The testing of Janice Day

Janice was having a good time at school. She found the girls attending the Middletown Seminary quite to her taste. They were hearty, healthy, sensible; and most of them were very kind to her. The management of the school was excellent. The teachers had just enough oversight of the girls, out of classes as well as in, to keep up the proper relationship between the pupils and themselves.

Mrs. Protherick, the principal, was a very lovely lady, Janice thought; and the under teachers all treated the day scholar from Polktown with most delightful friendliness. Janice was very busy with her studies, for she felt her deficiencies. Two years makes a long break in one’s education. But such time as she had to spend with her fellow pupils delighted the girl from Polktown.

One change in Janice which the school soon made pleased her aunt. She bought several ready-to-wear dresses in Middletown, and Aunt ’Mira was allowed to go along and help pick them out. Nor did Aunt ’Mira lack good sense in the selection of frocks for a girl of her niece’s age; it was only in her own adornment that she was inclined to go to extremes.

The run back and forth in the car was usually a very pleasant one. The Vermont woods were aflame with fall glories. Sometimes on the way to the seminary she loaded her car with gorgeous branches for the adornment of her friends’ rooms; or, going home, she stopped to pick up glossy brown chestnuts under the trees, or shake down hickory nuts in their golden-brown sheaths.

She seldom failed to take the Upper Road coming home from school, and had found a short-cut through a private lane into the wood road that passed the Trimmins’ cabin. So she saw much of those wild children, including the girl with the black hair.

Not that she spoke much with them, for usually if Janice undertook to address one of them, there was a pert response, especially from Jinny or the red-haired boy, Tom. But the little ones began to be more friendly, for she secretly bought their confidence with lollypops and other goodies.

Virginia had had some schooling, it was plain. Janice frequently caught the wild little mob playing school, and the black-haired girl was always the teacher. Janice tried to interest her in a meeting that had been planned for on a Saturday afternoon in the old vestry of the Union Church.

“You will like it, Virginia,” she said to the scowling, doubtful young Arab. “It’s just a society for girls of your age—nobody there to boss you, or make you do anything you don’t like. And after the society is organized, the girls are going to have lots of good times.”

“What doing?” demanded Jinny.

“For one thing, they are going to sew dolls’ clothes. There will be somebody there to teach you just how to cut them out, and fit them, and sew them. And——”

“Ain’t got no doll!” snapped Jinny. “That’s baby-play. Don’t want t’ come to church. Ye always have to take money.”

“There will be no collection taken up,” Janice assured her. “There will be tea and cakes and a little entertainment of some kind every Saturday afternoon. And if it is too far for you and your two sisters to walk, I’ll come and get you in my car.”

That last was a temptation. It was Janice’s high card and she played it knowingly. Jinny hesitated—but she was not lost. She shook her head stubbornly, and poked her bare toe into the sand—for these children ran bare-legged long after frost.

“Won’t come!” she snarled with finality. “We-uns don’t want nothin’ t’ do with you Yanks, no-ways. I ain’t got no doll. I hate ’em! Go ’long!”

But Janice was sure that the maternal instinct was just as strong in Virginia Trimmins as it was in any little girl in Polktown. She saw her so many times nursing the baby; and she looked after her small brothers and sisters with all the solicitude of a mother-hen with a flock of chicks. Indeed, these days, the baby of the family, a wan little boy, seemed seldom out of Jinny’s arms. He was sickly; but what was the matter with him Janice could not find out.

With her new interests at school, Janice had not forgotten her desire to help and interest the younger girls; and out of this desire had grown the society with which she was endeavoring to net the black-haired Trimmins girl. Janice had interested Mr. and Mrs. Middler, and they were enthusiastic for the plan. The good minister knew that something should be done to counteract the influence of Annette Bowman and the people whom she had enthralled. The little girls should be taught to be happy and sensible at the same time. The large class of girls of Janice’s age and older were becoming more and more frivolous.

Mrs. Middler agreed to teach the sewing class; Janice arranged novel little entertainments for the girls—stereopticon pictures; once a real Punch and Judy show; marionette entertainments; and an occasional talk by one of the teachers from the Middletown Seminary, whom she easily interested in the new society. Chocolate and cakes were supplied by the ladies of the Aid Society, and the new club became popular after the very first meeting.

Thus Janice’s mind, and heart, and hands were very full. Yet she had time to plan for another long expected event. Little Lottie Drugg was coming home, and Janice determined that her return should be celebrated in some way to delight the storekeeper’s child.

She conferred with Miss ’Rill and together they swept and garnished the living-rooms, bought Lottie a dainty white and gold chamber set, painted and re-papered the child’s room—making it the daintiest nest that a little girl ever could have. Janice bought lanterns and flags to decorate the front of the old shop, too; and Hopewell overhauled his stock, re-dressed his windows, and otherwise prepared the old place for the return of the little girl who could see.

Janice and Miss ’Rill went to meet her with the car. One of the teachers traveled from Boston with her, and when little Lottie came down the car steps it was almost impossible for the two friends to believe it was she, she had grown so, and was so changed in other ways.

No more groping in the dark, with hand outstretched to guide her! Nor did she skuff her feet on the platform as so many deaf and mute people are apt to do when they walk. Her tread was as light and springy as that of any child. Her eyes never had appeared blind, but now there was a light in them that they had not held before.

She hesitated just a moment when she saw Janice and Miss ’Rill; but she knew them both, and with a happy little cry flew lightly to them. She hugged them both; and she clung to Janice’s hand after the first greeting was over.

“Janice! Janice! I love you,” she whispered. “If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t see at all, and, maybe, I’d fall down the cellar opening again.”

The school had wonderfully improved Lottie. She chattered volubly, and although she watched the movements of her friends’ lips alertly, she really heard very well, indeed. The tones of her voice had become modulated—were sweeter and less shrill.

When they came in the swift-moving car to the path that led down to the abandoned old wharf at Pine Cove, which had been Lottie’s favorite haunt, she begged to run down and hear if “her echo” was there. Janice went with her and Lottie made her way out upon the wharf rather gingerly. In her blindness she had run over the shaking timbers without the least fear; now she could see the black tide swirling among the piles beneath her feet.

“He-a! he-a! he-a!” she shrieked, and the echo answered promptly her cry: “’E-a! ’e-a! ’e-a!”

Lottie turned to Janice, pale with delight. “I heard it! it’s there!” she gasped. “I know you writed me it was, but I couldn’t hardly expect it to wait so long for me. What a nice, nice echo it is; isn’t it, Janice?”

Lottie was delighted, of course, with the motor-car; and when they swung up to the wide stoop before the grocery store, she was only sorry the ride had been so short. When she saw Hopewell standing in the doorway, with his arms outstretched and the tears running down his cheeks, Lottie flung herself at him with a cry of delight and forgot all about the automobile, and everything else.

The reunion was a touching one. Janice and Miss ’Rill left at once in the car, and Miss ’Rill only went back at supper time to prepare the meal for the father and his little daughter. Hopewell could play nothing but lively tunes that night on his old fiddle, and “Jingle Bells” and “Aunt Dinah’s Quilting Party” were scarcely lively enough to express his exuberance of spirit.

Now Miss ’Rill was willing to set the time for her wedding. Little Lottie was delighted at the idea of having her for a “new mamma.” She confided to Janice one day soon after her return:

“You know, Janice, the other little girls where I was all talked about their mammas, and how good mammas were to have, and I couldn’t say a word, ’cept about my father. Of course, I told ’em he was better than most mammas; but they wouldn’t b’lieve me. So I jest prayed hard that I would have a mamma—and there couldn’t be one nicer, I’m sure, than Miss ’Rill.

“I’m going to call her ‘Mamma ’Rill’—it’s such a pretty name,” went on Lottie. “She says she’ll not mind what I call her so long as I love her. Who wouldn’t love Miss ’Rill?”

“That is true, Lottie,” agreed Janice. “And I know she will be devoted to you, just as though you were her owniest own little girl!”

“And we’re going to make papa happy together—she says so,” declared Lottie. “He isn’t sorry any more; and he plays real lively tunes on his fiddle. I like them best, too, for I can hear them now; and the sad, quavery tunes make me cry.”

Winter was coming on in earnest. The cornfields were dreary looking and the puddles in the roadway of a morning were mirrors of black ice as Janice’s car whisked over them on her way to school. She must look forward now to bad weather and heavy snows, when she would be obliged to remain in Middletown until Friday evening, and come back home with Walky Dexter, returning with him to school on Monday morning.

While the weather remained brisk and dry there was still much enjoyment to be had out of her car. Every close friend she possessed in Polktown, as well as at the seminary, had ridden once or more in the Kremlin, except Nelson Haley. So far he had never stepped foot into her car.

And it seemed that Nelson was drifting farther and farther away from her. She seldom saw him during these autumn weeks to speak to, even at church. In the usual public places he was almost always in attendance on Frank Bowman’s sister. Annette selfishly acquired all the male attention possible; Nelson was not alone in her train. But it was Nelson’s case that troubled Janice.

For the younger girl was sensible enough to see that the school teacher was hurting himself in the eyes of Polktown people by dancing attendance upon the city girl. Annette had led social affairs for some time now; but she overstepped the bounds of what many of the quieter people of the town considered decent.

Until her brother stopped it—and stopped it with indignation—she had allowed the traveling salesmen that came to the inn to take her about to country dances, boating parties, and the like. At several parlor dances, too, Annette had been Bogarti’s partner in new and daring expositions of the modern steps. And her evening frocks were very, very décolleté.

Gradually the nicer people began to fall away from Annette. Even some of the bolder and faster girls were made by their parents to keep away from Miss Bowman. When a girl begins to be talked about in a country town her reputation is very likely to be ruined for life; and although the city girl did absolutely nothing that Gossip could point at as wicked, she was traveling a very narrow path along the Precipice of Public Opinion.

Janice feared that Nelson’s influence in the school would be hurt because of his attentions to Annette. Was it her business to try and save him from his own folly, and from the influence of the city girl? That query long puzzled and worried Janice Day. Her desire was to save the school teacher from the results of his course of action; but the puzzle was how to do so without bringing unpleasant comment upon herself.