The testing of Janice Day

Janice found solace in her new car. She had now learned to run it alone, although at first Frank Bowman went with her if she took a trip of any length. She sat behind the wheel and Frank acted only in an advisory capacity.

Marty was the proudest boy in Polktown when he was allowed for the first time to hold the steering-wheel and put his dusty shoes on the pedals. When the shiny Kremlin car swung out of the foot of Hillside Avenue into High Street and his boy friends cheered, Marty’s freckled face glowed a brick-red and his eyes sparkled with excitement.

“Hi tunket!” he breathed. “I didn’t know there was such fun. I’m a-goin’ to save my money, Janice, till I can buy one o’ these cars. I will so!”

Marty had his wish about meeting Walky Dexter and old Josephus on the road on this very trip. They met the village expressman and his ancient steed in front of the Town Hall at the head of High Street, where the highway was split by the Town Hall lot into two country roads.

The sunlight was shining full upon all the polished brass trimmings of the car and on the windshield. Marty considered it his glad duty to keep everything about Janice’s car highly polished. This startling, sparkling, whizzing thing coming up out of the shaded main avenue of the village, struck Walky’s old horse almost blind.

Josephus literally staggered back. And having begun to back, continued to do so, despite Walky’s frantic commands, until the rear wheels of the wagon brought up solidly against the granite curb and iron fence which fenced in the Town Hall lawn.

“Jefers pelters!” cried Walky, as Marty brought the chugging car to a stop at Janice’s reiterated order. “I told ye how ’twould be! I told ye jest how ’twould be! Lucky I ain’t got no heart complaint—nor Josephus neither. The looks o’ that thar thing cornin’ up the hill made me think o’ a chariot of flame comin’ ter take us all ter glory. That’s right!”

“I guess there’s no damage done, is there, Walky?” asked Janice, laughing.

“Can’t tell—dunno, yit. Ain’t seen my lawyer,” said the expressman, with a grin. “As for Josephus——”

Josephus, when the car stopped, seemed to fall asleep, and his head was already nodding. Slily, Marty reached out and touched the button of the automobile horn. Its raucous voice startled the somnolent Josephus like a spur.

“Whoa! whoa!” yelled Walky.

He had been sitting carelessly on the board he used for a wagon-seat, the reins lying idly across his lap, his hands busy filling his pipe. When Josephus jumped—and Marty vowed afterward that the old horse’s eyes didn’t pop open until all four hoofs had struck the road again after his jump—Walky lost his balance, kicked up with both cowhided feet, and landed on his back with a grunt of astonishment in the empty wagon-box.

“Marty! how could you?” gasped Janice, springing out of the car and running to Walky’s assistance.

But Josephus did not offer to run. He merely looked surprised—and hurt. As for the village expressman, he naturally displayed some peevishness.

“Drat that boy!” he sputtered, rising slowly—for Walky was a portly man. “What did he wanter let go with that ’tarnal thing for? ’Nough to scare Josephus out of a year’s growth. An’ I broke my pipe, by jinks! Ain’t that a shame? Marty Day, you gotter buy me the best T. D. Hopewell Drugg’s got in his store, or I’ll bring the bill in to your father,” and he grinned again, for Walky could not hold venom for long.

“I won’t let him drive my car, Walky,” said Janice seriously, “if he plays such tricks.”

“But crackey!” gasped the boy, choked with laughter, “I got a rise out of old Josephus. I never did believe that hoss could move so quick, Walky.”

“I tell you,” said Janice, laughing, “Marty shall be punished for this caper. He can drive old Josephus home, Walky, and you shall come for a ride with me in the car.”

“Hold on!” protested the boy. “I don’t want to drive that old dead-and-alive to the barn. It’ll take all day, and I got something to do.”

But Walky fell right in with Janice’s suggestion. “That’s the ticket,” he said briskly. “I was going home, an’ I reckon I kin trust Josephus with Marty. They won’t run away with each other—ha, ha, ha!”

Marty was inclined to sulk a little; to come up through High Street in a shiny car and return in Walky’s old farm wagon behind his stumpy-tailed horse, seemed a terrible come-down—and so he grumbled. But Janice got briskly in behind the steering-wheel and the portly Mr. Dexter climbed in beside her.

“I’ve made my will, and I hope my callin’ an’ election’s sure,” said Walky gravely. “I never did expect to travel faster’n the cannon-ball express on the Vermont Central; I went to Montpelier once. But go ahead. If we’re wrecked, it’ll be in the cause of progress, and I snum! nobody can’t say that Walkworthy Dexter ain’t as up-an’-comin’ as the next man in Polktown.”

Janice started the engine and the automobile turned into the Upper Road. There were not many houses here, and she speeded up to about twenty miles an hour right at the start. Walky gasped, grabbed a hand-hold with one huge, hairy hand, and clapped the other on his hat.

As the car chugged along his grin expanded slowly but surely, until Janice was half afraid that his ears would disappear entirely. When they shot past Elder Concannon’s house the old minister was out in his yard. Walky wanted to say something, but he had lost his voice. The Elder scowled after the flying car, which was out of sight in half a minute.

The Kremlin ran easily and prettily, and not until they had gone ten miles or more did Janice slow down and turn the machine about.

“Well!” sighed Walky. “I ain’t felt jest that way since I was swung too high at the Lakeside Picnic Grounds when the Union Sunday School went there on a picnic the year I was married—and that’s longer ago than I wanter tell ye, Janice. What do one o’ these things cost? I dunno but I’ll git me a gasoline truck and sell old Josephus and his mate. Nothin’ like keepin’ up with the times.”

Janice felt herself to be a good enough driver now to venture almost anywhere with the car. Frank Bowman’s work had begun and he was busy on the railroad survey all day long. Marty went to work for him as he had promised, and labored twice as hard as he would have been obliged to work at home. He started off early in the morning with his dinner-pail and returned in the evening with a tired but happy face.

“Makes a feller feel like he was somebody,” he confided to Janice. And when, at the end of the week, he brought home nine dollars—all silver “cartwheels”—and dropped them one by one into his mother’s lap, Aunt ’Mira wept for pleasure.

“Does seem just too good to be true, Janice,” she said to her niece, “Marty steadying down this way. And he never had an idee that amounted to nothin’ in his head afore you come to us.”

“He was too young then to think about work,” Janice said.

“Ya-as, mebbe. But I know who to thank,” said the large woman, giving her niece a bearlike hug. “You don’t know what it means to a mother to see she’s raised a son to an age where he’s something besides an expense and a nuisance. If anything should happen to his father—God forbid!—I feel now as though Marty would be somethin’ more’n a willer-reed to lean onto.”

It was Aunt Almira who took the deepest satisfaction in the motor-car, after all. Born under another star, the large and lymphatic lady would without doubt have been a society devotee. She loved dress and display, and sometimes Janice found it difficult to influence Aunt ’Mira to have frocks and hats proper to her age and station.

Until the monthly stipend for Janice’s board had come to the Day house, she had seldom handled cash during her married life; for Uncle Jason believed in treating “wimmen-folks” like a species of overworked pauper. Now Aunt ’Mira did not even have to use the board money for her personal expenses, and was secretly banking it for Janice, depending upon her hens and the butter she made for cash with which to clothe herself.

Aunt ’Mira dressed in her automobile “togs” was a vision to excite wonder. She had purchased coat, hat, veil and gloves all of fawn color, and when she climbed heavily into the tonneau, making the springs creak under her weight, Uncle Jason stood by and expressed his opinion in pointed, if uncultivated, speech.

“I swan to man, Almiry,” he said, “you look like a load of hay! Seems ter me if I was as big as you be, I’d put suthin’ on ter fool folks inter thinkin’ my shape was a leetle more genteel. I snum! if that’er contraption of Janice’s don’t scare all the hosses in Polktown into fits, you’ll do it, sure. Huh!”

His criticism did not disturb his wife’s poise. She was not to be ridiculed out of her triumph, but sat in the back of the car like a queen enthroned, and excited almost as much attention on High Street as a circus parade.

Janice did not mind a bit. She loved Aunt ’Mira with all her innocent faults. Her vanity over what she thought was the height of fashion in automobile apparel, merely amused Janice. She drove the car slowly up High Street, so that everybody would have a chance to get to their front windows and see Mrs. Jason Day go by. And by the flickering of the slats in the window blinds, the girl knew that many of the women-folk along the way came to peep at the car and its occupants.

“I declare for’t, Janice!” exclaimed her aunt, in vast satisfaction, “I wish High Street was as long as the makin’ of books—an’ the Scriptures say there ain’t no end to that. I know there’s a-many of these Polktown wimmen have looked down on us Days in times passed; Jase was drefful shiftless and I was a reg’lar drag myself. And it delights me—it does, indeed—to show ’em we can hold our heads up with the best. An’ I lay it to you, Janice, that our fortunes have changed,” and the good lady’s eyes became moist in her earnestness. “What you’ve done for Polktown——”

“Why, Auntie!” laughed Janice. “You’ll make me quite vain.”

“What you’ve done for Polktown,” went on her aunt, unruffled by the interruption, “casts a sort of reflected glory on us other Days. An’ we’ve got to live up to it. I’m sure, Janice, though you be only a girl, you ought to think more about dress than you do. I never see a young girl that seemed to care less about prinkin’ than you do.”

“I should hope not!” gasped Janice. “And I’ve got plenty of nice dresses, Aunt ’Mira.”

“But they ain’t in the new style. There’s lots of pictures in one of the papers I take—an’ it has the dearest love stories in it. But it’s the pictures of the slit-skirt effects that I want you to look at. You must have some new, up-to-date clo’es. We Days ought to dress as good as the best.

“It’s the desire of my heart,” concluded this good lady, with a sigh of longing, “to have us Days set the styles for Polktown. Then I’ll show Miz’ Hutchins an’ them others what’s what!”