and pink stockings with a gaping hole in the seam at the back of one, which Janice very plainly saw as her aunt preceded her upstairs to the room the visitor was to occupy.

"I hope ye won't mind how things look," drawled Aunt 'Mira. "We ain't as up-an'-comin' as some, I do suppose. But nothin' ain't gone well with Jason late years, an' he's got some mis'ry that he can't git rid of, so's he can't work stiddy. Look out for this nex' ter the top step. The tread's broke an' I been expectin' ter be throwed from top to bottom of these stairs for weeks."

"Can't Uncle Jason fix it?" asked Janice, stepping over the broken tread.

"Wal, he ain't exactly got 'round to it yet," confessed her aunt. "There! I do hope you like your room, Niece Janice. There's a pretty outlook from the winder."

True enough, the window overlooked the hillside and the lake. Only, had the panes been washed one could have viewed the landscape and the water so much better!

The room itself was the shabbiest bedchamber Janice Day had ever seen. The carpet on the floor had, generations before, been one of those flowery axminsters that country people used to buy for their "poller." Then they would pull all the shades down and shut the room tightly, for otherwise the pink roses faded completely out of the design.

This old carpet had long since been through that stage of existence, however, and was now worn to the warp in spots, its design being visible only because of the ingrained grime which years of trampling had brought to it.

The paper on the walls was faded and stained. Empty places where pictures had hung for years, showed in contrast to the more faded barren districts. A framed copy of the Declaration of Independence ornamented the space above the mantel. Hanging above the bed's head were those two famous chromos of "Good-Morning" and "Good-Night." A moth-eaten worsted motto and cross, "The Rock of Ages," hung above the little bureau glass. There was, too, a torn and faded slipper for matches, and a tall glass lamp that, for some reason, reminded Janice of a skeleton. She could never look at that lamp thereafter without expecting the oil tank to become a grinning skull with a tall fool's cap (the chimney) on it, and its thin body to sprout bony arms and legs.

The furniture was decrepit and ill matched. Janice could have overlooked the shaky chair, the toppling bureau, and the scratched washstand; but the bed with only three legs, and a soap-box under the fourth corner, did bring a question to the guest's lips:

"Where is the other leg, Aunty?"

"Now, I declare for't!" exclaimed Mrs. Day. "That is too bad! The leg's up on the closet shelf here. Jase was calkerlatin' to put it on again, but he ain't never got 'round to it. But the box'll hold yer. It only rattles," she added, as Janice tried the security of the bedstead.

That expression, "it only rattles," the girl from Greensboro was destined to hear unnumbered times in her uncle's home. It was typical of the old Day house and its inmates. Unless a repair absolutely must be made, Uncle Jason would not take a tool in his hand.

As for her Cousin Martin ("Marty" everybody called the gangling, grinning, idle ne'er-do-well of fourteen), Janice was inclined to be utterly hopeless about him from the start. If he was a specimen of the Poketown boys, she told herself, she had no desire to meet any of them.

"What do you do with yourself all day long, Marty, if you don't go to school?" she asked her cousin, at the dinner table.

"Oh, I hang around—like everybody else. Ain't nothin' doin' in Poketown."

"I should think it would be more fun to go to school."

"Not ter 'Rill Scattergood," rejoined the boy, in haste. "That old maid dunno enough to teach a cow."

Janice might have thought a cow much more difficult to teach than a boy; only she looked again into Marty's face, which plainly advertised the vacancy of his mind, and thought better of the speech that had risen to her lips.

"Marty won't go to school no more," her aunt complained, whiningly. "'Rill Scattergood ain't got no way with him. Th' committee's been talkin' about gittin' another teacher for years; but 'Rill's sorter sot there, she's had the place so long."

"There's more than a month of school yet—before the summer vacation—isn't there?" queried Janice.

"Oh, yes," sighed Mrs. Day.

"I'd love to go and get acquainted with the girls," the guest said, brightly. "Wouldn't you go with me some afternoon and introduce me to the teacher, Marty?"

"Me? Ter 'Rill Scattergood? Naw!" declared the amazed Marty. "I sh'd say not!"

"Why, Marty!" exclaimed his mother. "That ain't perlite."

"Who said 'twas?" returned her hopeful son, shortly. "I ain't tryin' ter be perlite ter no girl. And I ain't goin' ter 'Rill Scattergood's school—never, no more!"

"Young man," commanded his father, angrily, "you hold that tongue o' yourn. And you be perlite to your cousin, or I'll dance the dust out o' your jacket with a hick'ry sprout, big as ye be."

Janice hastened to change the subject and tune the conversation to a more pleasant key.

"It is so pretty all over this hillside," she said. "Around Greensboro the country is flat. I think the hills are much more beautiful. And the lake is just dear."

"Ya-as," sighed her aunt. "Artis' folks come here an' paint this lake. I reckon it's purty; but ye sort er git used ter it after a while."

It was evidently hard for Aunt 'Mira to enthuse over anything. Marty volunteered:

"We got a waterfall on our place. Folks call it the Shower Bath. Guess a girl would think 'twas pretty."

"Oh! I'd love to see that," declared Janice, quickly.

"I'll show it to you after dinner," said Marty, of a sudden surprisingly friendly.

"You'll hoe them 'taters after dinner," cried his father, sharply. "That's what you'll do."

"Huh!" growled the sullen youth. "Yer said I was to be perlite, an' when I start in ter be, you spring them old pertaters on a feller. Huh!"

"Aw, now, Jason," interposed his mother. "Can't Marty show his cousin over the farm and hoe the 'taters afterward?"

"No, he can't!" denied Master Marty, quickly. "I ain't goin' ter work double for nobody. Now, that's flat!"

"Oh, we can go to the Shower Bath some other time," suggested Janice, apprehensive of starting another family squabble. "I don't know as I'd be able to hoe potatoes; but maybe there are other things I can do in the garden. I always had a big flower garden at home."

"Huh!" grunted Marty. "Flowers are only a nuisance."

"I s'pose you could weed some," sighed Aunt 'Mira. "It hurts me so to stoop."

"She'd better pick 'tater bugs," said Marty, grinning. "They've begun to come, I reckon. Hard-shells, anyway."

Janice could not resist shivering at this suggestion. She did not love insects any better than do most girls. But she took Marty's suggestion in good part.

"You wait," she said. "Maybe I can do that, too. I'll weed a little, anyway. Have you a large farm, Uncle Jason?"

"It's big enough, Janice," grumbled Jason. "Does seem as though—most years—it's too big for us to manage. If Marty, here, warn't so triflin'——"

"I don't see no medals on you for workin' hard," whispered the boy, loud enough for Janice to hear.

"This was a right good farm, onc't," said Aunt 'Mira. "B'fore Jason got his mis'ry we use ter have good crops. That's when we was fust married."

"But that's what broke my health all down," interposed Uncle Jason. "Don't pay a man to work so hard when he's young. He has ter suffer for it in the end."

"Huh!" grunted Marty. "If it wasn't good for you to work so hard when you was young, what about me?"

"You git along out o' here an' start on them 'taters!" commanded Mr. Day, angrily.

Marty slid out, muttering under his breath. Janice jumped up from the table, saying cheerfully: "I'll help you with the dishes, Aunty. Let's clear off."

Her uncle had risen and was feeling for his corncob pipe on the ledge above the door. Mrs. Day looked a bit startled when she saw Janice begin briskly to collect the soiled dishes.

"I dunno, Janice," she hesitated. "I gin'rally feel right po'ly after dinner, and I'm use ter takin' forty winks."

Janice did not wonder that her aunt felt "right po'ly." She had eaten more pork, potatoes, spring cabbage and fresh bread than would have served a hearty man.

"Let's get rid of the dishes first, Aunty," said Janice, cheerfully "You can get your nap afterward."

"Wa-al," agreed Mrs. Day, slowly rising. "I dunno's there's water enough to more'n give 'em a lick and a promise. Marty! Oh, you Marty! Come, go for a pail of water, will ye? That's a good boy."

"Now, ye know well enough," snarled Jason's voice just outside the door, "that that boy ain't in earshot now."

"Oh, I can get a pail of water from the pump, Aunty," said Janice, briskly starting for the porch.

"But that pump ain't goin'," declared Mrs. Day. "An' no knowin' when 'twill be goin'. We have ter lug all our water from Dickerson's."

"Oh, gimme the bucket!" snapped Uncle Jason, putting his great, hairy hand inside the door and snatching the water-pail from the shelf. "Wimmen-folks is allus a-clatterin' about suthin'!"

Janice had never imagined people just like these relatives of hers. She was both ashamed and amused,—ashamed of their ill-breeding and amused by their useless bickering.

"Wa-al," said her aunt, yawning and lowering herself upon the kitchen couch, the springs of which squeaked complainingly under her weight, "Wa-al, 'tain't scurcely wuth doin' the dishes now. Jason'll stop and gab 'ith some one. It takes him ferever an' a day ter git a pail o' water. You go on about your play, Niece Janice. I'll git 'em done erlone somehow, by-me-by."

Mrs. Day closed her eyes while she was still speaking. She was evidently glad to relax into her old custom again.

Janice took down her aunt's sunbonnet from the nail by the side door and went out. Amusement had given place in the girl's mind to something like actual shrinking from these relatives and their ways. The porch boards gave under even her weight. Some of them were broken. The steps were decrepit, too. The pump handle was tied down, she found, when she put a tentative hand upon it.

"'It jest rattles,'" quoted Janice; but no laugh followed the sigh which was likewise her involuntary comment upon the situation.

CHAPTER IV

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

There was a long, well-shaded yard behind the house, bordered on the upper hand by the palings of the garden fence. Had this fence not been so overgrown by vines, wandering hens could have gone in and out of the garden at pleasure.

Robins were whisking in and out of the tops of the trees, quarreling over the first of the cherry crop. Janice heard Marty's hoe and she opened the garden gate. About half of this good-sized patch was given over to the "'tater" crop; the remainder of the garden seemed—to the casual glance—merely a wilderness of weeds. There may have been rows of vegetable seeds planted there in the beginning; but now it was a perfect mat of green things that have no commercial value—to say the least.

Marty was about halfway down the first row of potatoes. He was cleaning the row pretty well, and the weeds were wilting in the sun; but the rows were as crooked as a snake's path.

"Hullo!" said the boy, willing to stop and lean on the hoe handle. "Don't you want to help?"

"I don't believe I could hoe, Marty," said Janice, doubtfully.

"If you'd been a boy cousin, I wouldn't have minded," grunted Marty. "He and me could have had some fun."

"Don't you think I can be any fun?" demanded Janice, rather amused by the frankness of the youth.

"Never saw a gal that was," responded Marty. "Always in the way. Marm says I got to be perlite to 'em——"

"And is that such a cross?"

"Don't know anything about no cross," growled Marty; "but a boy cousin that I could lick would ha' been a whole lot more to my mind."

"Oh, Marty! we're not going to quarrel."

"I dunno whether we are or not," returned the pessimistic youth. "Wait till there's only one piece o' pie left at dinner some day. You'll have ter have it. Marm'll say so. But if you was a boy—an' I could lick ye—ye wouldn't dare take it. D'ye see?"

"I'm not so awfully fond of pie," admitted Janice. "And I wouldn't let a piece stand in the way of our being good friends."

"Oh, well; we'll see," said Marty, grudgingly. "But ye can't hoe, ye say?"

"I don't believe so. I'd cut off more potato plants than weeds, maybe. Can't you cultivate your potatoes with a horse cultivator? I see the farmers doing that around Greensboro. It's lots quicker."

"Oh, we got a horse-hoe," said Marty, without interest. "But it got broke an' Dad ain't fixed it yet. B'sides, ye couldn't use it 'twixt these rows. They're too crooked. But then—as the feller said—there's more plants in a crooked row."

"What's all that?" demanded Janice, waving a hand toward the other half of the garden.

"Weeds—mostly. Right there's carrots. Marm always will plant carrots ev'ry spring; but they git lost so easy in the weeds."

"I know carrots," cried Janice, brightly. "Let me weed 'em," and she dropped on her knees at the beginning of the rows.

"Help yourself!" returned Marty, plying the hoe. "But it looks to me as though them carrots had just about fainted."

It looked so to Janice, too, when she managed to find the tender little plants which, coming up thickly enough in the row, now looked as livid as though grown in a cellar. The rank weeds were keeping all the sun and air from them.

"I can find them, just the same," she confided to Marty, when he came back up the next row. "And I'd better thin them, too, as I go along, hadn't I?"

"Help yourself," repeated the boy. "But pickin' 'tater bugs wouldn't be as bad as that, to my mind."