The testing of Janice Day

Yes, this was Annette Bowman, to whose coming to Polktown Janice had looked forward with such pleased expectancy. Now she was very sorry she even knew Frank, for she did not see how she could escape being introduced to his sister.

There were, however, a few days of grace. It was mid-week when Annette came to the Lake View Inn and Frank could not very well bring her up to the Day house before Saturday afternoon.

Janice shrank from contemplating the awkwardness bound to arise out of her meeting with the civil engineer’s sister. Frank might be a very “civil” engineer indeed; but Annette, as Janice well knew, was woefully lacking in that element of her brother’s character. When Janice and Annette met, the latter could not fail to recognize the former as the person who had driven the automobile when Judge Slater’s cob was frightened on the Middletown Lower Road. And then what?

“There will be an explosion,” sighed Janice. “I would give a good deal if Auntie and I had not gone to Middletown that day.”

Meanwhile Annette was not idle. She made her presence felt in Polktown from the beginning. Her first parade up the hill to Massey’s drug store for the purchasing of a new toothbrush and some face powder was conducted in a manner to strike Polktown—even the feminine section—with awe. A musical comedy queen, right off the stage, could have been no more gaily appareled than Annette Bowman. Moreover, her eyebrows were heavily penciled, her lips rouged, her cheeks tinted and her nose powdered so thickly that the contrast between cheeks and nose was startling.

She wore a dress of pale green, the over-gown of some sheer material, while the actual frock itself clung as closely to her slight figure as a glove, and was slit up in front half way to her knees. She wore dancing slippers with high heels, and as she walked one could glimpse embroidered silk stockings.

Walky Dexter, who saw her as he was driving down to the boat dock, afterward vowed that Josephus was more startled by the sight than he had been by the apparition of Janice Day’s new car.

“I snum!” exclaimed Walky; “she looked like one o’ them green hoppergrasses ye see in a ryefield—a standin’ on its hind laigs an’ teeterin’ along like our old Ponto when he tries ter beg for a dog-biscuit. Nor I never did see nothin’ jest like that parasol before, neither—all lace and do-funnies. Wouldn’t keep the sun off’n a blind worm in a mole-tunnel, that wouldn’t! Jest as soon hev a colander on a stick.”

Whereas Walky was critical and some of the other male observers inclined to laugh at Miss Annette Bowman, the female portion of Polktown’s inhabitants was soon divided into two camps—one openly admiring the stylish young lady, the other speaking harshly of her; but both in their hearts wishing they could view her wonderful costumes more closely.

In the afternoon Annette went for another stroll, arrayed from head to toe in an entirely different creation of a fashionable New York costumer. Behind the cover of the window blinds the ladies of High Street took note of Miss Bowman’s fashion-plate figure.

Venturing into Massey’s once more, the proprietor, on the strength of having served her in the morning, introduced a couple of the older girls to the new arrival in Polktown. Annette was very gracious—nobody could be more so when she cared to make a good impression—and she quite charmed Elvira Snow and Mabel Woods. All three strolled up the shadiest side of High Street. Elvira and Mabel were the sort of girls who read romantic novels, consider a boy’s attentions a subject to be whispered about, and who preen before a mirror when they make ready for an appearance in public. Elvira desired her friends to call her “’Vira,” while Mabel Woods had long written her name “Maybelle.”

They were envied by the other girls they met that day because they were first to become acquainted with the new guest at the Lake View Inn. There was to be a small party at Major Price’s house that evening, and when, in the peregrinations of the trio, they came past the Major’s fine old mansion and spacious lawn, Maggie Price was introduced to the city girl. No matter what was put on poor Maggie, she always would look dowdy; and yet in her soul the Major’s daughter worshipped at the shrine of Fashion.

She was enamored of Annette instantly. Elvira and Mabel made themselves friends for life of Maggie Price by tolling the brilliant bird of passage to the Price gate.

“Do come up to-night, Miss Bowman—and bring your brother, of course. It’s quite informal. Pa is acquainted with Mr. Bowman; I’m not and I’m just dying to meet him. But he hasn’t had much time since he’s been in Polktown for anybody or anything but Janice Day and her new automobile. I’m just dying to have a car myself; but pa won’t hear to it. He says he doesn’t want anything in the stable that he can’t stop by saying ‘Whoa!’ You will come? That’s so nice. You’ll come, too, now—’Vira and Maybelle—won’t you? Well, now, do!”

To be invited to the Price house was to enter the Golden Gate of Polktown society. Annette dragged Frank off to the dull reception after his hard day’s work; but the young civil engineer attended her with little complaint. He really loved his sister, and Annette showed him the most lovable side of her character.

Some of the young traveling men—drummers Polktown people called them—had actually stayed over their usual time at the Inn because of Annette’s appearance at the general table. But the presence of Frank and the stern oversight of good Mrs. Parraday guarded the foolish Annette from any unpleasant consequences of her gay appearance.

“That gal,” the innkeeper’s wife confessed to her neighbor, “ain’t no more responsible than a butterfly—and she flits about jest as perky an’ unsuspicious. Her brother left her in my care when he’s off to his work daytimes, and any of them drummers that try to git fermiliar with the foolish gal is goin’ to git a broadside from Ma’am Parraday that they won’t forgit!”

Annette went to Major Price’s arrayed in a party gown such as never had been seen in Polktown before. Frank, who knew a little something about the village standards, made his sister wear some lacy stuff tucked into the upper part of the frock.

“Talk about the lilies of the field bein’ dressy,” drawled Marty, who had chanced to observe Frank and his sister as they left the hotel for the party, and came home to tell about it, “they ain’t got nothin’ on Annette Bowman, believe me! I expect Frank’s used to seeing girls in New York dressed like that; but, crackey, Janice! if you was to put on clo’es like she wears I’d be ashamed to walk out to the cow-barn with ye.”

“Why, Marty!” laughed Janice. “She can’t be dressed as badly as all that.”

“I’d love to see that dress,” his mother said, with a sigh. “It must be lovely!”

“Lovely—huh!” snorted Marty, in deep disdain.

Annette and her frocks were the main topics of conversation that week in Polktown. Interest in the new railroad waned and Janice’s automobile was likewise relegated to the background. After the Prices’ party Mrs. Hutchins and the other dressmakers of the town were immediately rushed with work. Mr. Massey, who kept a side line of books and periodicals, sold out his latest pattern magazines almost at once. A furore of frock-making took hold upon the mothers of the town.

It was mostly the girls of about Annette’s age who began this aping of the ultra-fashions; but the disease spread until many of the staid matrons of the town were refurbishing their summer frocks, or having new ones made more in accord with the pictures in Aunt ’Mira’s story papers.

It was a bit of male gossip that Mr. John-Ed. Hutchins was scarcely seen out of the house for the next fortnight. It was a long-established fiction that Mr. John-Ed. was “weakly” and could not work. At least, he never did work—much; but he was not too weak to pull basting threads, and when his wife was “driv with work,” in Polktown parlance, she kept her otherwise useless spouse busy at this end of the dressmaking art. Mrs. Hutchins admitted that she hadn’t been so busy before in years.

Miss Link, the plump, little, near-sighted milliner, who always seemed to be lurking like a bespectacled spider behind her half blind on High Street, got near enough to Annette during the first few days of her stay at the Inn to copy one or two of the city girl’s hats, and she put them in a prominent position in her show window for “bait.” Harlan, the shoeman, immediately got in a stock of pumps and spats, and Icivilly Sprague bought the first pair of the latter ever sold in Polktown.

Icivilly’s brother, Sam, had a remarkably long neck, and he was addicted to attacks of quinsy sore throat at all times of the year. The unfortunate Sam had a bad attack the very night his sister brought home the spats, and Mrs. Sprague strapped a warm poultice on Sam’s long neck with one of the spats.

“There!” said the indignant lady, who had forbidden her daughter’s wearing the things the instant she saw them. “There! them do-funnies is good for suthin’, I vum! They jest fit Sam’s throat, an’ mebbe he’ll git some wear out o’ them.”

Janice kept out of the way of Frank Bowman’s sister until Saturday afternoon. Even then she planned to escape by taking Marty for a drive into the country in reward for his sticking all the week to his job.

“I gotter see Frank before we start,” the boy said. “Or—can’t we drive down by the ho-tel? I won’t stop but a minute. And say, Janice! Nelse Haley’s back. Did you know it?”

Janice was fortunately examining the “innards,” as Uncle Jason called it, of the automobile, and could hide her face from Marty. “No; I had not heard of his return,” she said. “I guess this is all right. Anyway, we’ll start.”

She could not see how she was to escape going to the Inn with Marty; and then, she suddenly hoped, by driving through the main street of the town they might see Nelson. Perhaps he would go with them in the car. She did not give much attention to Marty’s chatter until the boy said:

“You’ve sure made a hit with Frank Bowman, Janice. He was saying last night he wished that sister of his was more like you. She acts like she ain’t got right good sense, from all I hear tell.”

“You mustn’t say that, Marty,” Janice admonished him.

“Huh! why not? It’s true enough. I bet Frank wishes she had half your sense. For a girl, Janice, you are pretty nice,” added this candid youth. “There! if that ain’t her now—an’ all dressed up like a hoss in a circus parade.”

The car had swung into High Street and was descending the hill. The Lake View Inn with its pleasant piazzas was in sight. Janice saw the bird of brilliant plumage in a prominent position overlooking the street. And by her side, sitting very close to her and listening to Annette’s vivacious chatter, was Nelson Haley, the young schoolmaster!