The testing of Janice Day

The Elder’s hired man brought out the sleigh and took Janice, Marty and Nelson Haley down to the Day house on Hillside Avenue; the Elder insisted on that. Marty sat in front with the driver, while Nelson and Janice cowered under the buffalo robes on the rear seat.

There was nothing particularly private in the conversation between the school teacher and Janice Day during this ride through the storm; yet it was very illuminating for both of them.

The subject of the Bowmans came up naturally, for Nelson, in telling of little Lottie Drugg’s adventure, of course mentioned the difficulty Frank Bowman had gotten into.

“And he seems like a pretty nice fellow, Janice,” said Nelson generously. “I never really talked with him until to-day. He must be quite wrapped up in his work to spend so much of his time on it.”

Janice laughed—a happy little laugh. Why! she couldn’t help laughing now.

“Mr. Bowman is always talking about ‘making good’ with the company,” she said, “but it’s Phoebe Harrison he wants to make good with. Oh! I know.”

“So he admitted to me,” said Nelson earnestly. “I have an idea he will succeed, too. She’s an awfully pretty girl. But I am afraid his sister’s affair isn’t running so smoothly.”

“Her affair? With whom?” asked Janice, choking suddenly, but looking at him squarely.

“Jim Brainard, a college friend of mine. I don’t know that it pays for an outsider to interfere in such matters. But Jim is a good fellow and he is dreadfully fond of Annette, and I thought I might help him. She likes him, too; but she’s obstinate, likes applause and the attentions of a whole raft of fellows. So they quarreled just before she came here to Polktown.

“I believe that’s what has made her act so recklessly and meanly. Really, she is not as bad as she has painted herself. She could never make Polktown people believe in her good qualities now, I fear; but she is going down to New York next week, and she’ll probably stay there. I know that she is going simply because Jim has returned from a long business trip that he took for his firm.

“They’ll meet,” concluded Nelson, laughing, “and I have faith that they will not punish themselves any longer by disagreeing.”

Janice turned to him suddenly, her old frank self. “Tell me,” she demanded, “didn’t you care at all for Annette?”

“I—should—hope—not!” he gasped. “Why, Janice, I—I——”

“Why did you ask to see her when you were sick?” she continued.

“I didn’t!”

“You did! I was—was there when you asked for her.”

“Well, I was out of my head, wasn’t I?” returned the school teacher, grimly. “I must have been to want to see Annette Bowman. It was another person altogether that I wished to see.”

He had leaned close to her and she could see the expression of his face despite the driving snow.

“You—you mean——”

Her tongue faltered and she blushed furiously. Nelson had taken hold of her gloved hand and pressed it closely in his own.

“I meant you, Janice!” he whispered.

Marty, on the front seat, suddenly struck into Hopewell Drugg’s late favorite:

They turned into the driveway of the old Day house, and were at home.

Aunt ’Mira would not consent to Nelson’s going home that night. “The Widder Beasely’ll know you’ve stepped in somewhere,” she said, with confidence. “This storm ain’t fit for a dog to be out in; and after your illness, Mr. Haley, you’ve been exposed enough for once’t, I declare for’t!”

Janice’s eyes shone. Their tender glances, bent upon him in confirmation of her aunt’s invitation, would have kept Nelson if no other consideration would.

“Bully!” shouted the exuberant Marty. “If Walky Dexter comes down, we’ll have a grand game of parchesi.”

Her son declared that Aunt ’Mira “did herself proud” in that supper. She believed in putting forth her best for the minister or the school teacher. Fried ham, home smoked; shirred eggs in individual ramikins; potato chips as crisp and dry as autumn leaves; fluffy biscuit; golden butter, despite the season, for Aunt ’Mira knew how to use the carrot juice in just the right amount when she colored it; heaps of brown doughnuts at either end of the table, “where they’d be handiest”; a plate piled with wedges of moist, yellow cheese—all this besides a variety of cake, preserves, pickles, and the inevitable pie. The Widow Beasely might set a good table; but she could not beat Aunt ’Mira when the latter set out to do her best.

After the adventures of the afternoon Nelson, at least, did full justice to the meal. And all through it they redescribed their adventures to each other. The loss of little Lottie in the snow brought this comment from Uncle Jason:

“I swow! I dunno nobody who needs a wife more’n Hopewell, if only to keep that young’un in leash. She’s as wild as a hawk.”

“I hope Mr. Bowman isn’t badly hurt,” said Janice. “He is so anxious about that bridgework.”

“He’s a nice feller to work for,” volunteered Marty. Then, wistfully: “I’d love to have his job. I think being a civil engineer is about the nicest thing a feller can do.”

“Huh!” grunted his father, who had been hearing a good deal of this sort of talk of late, “you l’arn to be civil now; time enough to git to be an engineer when you air older.”

“Mr. Bowman is a fine fellow, I think myself,” Nelson hastened to say, covering up this little family bickering. “I never knew him at all till we were out in the storm together to-day. He has pluck all right.”

“And I should say you had a-plenty,” Aunt ’Mira cried frankly. “I b’lieve after what you have been through this afternoon, you’d ought to go to bed purty soon after supper. I’ll iron the best room bed, and Jason’ll put the heater in there.”

But a chorus of objections from the young folk vetoed this plan. Even Janice thought it an unnecessary precaution, Mr. Haley was so well now.

“And what my nurse says, goes!” declared Nelson, laughing. “Janice is a famous sick-room attendant, as I can testify.”

“I believe you, Mr. Haley,” agreed Aunt ’Mira. “She can jest charm away a headache. She’s a capable gal, if I do say it as shouldn’t, bein’ her aunt. Me an’ Jason air jes as proud as Punch of her.”

Janice ran out of the room for a fresh supply of biscuit, and to hide her blushes.

“Janice is the bulliest girl that ever was,” chimed in Marty. “If there was more girls like her I’d mebbe think of marryin’, myself.”

This statement caused a general laugh.

The men folk sat before the base-burner in the sitting-room and talked about other severe storms while Janice and her aunt cleared the table and washed the supper dishes. By and by there was a great stamping and blowing on the porch.

“Marty,” said his father, taking the pipe from his mouth, “that’s either a whale come aboard, or Walky Dexter. Go give him a hand with the broom. Your mother won’t want all that fresh snow on her clean kitchen floor.”

It was Walky. Despite the howling storm, he had come down the hill for his weekly evening call at the old Day house.

“Gosh all fish-hooks!” he exclaimed, coming into the sitting-room at last. “This is the wust storm we’ve had since seventy-two, Jason. ’Member that?”

“Sure, the time Job Eldridge got snowed-up in a bear’s den,” declared Uncle Jason quickly.

“Jest the same—jest the same,” said Walky, his eyes sparkling as he rubbed his great, red hands in the heat of the glowing stove.

“In a bear’s den!” ejaculated Marty. “Was the bear at home?”

Walky was chuckling hugely. “You’d oughter as’t Job,” he said. “He had a-plenty to say about it arterward. Ain’t that so, Jason? He talked voluminous on that subject for the rest of his endurin’ life!”

“Tell us about it, do, Walky,” urged Janice, taking up the last piece of fancy-work she expected to finish before Christmas.

Aunt ’Mira came in, too, and sat down under the lamp. Walky Dexter began slowly to expand; he dearly loved the sound of his own voice, as Janice had frequently told him.

“Wal,” began Walky, “Job was the laziest man that ever drew on a pair of boots! He worked for ’Linus Webster one winter, up on the back of this very mountain, gettin’ out timbers for this very Constance Colfax that frets the waters of this very lake. You kin see the boat is some aged, and that we need a new one, railroad competition, or no railroad competition, eh, Jason?”

“Quite right, Walky,” agreed Uncle Jason, “greasing the wheels” of Walky’s speech.

“We was all comin’ home nights from the wood-lot, ’cause ’twas easier than buildin’ a camp and hirin’ a cook, and all. Besides, we misjedged ’Linus’ supplies. Time before he’d hired a gang to go lumberin’ he’d supplied weevilly flour and wormy pork,” explained the story-teller.

“It come on to snow ’bout the time we was hitchin’-in after takin’ our noon snack, just siftin’ down through the treetops like an old lady siftin’ powdered sugar on a ’lection-day cake,” and Walky smacked his lips. “But it gathered fast. We soon see we was goin’ to be snowed up there in the woods if we didn’t light out for home soon.”

“Did it snow as hard as it does to-night, Walky?” asked Marty, the curious.

“Jest as hard, I reckon. Hard enough, anyway. But Job Eldridge didn’t believe it’d be much more’n a squall. He never did have the sense of a mite! He was on the choppin’ gang and he wanted to keep on. Us that had teams up there jest hooked up aour chains and lit out for home. If it snowed like that in the timber, we knowed it would be as bad ag’in outside.

“Now, Job wouldn’t come at first. Then he found he was left alone at the choppin’ and that, I reckon, scare’t him. It snowed hard enough to scare anybody. He started for home an hour behind us.

“There he showed poor jedgement ag’in,” said Walky. “There was somethin’ that resembled a shack handy, and he might have gone in there and staid hived up till the wust was over.

“But no. That wouldn’t do for Job. He was as panicky inside as though he’d eat a sour apple with the Jamaica ginger ten miles away. He set off runnin’ through the wood, not follerin’ the wagon road even, but tryin’ to cut across’t and ketch up with us.

“Must ha’ got twisted around purty soon,” continued the narrator. “Reckon he follered a trail like a corkscrew, Jason, to find that old holler maple, eh?”

“Must have,” agreed Uncle Jason, broadly smiling.

“Anyway, he come plumb upon it. He was as scare’t as a cat then. The holler offered refuge, and he plumped in. The wind was a-howlin’, and the trees a-writhin’, and the snow a-suckin’ into the holler, though ’twas on the lee side. So Job, he scrouged back inter the dark—an’ he come upon somethin’ there.”

“Oh!” gasped Janice, for the suggestion of the bear’s presence, hibernating in the hollow tree for the winter, could not be mistaken. Marty and even Nelson were round-eyed.

“It was somethin’ hairy and warm—and it moved,” said Walky hoarsely. “My soul! ye oughter heard Job tell about it. Make yer hair stand right up on end!”

“You’re making ours stand out like the quills on the fretful porcupine, Mr. Dexter,” interposed Nelson.

“Did the bear bite him?” demanded Marty, too impatient to wait longer for the dénouement.

“No,” said Walky, shaking his head, and preternaturally grave.

“No? What kind of a bear was that?” asked the boy, in disgust.

“You reckless boy!” cried Janice. “You wouldn’t want the bear to bite the poor man, would you?”

“Wal——”

“Go on, do, Walky!” urged the girl, eagerly. “Why didn’t it bite him, as Marty wants to know?”

“Didn’t have no teeth,” chuckled Walky.

“What?” was the chorused expression of his listeners.

“A bear as old as that?” gasped Janice.

“’Twarn’t very old,” said Walky, his eyes twinkling; “but it didn’t have no head, neither.”

“A dead bear!” shrieked Marty.

“Nop. ’Twas a buffaler robe of ’Linus Webster’s that he throwed in there, and Job wrapped himself up in it and slept as warm as toast all night long,” and Walky broke into one of his loud guffaws over the way in which he had fooled them all.

But they beat him playing parchesi, and it was a happy if rather noisy evening spent in the old Day house sitting-room. By and by Aunt ’Mira brought on the unfailing doughnuts and cheese, and Uncle Jason went down to the cellar in his thick woolen socks, which he had been steaming on the footrail of the stove while he nodded in his chair, and brought up a jug of cider that had been kept sweet by some secret method, and also a milk-pan of baldwin apples.

Janice and Marty got out the popper and the corn. Nelson made his fingers sore shelling the sharp-pointed kernels from the cobs, while Marty shook the popper over the fire in the kitchen range. Janice skimmed two pans of milk—each skimming, a “blanket” of thick, pale yellow lusciousness.

With bowls of cream and hot popcorn and the other goodies, they “managed to make out” a supper, as Aunt ’Mira depreciatingly said. The storm howled outside and when Walky was sped as the parting guest, it was into a world of swirling, raging snow that almost smothered the light of his lantern. He did not bother with the gate, but walked out of the yard over the fence into Hillside Avenue.

“A good night to be in-doors,” said Uncle Jason, coming back to the fire. “I’m glad the critters air all well housed.”

“One sure thing, Broxton Day hasn’t got it as bad as this down there where he is, Janice,” said her aunt, consolingly. “It’s most always summer there, ain’t it?”

“I guess they have some bad weather where Daddy is,” confessed Janice. “I—I wish he were here.”

“Crickey! so do I,” agreed Marty. “I bet he could tell us something interesting.”

“Better than Walky’s bear stories?” laughed Nelson.

There was a little silence. The wind sounded as though it were choking to death in the chimney. Aunt ’Mira sighed.

“I do hope there’s nobody out in this storm,” she said. “We got lots o’ marcies to be thankful for.”

“We have that!” agreed her husband. “This is a pretty good Christmas.”

Janice smiled as she bent to thread her needle. Her mind had flashed back to the many, many complaining comments that had fallen from the lips of her uncle and aunt when first she had come to live with them. How their circumstances and outlook on life had changed!

“And they have done it all themselves,” she murmured. “Only—they don’t know it!”

Nelson was watching her. Her nimble fingers played a pretty dance among the colored silks. She looked up to see him watching her, and her countenance was immediately glorified.

“Crickey!” drawled Marty, not understanding, “Janice is gittin’ prettier and prettier all the while.”

“That’s worth a Christmas present, sure enough, Marty,” she told him, laughing happily.

Uncle Jason yawned frankly and reached to take the big Bible down from its usual place on the corner of the mantel. Janice and her aunt put away their work. They all gathered closer about the stove as the head of the house opened The Book.

He read of that First Christmas and they listened with that feeling of growing tenderness which a reverent perusal of the story always induces. While the snow blanketed the Vermont village, they listened again to the happenings of that wondrous night in Palestine; and if the blizzard blew without, and the mountain shivered in the storm, their hearts within were warm and their souls comforted.

The reading ended, and Uncle Jason led in the evening prayer. Aunt ’Mira bustled about with the old-fashioned warming-pan. They took their candles and separated. Half an hour later when the big clock in the hall hoarsely struck the hour of eleven it seemed to have the old Day house to itself, for all the inmates were asleep.

The blizzard blew itself out before Christmas Eve. The whole town turned out to shovel paths and plow out the roadway. For there was to be an occasion of much moment at the Union Church.

Polktown did not often have a church wedding—or a wedding of any kind as for that. Mr. Middler’s marriage fees would never make him rich.

There were no invitations sent out; Hopewell and Miss ’Rill had nobody but friends in the town and the entire congregation was welcome. Nor did any, as Walky Dexter said, but the lame, the halt and the blind fail to get to the church on Christmas Eve.

The Girls’ Guild had their entertainment in the afternoon; several of the smaller girls were to act with little Lottie as flower-girls at the wedding. And when the procession came in from the vestry and started down the aisle, it was a very pretty one indeed.

What matter if the organist got her numbers mixed and started to play “See the Conquering Hero Comes” instead of the usual “Here Comes the Bride”? As Marty observed, it might have been a whole lot worse; Mrs. Ebbie Stewart was awfully absent-minded.

But the wedding was a pronounced success. Miss ’Rill, in her pretty, modest dress, and with her pink cheeks and fluffy hair, looked as sweet as any girl bride who had ever walked up the aisle of the old church. And during the last few months Hopewell had positively been growing younger.

Even Mrs. Scattergood could not cast gloom over the occasion. She found herself being congratulated after the ceremony by those who could not at first get to the bride and groom to shake hands with them. Everybody seemed to think it was such an eminently fitting wedding that even this opinionated old lady was swept away from the foundations of her former belief.

“Wal, wal!” she sniffed, wiping her eyes, and speaking to Janice. “I guess I don’t know nothin’. I must be gittin’ old. Nobody agrees with me that this is the foolishest marriage that ever happened in this town.”

“I should hope not, Mrs. Scattergood,” cried Janice, gaily. “I think it’s just lovely!”

“I’m behind the times then,” grumbled Mrs. Scattergood, shaking her head. “I’m a-goin’ home and sew up the slit in this dress o’ mine. I’m too old ter foller the fashions. Thank heaven! I didn’t try ter dance with this game leg.”

But Aunt ’Mira did not consider that the wedding made her feel old. She had dragged Uncle Jason out to it, dressed in his old wrinkled black suit. Her own gay apparel made him look particularly shabby.

“It’s his own fault,” she declared to her niece. “He ain’t bought a new suit in ten year. But he’s a-goin’ to now. I’m a-goin’ to liven his old bones up—you see if I don’t!”

Which prophecy seemed likely to be fulfilled when, after the reception in the church, Mr. and Mrs. Day joined the closer friends of the happy pair at the Drugg place. There was supper, and speech-making, and reiterated congratulations.

The floor of the shop had been cleared, and offered a good-sized space for dancing. After the opening number, a square dance, when Hopewell and his bride led the figure, the storekeeper seized his own fiddle and played for the dancers.

There was a sudden explosion of expostulations in a corner and Uncle Jason was heard to announce: “I snum! yeou air bound to make a fule of me, Almiry, as well as of yerself.”

“We both of us hev been foolish long enough, Jason,” declared the heavy lady, with conviction. “We been gittin’ old afore our time. No more of it! Come on! Git up here with yer lawful wife an’ put yer best fut for’ard. Yeou useter be the best dancer in Polktown; now show the folks what yeou kin do.”

And, hilariously, yet perhaps with some moist eyes among them, the company gathered to see Aunt ’Mira lead her reluctant spouse out upon the floor. Aunt ’Mira was radiant—and wonderfully dressed! There was no younger feeling person in the house when Hopewell struck up a reel and Mr. and Mrs. Jason Day led the figure.

Janice and Nelson Haley danced in the same set, and were very happy. So did Frank Bowman and his sister, the latter welcomed for her brother’s sake if not for her own.

Uncle Jason began to get livened up. He found he had not forgotten the figures. When his wife was breathless he insisted upon dancing with Mrs. Scattergood, the lugubrious. Then he seized upon Janice, and finally he danced with the bride before the time came to go home.

The party broke up at an early hour, for the morrow’s morn was Christmas and, therefore, a busy one. It was a brilliant moonlight night as the merrymakers left the old store on the side street and struck out along the well-shoveled paths on their homeward way.

Janice and the school teacher were behind her aunt and uncle as they came out—the last of the company to leave. Miss ’Rill was briskly putting out the lamps in the store windows. But from the rear came the scraping of the old fiddle to the lilt of a lively tune again, and Janice and Nelson stepped off through the snow to the tune of