The testing of Janice Day

The family sat down to breakfast, and Mr. Day said grace.

He was a spare, gray-faced man, with watery and wandering eyes. Jason Day had never moved quickly in his whole life; but there had been much improvement in him, as well as in the remainder of the family, since first Janice had seen him standing on the dock to welcome her on her arrival at Polktown.

“Great doin’s to-day, I s’pose, Niece Janice,” he said, with rather more humor in his light eyes than they usually displayed.

“That rhinoceros Uncle Brocky is sending her arrives to-day,” chimed in Marty, broadly agrin.

“Wa-al,” observed Mr. Day, with the naturally critical feeling of one brother for another, “Broxton Day has spent some of his money, I kalkerlate, almost as foolish as buying rhinoceroses. He spiles you, Janice, with all the money he’s sent for you to scatter around.”

“Now, Jason Day!” exclaimed Aunt ’Mira, quite vigorously for her, “you be still! You know you don’t mean that. Don’t you mind him, Janice.”

“I don’t,” replied the girl, smiling at her uncle. “And I expect I have spent some of my money foolishly. I didn’t have to tell Daddy what I did with my thousand dollars. And—and maybe I didn’t just want to tell him how I spent some of it.”

“Sending that youngster of Hopewell Drugg’s to Boston,” grumbled Uncle Jason. “I call that a wicked waste! Hopewell orter saved money enough to pay for the child’s being operated on himself.”

“Now, Jason!” admonished Aunt ’Mira again.

“I do not regret spending my money on little Lottie,” said Janice softly, “though I didn’t tell Daddy about it. I just said in my letter that I preferred getting something different from the little car I wanted.

“And I did get something different,” added Janice, with decision. “I get far more satisfaction and pleasure out of knowing that little Lottie Drugg can see again, and will soon hear and talk like other children, than I could possibly experience if I had bought my car.”

Here Marty laughed, and choked, coming near to strangling.

“What’s the matter with you, boy?” demanded his father sternly.

“Lemme pat you on the back, son,” said his mother, trying to rise from her chair to reach him. But with a whoop Marty got up and ran out of doors to finish his spasm in the open air.

“He was laughing and trying to swallow coffee at the same time. I don’t know what he is laughing at,” said Janice, a little plaintively, “but he’s been doing it ever since Daddy’s letter came, telling me to look out for the surprise.

“Why!” she added, “I’d really think that Marty knew what Daddy has sent me—only that’s impossible, of course.”

“Wa-al,” began Uncle Jason; but Aunt ’Mira gave him a look that froze his further words upon his lips, and she likewise changed the subject with an adroit question addressed to her husband:

“How did that railroad business turn out last night, Jason? You went down to the Board of Trade meeting.”

“All right, all right, Almiry, if it don’t double our taxes in the end to hev that railroad come in here,” said Uncle Jason, shaking his head doubtfully. “I kalkerlate that ev’rything that’s new don’t allus mean progress, no-sir-ree-sir! Our committee reported that the V. C. road was coming——”

“Why,” spoke up Marty, who had now come back to finish his breakfast, “there’s a feller in town that’s going to build the bridge for the V. C. branch over Mr. Cross Moore’s brook. His name’s Frank Bowman. I know him,” said Marty proudly.

“Well, I certainly shall be glad when the road’s built,” sighed Aunt ’Mira. “Then a body may get to the city once ’n a while.”

Uncle Jason snorted—no other word could express the sound of disgust he made. “There!” he added. “I s’pose you’ll be runnin’ to town all the endurin’ time, Almiry.”

“Yes,” she said calmly. “I been once to Middletown in the past five years, and ain’t been as far as Montpelier since our weddin’ tower. I’m a great gad-about, Janice. Ain’t that just like a man?”

Uncle Jason subsided, while Marty went on retailing the gossip of the new railroad work that had been the most exciting topic of conversation in Polktown that week.

“This Mr. Bowman’s a civil engineer; and he ain’t much older than Nelson Haley,” said Marty, careful now to distribute his talk and his mouthfuls so as not to choke a second time.

“You’d oughter say Mr. Haley. He’s your school teacher,” his mother admonished him.

“Well,” said Marty, too much interested in his information to take umbrage at his mother’s correction. “Well, this Bowman is going to build the bridge. It’s his first big job with the V. C. I’m going to carry the chain for him, I am!” the boy added, with satisfaction.

“You’d better be in the cornfield, boy, if we expect to make a crop this year,” remarked Mr. Day.

“Hi tunket! you expect a feller to work all the time,” grumbled Marty. “I done my share of that old corn cultivatin’. Might’s well be a slave as to belong around here——”

His grumbling remarks faded out gradually; his father ignored them, saying:

“I ’low Polktown will pick up a bit if all that’s promised comes true. The steamboat company is going to build a new boat. Got to com-pete with the trains when they git to runnin’.”

“It’s lucky that old tub, the Constance Colfax, has held together as long as she has,” said Mr. Day. “There’s some talk of rebuilding the dock, too. I declare for’t! we won’t know the town, come next year this time.”

Her Aunt Almira turned on Janice suddenly, failing to continue her interest in the vista of changes which marked Polktown’s immediate future.

“Say, Janice, is it true that Mr. Haley is going to leave the school?”

Janice flushed a little; but nobody noticed it, for which she was glad.

“I don’t just know what his plans are, Aunt ’Mira,” said the girl hesitatingly. “He has a chance to become an instructor at the college—of course, beginning in a small way. It is really his work here at the new Polktown school that brought him the offer.”

“And of course he’ll take it,” grumbled Marty. “I ain’t goin’ to school no more if Nelse Haley leaves us—now I tell you.”

“How you talk, Marty!” cried Janice. “Of course you will.”

“And of course I won’t, Miss!” reiterated Master Marty.

“Why not?”

“Oh, they’ll git somebody to teach the school like ’Rill Scattergood. Ain’t goin’ to school again to no old maid,” declared Marty, with a finality that could not be doubted.

“Perhaps Mr. Haley will not leave us so soon,” said Janice quietly. “I think he has not decided finally to accept the offer of the college committee. He thinks, and so do—do his friends,” added Janice hastily, “that another year’s experience with his present school might help him a great deal in the future.”

“And sartain sure,” Uncle Jason, who was one of young Haley’s staunchest partizans, said, “Polktown needs him. He’s one fine feller. Now, Marty! if you’ve tucked away about all the feed you can carry for a while, we’ll put the finishing touches to that new shed.”

“Well, we’ve got to hurry,” declared the younger Day. “I promised to meet Frank Bowman about that chain-carrying job this forenoon; and you bet I want to be at the dock when the Constance Colfax arrives with that African gi-raffe that Janice is expecting.”

“What do you suppose Marty means?” demanded Janice, as she helped Aunt ’Mira scrape and stack the breakfast plates, preparatory to their bath in hot suds. “I am almost ready to believe that he does know what Daddy’s surprise is to be. But he can’t really know; can he, Auntie?”

“Oh, it’s only Marty’s foolishness. I wouldn’t bother my head about him,” said Mrs. Day comfortably.

But to expect Janice Day to think of anything that morning but the promised present from Daddy, was to demand the impossible. She helped about the house as usual, singing blithely the while; but her active thought was with the Constance Colfax blundering up the lake from The Landing toward the Polktown dock.

The hammers of Uncle Jason and Marty rang vigorously until about nine o’clock. The new shed which had so puzzled Janice was finished. Mr. Day went off to the cornfield while Marty slipped away, probably to meet Mr. Bowman and “see about that job,” as he had told Janice.

Marty was a good deal like the majority of human beings. He did not care to do the tasks right at his hand, but wanted something that looked better and bigger in the distance. He disliked school—or had done so until Nelson Haley came to Polktown to teach; and now that school was not in session he did not want to help his father run their small farm.

There was a halo of romance, in fact, about any trade that took him away from home. He often told Janice he wished he was like “Uncle Brocky,” and could “go ’way off to a mine in Mexico, or any old place!”

“This doing chores, and going to school, and bringing in wood and water, and all that, is good enough for half these fellers in Polktown. They haven’t any spirit in ’em!” Marty frequently complained to his cousin.

Janice was far too wise to try to talk him out of this mental attitude. Marty—as his mother often said—was “as stubborn as a mule.”

But she influenced him by other means. She shamed the boy into doing some things that he would gladly have left undone; she ignored his faults, bolstered up his pride, and spurred his ambition. Secretly her cousin would have done much to keep Janice’s good opinion. But, of course, boy-like, he would not admit his affection for her.

The hour for the arrival of the lake steamboat approached. From her window Janice had watched for the smudge of her smoke against the sky, and the appearance of her bow around the steep promontory which hid the lower end of the lake from the Day house.

When the steamer thus appeared she was more than two miles from the Polktown dock. But Janice seized her hat and hastened down the hill.

She was not the only person abroad interested in the arrival of the boat. When Janice came to the main street of the town she saw several people going down to the dock.

Walky Dexter, the expressman, a well-known town character, was driving Josephus, his poky old horse, dockward, in expectation of a load of drummers’ sample cases and a possible trunk.

Some of the boys and many of the village idlers were drifting lakeward, too; and, yes! there was Marty, in the company of a tall young man in good clothes, and with well set-up shoulders, walking briskly in the same direction.

“I wonder if that is the Frank Bowman he spoke of?” thought Janice. “It must be. I wonder if he’s nice?”

And then she forgot all about the stranger and Marty and everybody else for something that she caught sight of on the freight deck of the Constance Colfax. That ugly, blundering old craft was almost at the dock, and Janice could see this startling object plainly. Something within told her that this was the joyful surprise Daddy had prepared for her.

Big girl that she was, Janice broke into a run. She could not get to the dock quickly enough, so eager was she to make sure about the expected gift.