Janice Day

The quick eye of Janice Day caught sight of this row of nondescripts. (See page 15.)

JANICE DAY

BY

HELEN BEECHER LONG

ILLUSTRATED BY

WALTER S. ROGERS

GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS :-: NEW YORK
Copyright, 1914, by
SULLY AND KLEINTEICH
All rights reserved

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
I. A New-Fashioned Girl [1]
II. Poketown [10]
III. "It Jest Rattles" [22]
IV. First Impressions [32]
V. 'Rill Scattergood and Her School [43]
VI. An Afternoon of Adventure [56]
VII. The Little Girl Who Lost the Echo [64]
VIII. A Bit of Romance [73]
IX. Tea, and a Talk with Daddy [84]
X. Beginning with a Bedstead [96]
XI. A Rainy Day [109]
XII. On the Road with Walky Dexter [122]
XIII. Nelson Haley [131]
XIV. A Time of Trial [139]
XV. New Beginnings [149]
XVI. "Showing" the Elder [159]
XVII. Christmas News [173]
XVIII. "The Fly-By-Night" [184]
XIX. Christmas, After All! [197]
XX. The Trouble with Nelson Haley [210]
XXI. A Stir of New Life in Poketown [217]
XXII. At the Sugar Camp [226]
XXIII. "Do You Mean That?" [235]
XXIV. The School Dedication [241]
XXV. Through the Second Winter [253]
XXVI. Just How It All Began [262]
XXVII. Poketown in a New Dress [271]
XXVIII. No Odor of Gasoline! [280]
XXIX. Janice Day's First Love Letter [290]
XXX. What the Echo Might Have Heard [302]

ILLUSTRATIONS

The quick eye of Janice Day caught sight of this row of nondescripts. (See page 15.) [Frontispiece]
FACING PAGE
The old violin wailed out the tune haltingly [72]
God's world did look bigger and greater from The Overlook. (See page 155.) [154]
She just had to raise her eyes and look into his earnest ones. (See page 307.) [306]

JANICE DAY

CHAPTER I

A NEW-FASHIONED GIRL

"Well! this is certainly a relief from the stuffy old cars," said Janice Day, as she reached the upper deck of the lake steamer, dropped her suitcase, and drew in her first full breath of the pure air.

"What a beautiful lake!" she went on. "And how big! Why—I had no idea! I wonder how far Poketown is from here?"

The ancient sidewheel steamer was small and there were few passengers on the upper deck, forward. Janice secured a campstool and sat down near the rail to look off over the water.

The officious man in the blue cap on the dock had shouted "All aboard!" the moment the passengers left the cars of the little narrow-gauge railroad, on which the girl had been riding for more than two hours; but it was some minutes before the wheezy old steamer got under way.

Janice was interested in everything she saw—even in the clumsy warping off of the Constance Colfax, when her hawsers were finally released.

"Goodness me!" thought the girl, chuckling, "what a ridiculous old tub it is! How different everything East here is from Greensboro. There! we're really off!"

The water hissed and splashed, as the wheels of the steamer began to turn rheumatically. The walking-beam heaved up and down with many a painful creak.

"Why! that place is real pretty—when you look at it from the lake," murmured Janice, looking back at the little landing. "I wonder if Poketown will be like it?"

She looked about her, half tempted to ask a question of somebody. There was but a single passenger near her—a little, old lady in an old-fashioned black mantilla with jet trimming, and wearing black lace half-mitts and a little bonnet that had been so long out of date that it was almost in the mode again.

She was seated with her back against the cabin house, and when the steamer rolled a little the ball of knitting-cotton, which she had taken out of her deep, bead-bespangled bag, bounced out of her lap and rolled across the deck almost to the feet of Janice.

Up the girl jumped and secured the runaway ball, winding the cotton as she approached the old lady, who peered up at her, her head on one side and her eyes sparkling, like an inquisitive bird.

"Thank ye, child," she said, briskly. "I ain't as spry as I use ter be, an' ye done me a favor. I guess I don't know ye, do I?"

"I don't believe you do, Ma'am," agreed Janice, smiling, and although she could not be called "pretty" in the sense in which the term is usually written, when Janice smiled her determined, and rather intellectual face became very attractive.

"You don't belong in these parts?" pursued the old lady.

"Oh, no, Ma'am. I come from Greensboro," and the girl named the middle western state in which her home was situated.

"Do tell! You come a long distance, don't ye?" exclaimed her fellow-passenger. "You're one of these new-fashioned gals that travel alone, an' all that sort o' thing, ain't ye? I reckon your folks has got plenty of confidence in ye."

Janice laughed again, and drew her campstool to the old lady's side.

"I was never fifty miles away from home before," she confessed, "and I never was away from my father over night until I started East two days ago."

"Then ye ain't got no mother, child?"

"Mother died when I was a very little girl. Father has been everything to me—just everything!" and for a moment the bright, young face clouded and the hazel eyes swam in unshed tears. But she turned quickly so that her new acquaintance might not see them.

"Where are you goin', my dear?" asked the old lady, more softly.

"To Poketown. And oh! I do hope it will be a nice, lively place, for maybe I'll have to remain there a long time—months and months!"

"For the land's sake!" exclaimed the old lady, nodding her head briskly over the knitting needles. "So be I goin' to Poketown."

"Are you, really?" ejaculated Janice Day, clasping her hands eagerly, and turning to her new acquaintance. "Isn't that nice! Then you can tell me just what Poketown is like. I've got to stay there with my uncle while father is in Mexico——"

"Who's your uncle, child?" demanded the old lady, quickly. "And who's your father?"

Janice naturally answered the last question first, for her heart was full of her father and her separation from him. "Mr. Broxton Day is my father, and he used to live in Poketown. But he came away from there a long, long time ago."

"Yes? I knowed there was Days in Poketown; but I ain't been there myself for goin' on twelve year. I lived there a year, or so, arter my man died, with my darter. She's teached the Poketown school for twenty year."

"Oh!" cried Janice. "Then you can't really tell me what Poketown is like—now?"

"Why, it's quite a town, I b'lieve," said the old lady. "'Rill writes me thet the ho-tel's jest been painted, and there's a new blacksmith shop built. You goin' to school there—What did you say your name was?"

"Janice Day. I don't know whether I shall go to school while I am in Poketown, or not. If there are a whole lot of nice girls—and a few nice boys—who go to your daughter's school, I shall certainly want to go, too," continued Janice, smiling again at the little old lady.

"Wal, 'Rill Scattergood's teached long enough, I tell her," declared the other. "I'm goin' to Poketown now more'n half to git her to give up at the end o' this term. With what she's laid by, and what I've got left, we could live mighty comfertable together. Who's your uncle, child?" pursued Mrs. Scattergood, who had not lost sight of her main inquiry.

"Mr. Jason Day. He's my father's half brother."

"Ya-as. I didn't know them Days very well when I lived there. How long did you say you was goin' to stay in Poketown?"

"I don't know, Ma'am," said Janice, sadly. "Father didn't know how long he'd be in Mexico——"

"Good Land o' Goshen!" ejaculated Mrs. Scattergood, suddenly, "ain't that where there's fightin' goin' on right now?"

"Yes'm. That's why he couldn't take me with him," confessed Janice, eager to talk with a sympathetic listener. "You see, I guess 'most all the money we've got is invested in some mine down there. The fighting came near the mine, and the superintendent ran away and left everything."

"Goodness! why wouldn't he?" exclaimed the old lady, knitting faster than ever in her excitement.

"But then that made it so my father had to go down there and 'tend to things," explained Janice.

"What! right in the middle of the war? Good Land o' Goshen!"

"There wasn't anybody else to go," said Janice, sadly. "The stockholders might lose all they put into it. And our money, too. Why! we had to rent our house furnished. That's why I am coming East to Uncle Jason's while father is away."

"Too bad! too bad!" returned the old lady, shaking her head.

"But you see," Janice hastened to say, with pride, "my father is that kind of a man. The other folks expected him to take hold of the business and straighten it out. He—he's always doing such things, you know."

"I see," agreed Mrs. Scattergood. "He's one o' these 'up an' comin' sort o' men. And you're his darter!" and she cackled a little, shrill laugh. "I kin see that. You're one o' these new-fashioned gals, all right."

"I hope I'm like Daddy," said Janice, quietly. "Everybody loves Daddy—everybody depends on him to go ahead and do things. I hope Uncle Jason will be like him."

With the light breeze fluttering the little crinkles of hair between her hat and her brow, and an expression of bright expectancy upon her face, Janice was worth looking at a second time. So Mrs. Scattergood thought, as she glanced up now and again from her knitting.

"Poketown—Poketown," the girl murmured to herself, trying to spy out the land ahead as the Constance Colfax floundered on. "Oh! I hope Daddy's remembrance of it is all wrong now. I hope it will belie its name."

"What's that, child?" put in the sharp voice of her neighbor.

"Why—why—if it is poky I know I shall just die of homesickness for Greensboro," confessed Janice. "How could the early settlers of these 'New Hampshire Grants' ever dare give such a homely name to a village?"

"Pshaw!" ejaculated Mrs. Scattergood. "What's a name? Prob'bly some man named Poke settled there fust. Or pokeberries grew mighty common there. People weren't so fanciful about names in them days. Why! my son-in-law lives right now in a place in York State called 'Skunk's Hollow' and the city folks that's movin' in there is tryin' to git the post office to change the name to 'Posy Bloom.' No 'countin' for tastes in names. My poor mother called me Mahala Ann—an' me too leetle to fight back. But I made up my mind when I was a mighty leetle gal that if ever I had a baby I'd call it sumthin' pretty. An' I done the right thing by all my children.

"Now here's 'Rill," pursued Mrs. Scattergood, waxing communicative. "Her full name's Amarilla—Amarilla Scattergood. Don't you think that's purty yourself, now?"

Janice politely agreed. But she quickly swung the conversation back to Poketown.

"I suppose, if mills had been built there, or the summer boarders had discovered Poketown, its name would have been changed, too. And you haven't been up there for twelve years?"

"No, child. But that ain't long. Ain't much happens in twelve years back East here."

Janice sighed again; but suddenly she jumped from her stool excitedly, crying: "Oh! what place is that?"

She pointed far ahead. Around a rocky headland the view of a pleasant cove had just opened. The green and blue-ribbed hills rose behind the cove; the water lay sparkling in it. There was a vividly white church with a heaven-pointing spire right among the big green trees.

A brown ribbon of main thoroughfare wound up from the wharf, but was soon lost under the shade of the great trees that interlaced their branches above it—branches which were now lush with the late spring growth of leaves. Here and there a cottage, or larger dwelling, appeared, most of them originally white like the church, but many shabby from the action of wind and weather.

Over all, the warm sun spread a mantle. In the distance this bright mantle softened the rigid lines of the old-fashioned houses, and of the ledges and buttresses of the hills themselves.

Old Mrs. Scattergood stood up, too, looking through her steel-bowed glasses.

"I declare for't!" she said, "that's Poketown itself! That's the spire of the Union Church you see. We'll git there in an hour."

Janice did not sit down again just then, nor did she reply. She rested both trimly-gloved hands on the rail and gazed upon the scene.

"Why, it's beautiful!" she breathed at last "And that is Poketown!"

CHAPTER II

POKETOWN

Some ancient dwellings have the dignity of "homestead" resting upon them like a benediction; others are aureoled by the name of "manor." The original Day in Poketown had built a shingled, gable-ended cottage upon the side-hill which had now, for numberless years, been called "the old Day house"—nothing more.

"Jason! You Jase! I'd give a cent if you'd mend this pump," complained Mrs. Almira Day. "Go git me a pail of water from Mis' Dickerson's and ask how's her rhoumatism this mawnin'. Come on, now! I can't wash the breakfas' dishes till I hev some water."

The grizzled, lanky man who had been sitting comfortably on a bench in the sun, sucking on a corncob pipe and gazing off across the lake, never even turned his head as he asked:

"Where's Marty?"

"The goodness only knows! Ye know he ain't never here when ye want him."

"Why didn't ye tell him about the water at breakfas' time?"

"Would that have done any good?" demanded Mrs. Day, with some scorn. "Ye know Marty's got too big to take orders from his marm. He don't do nothin' but hang about Josiah Pringle's harness shop all day."

"I told him to hoe them 'taters," said Mr. Day, thoughtfully.

"Well, he don't seem ter take orders from his dad, neither. Don't know what that boy's comin' to," and a whine crept into Mrs. Day's voice. "He can't git along with 'Rill Scattergood, so he won't go to school. His fingers is gettin' all stained yaller from suthin'—d'you 'xpect it's them cigarettes, Jase?"

Her husband was rising slowly to his feet. "Gimme the pail," he grunted, without replying to her last question. "I'll git the water for ye this onc't. But that's Marty's job an' he's got to l'arn it, too!"

"Here, Jase! take two pails," urged Mrs. Day. "An' I wish you would git Pringle to cut ye a new pump-leather."

But Mr. Day ignored the second pail. "I don't feel right peart to-day," he said, shambling off down the path. "And there's a deal of heft to a pail of water—uphill, too. An' by-me-by I got ter go down to the dock, I s'pose, when the boat comes in, to meet Broxton's gal. I 'xpect she'll be a great nuisance, 'Mira."

"I'll stand her bein' some nuisance if you give me the twenty dollars a month your brother wrote that he'd send for her board and keep," snapped Mrs. Day. "You understand, Jase. That money's comin' to me, or I don't scrub and slave for no relation of yourn. Remember that!"

Jason shuffled on as though he had not heard her. That was the most exasperating trait of this lazy man—so his wife thought; he was too lazy to quarrel.

He went out at the gate, which hung by one hinge to the gatepost, into the untidy back lane upon which one end of his rocky little farm abutted. Had he glanced back at the premises he would have seen a weed-grown, untidy yard surrounding the old house, with decrepit stables and other outbuildings in the rear, a garden which was almost a jungle now, although in the earlier spring it had given much promise of a summer harvest of vegetables. Poorly tilled fields behind the front premises terraced up the timber-capped hill.

Jason Day always "calkerlated ter farm it" each year, and he started in good season, too. The soil was rich and most of his small fields were warm and early; but somehow his plans always fell through before the season was far advanced. So neither the farm nor the immediate premises of the old Day house were attractive.

The house itself looked like a withered and gnarly apple left hanging upon the tree from the year before. In its forlorn nakedness it actually cried out for a coat of paint. Each individual shingle was curled and cracked. Only the superior workmanship of a former time kept the Day roof tight and defended the family from storms.

Some hours later the Constance Colfax came into view around a distant point in the lake shore. Mr. Day had camped upon the identical bench again and was still sucking at the stem of his corncob pipe.

"Wal," he groaned, "I 'xpect I've got to go down to meet that gal of Broxton's. And the sun's mighty hot this mawnin'."

"You wouldn't feel it so, if ye hadn't been too 'tarnal lazy to change yer seat," sniffed his wife. "Now, you mind, Jase! That board money comes to me, or you can take Broxton's gal to the ho-tel."

Mr. Day shambled out of the front gate without making reply.

"Drat the man!" muttered his wife. "If I could jes' git a rise out o' him onc't——"

It was not far to the dock. Indeed, Poketown was so compactly built on the steep hillside that there was scarcely a house within its borders from which a boy could not have tossed a pebble into the waters of the cove. Jason strolled along in the shade, passing the time of day with such neighbors as were equally disengaged, and spreading the news of his niece's expected arrival.

As he passed along the lane which later debouched upon the main thoroughfare of Poketown, it was evident to the most casual glance that the old Day house was not the only dwelling far along in a state of decay. Poketown was full of such.

On the street leading directly to the dock there were several well-cared-for estates—some of them wedged in between blocks of two-story frame buildings, the first floors of which were occupied by stores of various kinds. The post office had a building to itself. The Lake View Inn was not unattractive, its side piazza overlooking the cove and the lake spread beyond.

But the rutty, dusty road showed that it had been rutty and muddy in the earlier spring. The flagstones of the sidewalks were broken, and the walks themselves ill kept. The gutters were overgrown with grass and weeds. Before the shops the undefended tree trunks were gnawed into grotesque patterns by the farmers' hungry beasts. Hardware was at a premium in Poketown, for a dozen gates along the line were hung with leather hinges, and bits of rope had taken the places of the original latches.

From the water, however, even on closer view, the hillside village made a pretty picture. Near the wharf it was not so romantic, as Janice Day realized, when the coughing, wheezy steamboat came close in.

There were decrepit boats drawn up on the narrow beach; there were several decaying shacks bordering on the dock itself; and along the stringpiece of the wharf roosted a row of "humans" that were the opposite of ornamental. The quick eye of Janice Day caught sight of this row of nondescripts.

"Goodness me, Mrs. Scattergood!" she exclaimed, turning to the old lady who had been in receipt of her confidences. "Is the almshouse near Poketown?"

"There's a poorfarm, child; but there ain't nobody on it but a few old folks an' some orphans. We ain't poor here—not pauper poor. But, goodness me! you mean them men a-settin' there? Why, they ain't poor—no, no, child. I don't suppose there's a man there that don't own his own house. There's Mel Parraday, who owns the ho-tel; and Lem Pinney that owns stock in this very steamboat comp'ny; and Walkworthy Dexter—Walky's done expressin' and stage-drivin' since before my 'Rill come here to Poketown to teach."

"But—but they look so ragged and unshaven," gasped Janice.

"Pshaw! they ain't proud, I reckon," cackled the old lady, gathering up her knitting and dropping it into the beaded bag, which she shut with a snap.

"But isn't there anybody proud of them?" queried Janice. "Haven't they mothers—or wives—or sisters?"

The old lady stared at her. Then she made a sudden clicking in her throat that might have been a chuckle. "I declare for't, child!" she ejaculated. "I dunno as many of us in these parts air proud of our men folks."

Just then the steamboat's bow bumped the wharf. The jar scarcely seemed to awaken the languid line of Poketownites ranged along the other side. The only busy person in sight was the employee of the steamboat company who caught the loop of the hawser thrown him, and dropped it over a pile. The rest of the men just raised their heads and stared, chewing reflectively on either tobacco or straws, until the plank was dropped and the deckhands began trundling the freight and baggage ashore.

There were two or three commercial drummers beside Mrs. Scattergood and Janice, who disembarked on this dock. Mrs. Scattergood bade the girl from the West a brisk good-bye and went directly up the dock, evidently expecting nobody to meet her at this time of day. A lanky man, with grizzled brows and untrimmed beard, got up slowly from the stringpiece of the wharf and slouched forward to meet Janice Day.

"I reckon you be Broxton's gal, eh?" he queried, his eyes twinkling not unkindly. "Ye sort er favor him—an' he favored his mother in more ways than one. You're Janice Day?"

"Oh, yes indeed! And you're my Uncle Jason?" cried the girl, impulsively seizing Mr. Day's hand. There was nothing about this man that at all reminded Janice of her father; yet the thought of their really being so closely related to each other was comforting. "I'm so glad to see you," she continued. "I hope you'll like me, Uncle Jason—and I hope Aunt Almira will like me. And there is a cousin, too, isn't there—a boy? Dear me! I've been looking forward to meeting you all ever since I left Greensboro, and been wondering what sort of people you would be."

"Wal," drawled Uncle Jason, rather staggered by the way Janice "ran on," "we reckon on makin' ye comferble. Looks like we'd have ye with us some spell, too. Broxton writ me that he didn't know how long he'd be gone—down there in Mexico."

"No. Poor Daddy couldn't tell. The business must be 'tended to, I s'pose——"

"Right crazy of him to go there," grunted Uncle Jason. "May git shot any minute. Ain't no money wuth that, I don't believe."

This rather tactless speech made the girl suddenly look grave; but it did not quench her vivacity. She was staring about the dock, interested in everything she saw, when Uncle Jason drawled:

"I s'pose ye got a trunk, Janice?"

"Oh, yes. Here is the check," and she began to skirmish in her purse.

"Wal! there ain't no hurry. Marty'll come down by-me-by with the wheelbarrer and git it for ye."

"But my goodness!" exclaimed the girl from Greensboro. "I haven't anything fit to put on in this bag; everything got rumpled so aboard the train. I'll want to change just as soon as I get to the house, Uncle."

"Wal!" Uncle Jason was staggered. He had given up thinking quickly years before. This was an emergency that floored him.

"Why! isn't that the expressman there? And can't he take my trunk right up to the house?" continued the girl.

"Ya-as; that's Walky Dexter," admitted Mr. Day.

A stout, red-faced man was backing a raw-boned nag in front of a farm wagon, down upon the wharf and toward a little heap of baggage that had been run ashore from the lower deck of the Constance Colfax. Janice, still lugging her suitcase, shot up the dock toward the expressman, leaving Jason, slack-jawed and well-nigh breathless.

"Jefers-pelters! What a flyaway critter she is!" the man muttered. "I don't see whatever we're a-goin' to do with her."

Meanwhile Janice got Mr. Dexter's attention immediately. "There's my trunk right there, Mr. Dexter," she cried. "And here's the check. You see it—the brown trunk with the brass corners?"

"I see it, Miss. All right. I'll git it up to Jason's some time this arternoon."

"Oh, Mr. Dexter!" she cried, shaking her head at him, but smiling, too. "That will not do at all! I want to unpack it at once. I need some of the things in it, for I've been traveling two days. Can't you take it on your first load?"

"Wa-al—I might," confessed Dexter, looking her over with a quizzical smile. "But us'ally the Days ain't in no hurry."

"Then this is one Day who is in a hurry," she said, briefly. "What is your charge for delivering the trunk, sir?"

"Oh—'bout a quarter, Miss. And gimme that suitcase, too. 'Twon't cost ye no more, and I'll git 'em there before Jason and you reach the house. Poketown is a purty slow old place, Miss," the man added, with a wink and a chuckle, "but I kin see the days are going to move faster, now you have arove in town. Don't you fear; your trunk'll be there—'nless Josephus, here, busts a leg!"

Quite stunned, Uncle Jason had not moved from his tracks. "Now we're all right, sir," said the girl, cheerily, taking his arm and by her very touch seeming to galvanize a little life into his scarecrow figure. "Shall we go home?"

"Eh? Wal! Ef ye say so, Janice," replied Mr. Day, weakly.

They started up the main street of Poketown, Janice accommodating her step to that of her uncle. Mr. Day was not one given to idle chatter; but the girl did not notice his silence in her interest in all she saw.

It was a beautiful, shady way, with the hill not too steep for comfort. And some of the dwellings set in the midst of their terraced old lawns, were so beautiful! It was the beauty of age, however; there did not seem to be a single new thing in Poketown.

Even the scant display of goods in the shop windows had lain there until they were dust-covered, sun-burned, and flyspecked. The signs over the store doors were tarnished.

They came to the lane that led up the hill away from High Street, and on which Uncle Jason said he lived. An almost illegible sign at the corner announced it to be "Hillside Avenue." There were not two fences abutting upon the lane that were set in line, while the sidewalks were narrow or broad, according to the taste of the several owners of property along the way.

The beautiful old trees were everywhere, however; only some of them needed trimming badly, and many overhung the roofs, their dripping branches having rotted the shingles and given life to great patches of green moss. There was a sogginess to the grass-grown yards that seemed unhealthful. There were several, picturesque, old wells, with massive sweeps and oaken buckets—quaint breeders of typhoid germs—which showed that the physicians of Poketown had not properly educated their patients to modern sanitary ideas.

Altogether the village in which her father had been born and bred was a dead-and-alive, do-nothing place, and its beauty, for Janice Day, faded before she was halfway up the hill to her uncle's house.

CHAPTER III

"IT JEST RATTLES"

Almira Day was a good-hearted woman. It was not in her to treat her husband's niece otherwise than kindly, despite her threat to the contrary when Jason left the old Day house to meet Janice at the steamboat dock.

She stood smiling in the doorway—a large, pink, lymphatic woman, as shapeless as a half-filled meal-sack with a string tied around its middle, quite as untidy as her husband in dress, but with clean skin and a wholesome look.

Her calico dress was faded and, in places, strained to the bursting-point, showing that it was "store-bought" and had never been fitted to Mrs. Day's bulbous figure. She wore a pair of men's slippers very much down at the heel, and pink stockings with a gaping hole in the seam at the back of one, which Janice very plainly saw as her aunt preceded her upstairs to the room the visitor was to occupy.

"I hope ye won't mind how things look," drawled Aunt 'Mira. "We ain't as up-an'-comin' as some, I do suppose. But nothin' ain't gone well with Jason late years, an' he's got some mis'ry that he can't git rid of, so's he can't work stiddy. Look out for this nex' ter the top step. The tread's broke an' I been expectin' ter be throwed from top to bottom of these stairs for weeks."

"Can't Uncle Jason fix it?" asked Janice, stepping over the broken tread.

"Wal, he ain't exactly got 'round to it yet," confessed her aunt. "There! I do hope you like your room, Niece Janice. There's a pretty outlook from the winder."

True enough, the window overlooked the hillside and the lake. Only, had the panes been washed one could have viewed the landscape and the water so much better!

The room itself was the shabbiest bedchamber Janice Day had ever seen. The carpet on the floor had, generations before, been one of those flowery axminsters that country people used to buy for their "poller." Then they would pull all the shades down and shut the room tightly, for otherwise the pink roses faded completely out of the design.

This old carpet had long since been through that stage of existence, however, and was now worn to the warp in spots, its design being visible only because of the ingrained grime which years of trampling had brought to it.

The paper on the walls was faded and stained. Empty places where pictures had hung for years, showed in contrast to the more faded barren districts. A framed copy of the Declaration of Independence ornamented the space above the mantel. Hanging above the bed's head were those two famous chromos of "Good-Morning" and "Good-Night." A moth-eaten worsted motto and cross, "The Rock of Ages," hung above the little bureau glass. There was, too, a torn and faded slipper for matches, and a tall glass lamp that, for some reason, reminded Janice of a skeleton. She could never look at that lamp thereafter without expecting the oil tank to become a grinning skull with a tall fool's cap (the chimney) on it, and its thin body to sprout bony arms and legs.

The furniture was decrepit and ill matched. Janice could have overlooked the shaky chair, the toppling bureau, and the scratched washstand; but the bed with only three legs, and a soap-box under the fourth corner, did bring a question to the guest's lips:

"Where is the other leg, Aunty?"

"Now, I declare for't!" exclaimed Mrs. Day. "That is too bad! The leg's up on the closet shelf here. Jase was calkerlatin' to put it on again, but he ain't never got 'round to it. But the box'll hold yer. It only rattles," she added, as Janice tried the security of the bedstead.

That expression, "it only rattles," the girl from Greensboro was destined to hear unnumbered times in her uncle's home. It was typical of the old Day house and its inmates. Unless a repair absolutely must be made, Uncle Jason would not take a tool in his hand.

As for her Cousin Martin ("Marty" everybody called the gangling, grinning, idle ne'er-do-well of fourteen), Janice was inclined to be utterly hopeless about him from the start. If he was a specimen of the Poketown boys, she told herself, she had no desire to meet any of them.

"What do you do with yourself all day long, Marty, if you don't go to school?" she asked her cousin, at the dinner table.

"Oh, I hang around—like everybody else. Ain't nothin' doin' in Poketown."

"I should think it would be more fun to go to school."

"Not ter 'Rill Scattergood," rejoined the boy, in haste. "That old maid dunno enough to teach a cow."

Janice might have thought a cow much more difficult to teach than a boy; only she looked again into Marty's face, which plainly advertised the vacancy of his mind, and thought better of the speech that had risen to her lips.

"Marty won't go to school no more," her aunt complained, whiningly. "'Rill Scattergood ain't got no way with him. Th' committee's been talkin' about gittin' another teacher for years; but 'Rill's sorter sot there, she's had the place so long."

"There's more than a month of school yet—before the summer vacation—isn't there?" queried Janice.

"Oh, yes," sighed Mrs. Day.

"I'd love to go and get acquainted with the girls," the guest said, brightly. "Wouldn't you go with me some afternoon and introduce me to the teacher, Marty?"

"Me? Ter 'Rill Scattergood? Naw!" declared the amazed Marty. "I sh'd say not!"

"Why, Marty!" exclaimed his mother. "That ain't perlite."

"Who said 'twas?" returned her hopeful son, shortly. "I ain't tryin' ter be perlite ter no girl. And I ain't goin' ter 'Rill Scattergood's school—never, no more!"

"Young man," commanded his father, angrily, "you hold that tongue o' yourn. And you be perlite to your cousin, or I'll dance the dust out o' your jacket with a hick'ry sprout, big as ye be."

Janice hastened to change the subject and tune the conversation to a more pleasant key.

"It is so pretty all over this hillside," she said. "Around Greensboro the country is flat. I think the hills are much more beautiful. And the lake is just dear."

"Ya-as," sighed her aunt. "Artis' folks come here an' paint this lake. I reckon it's purty; but ye sort er git used ter it after a while."

It was evidently hard for Aunt 'Mira to enthuse over anything. Marty volunteered:

"We got a waterfall on our place. Folks call it the Shower Bath. Guess a girl would think 'twas pretty."

"Oh! I'd love to see that," declared Janice, quickly.

"I'll show it to you after dinner," said Marty, of a sudden surprisingly friendly.

"You'll hoe them 'taters after dinner," cried his father, sharply. "That's what you'll do."

"Huh!" growled the sullen youth. "Yer said I was to be perlite, an' when I start in ter be, you spring them old pertaters on a feller. Huh!"

"Aw, now, Jason," interposed his mother. "Can't Marty show his cousin over the farm and hoe the 'taters afterward?"

"No, he can't!" denied Master Marty, quickly. "I ain't goin' ter work double for nobody. Now, that's flat!"

"Oh, we can go to the Shower Bath some other time," suggested Janice, apprehensive of starting another family squabble. "I don't know as I'd be able to hoe potatoes; but maybe there are other things I can do in the garden. I always had a big flower garden at home."

"Huh!" grunted Marty. "Flowers are only a nuisance."

"I s'pose you could weed some," sighed Aunt 'Mira. "It hurts me so to stoop."

"She'd better pick 'tater bugs," said Marty, grinning. "They've begun to come, I reckon. Hard-shells, anyway."

Janice could not resist shivering at this suggestion. She did not love insects any better than do most girls. But she took Marty's suggestion in good part.

"You wait," she said. "Maybe I can do that, too. I'll weed a little, anyway. Have you a large farm, Uncle Jason?"

"It's big enough, Janice," grumbled Jason. "Does seem as though—most years—it's too big for us to manage. If Marty, here, warn't so triflin'——"

"I don't see no medals on you for workin' hard," whispered the boy, loud enough for Janice to hear.

"This was a right good farm, onc't," said Aunt 'Mira. "B'fore Jason got his mis'ry we use ter have good crops. That's when we was fust married."

"But that's what broke my health all down," interposed Uncle Jason. "Don't pay a man to work so hard when he's young. He has ter suffer for it in the end."

"Huh!" grunted Marty. "If it wasn't good for you to work so hard when you was young, what about me?"

"You git along out o' here an' start on them 'taters!" commanded Mr. Day, angrily.

Marty slid out, muttering under his breath. Janice jumped up from the table, saying cheerfully: "I'll help you with the dishes, Aunty. Let's clear off."

Her uncle had risen and was feeling for his corncob pipe on the ledge above the door. Mrs. Day looked a bit startled when she saw Janice begin briskly to collect the soiled dishes.

"I dunno, Janice," she hesitated. "I gin'rally feel right po'ly after dinner, and I'm use ter takin' forty winks."

Janice did not wonder that her aunt felt "right po'ly." She had eaten more pork, potatoes, spring cabbage and fresh bread than would have served a hearty man.

"Let's get rid of the dishes first, Aunty," said Janice, cheerfully "You can get your nap afterward."

"Wa-al," agreed Mrs. Day, slowly rising. "I dunno's there's water enough to more'n give 'em a lick and a promise. Marty! Oh, you Marty! Come, go for a pail of water, will ye? That's a good boy."

"Now, ye know well enough," snarled Jason's voice just outside the door, "that that boy ain't in earshot now."

"Oh, I can get a pail of water from the pump, Aunty," said Janice, briskly starting for the porch.

"But that pump ain't goin'," declared Mrs. Day. "An' no knowin' when 'twill be goin'. We have ter lug all our water from Dickerson's."

"Oh, gimme the bucket!" snapped Uncle Jason, putting his great, hairy hand inside the door and snatching the water-pail from the shelf. "Wimmen-folks is allus a-clatterin' about suthin'!"

Janice had never imagined people just like these relatives of hers. She was both ashamed and amused,—ashamed of their ill-breeding and amused by their useless bickering.

"Wa-al," said her aunt, yawning and lowering herself upon the kitchen couch, the springs of which squeaked complainingly under her weight, "Wa-al, 'tain't scurcely wuth doin' the dishes now. Jason'll stop and gab 'ith some one. It takes him ferever an' a day ter git a pail o' water. You go on about your play, Niece Janice. I'll git 'em done erlone somehow, by-me-by."

Mrs. Day closed her eyes while she was still speaking. She was evidently glad to relax into her old custom again.

Janice took down her aunt's sunbonnet from the nail by the side door and went out. Amusement had given place in the girl's mind to something like actual shrinking from these relatives and their ways. The porch boards gave under even her weight. Some of them were broken. The steps were decrepit, too. The pump handle was tied down, she found, when she put a tentative hand upon it.

"'It jest rattles,'" quoted Janice; but no laugh followed the sigh which was likewise her involuntary comment upon the situation.

CHAPTER IV

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

There was a long, well-shaded yard behind the house, bordered on the upper hand by the palings of the garden fence. Had this fence not been so overgrown by vines, wandering hens could have gone in and out of the garden at pleasure.

Robins were whisking in and out of the tops of the trees, quarreling over the first of the cherry crop. Janice heard Marty's hoe and she opened the garden gate. About half of this good-sized patch was given over to the "'tater" crop; the remainder of the garden seemed—to the casual glance—merely a wilderness of weeds. There may have been rows of vegetable seeds planted there in the beginning; but now it was a perfect mat of green things that have no commercial value—to say the least.

Marty was about halfway down the first row of potatoes. He was cleaning the row pretty well, and the weeds were wilting in the sun; but the rows were as crooked as a snake's path.

"Hullo!" said the boy, willing to stop and lean on the hoe handle. "Don't you want to help?"

"I don't believe I could hoe, Marty," said Janice, doubtfully.

"If you'd been a boy cousin, I wouldn't have minded," grunted Marty. "He and me could have had some fun."

"Don't you think I can be any fun?" demanded Janice, rather amused by the frankness of the youth.

"Never saw a gal that was," responded Marty. "Always in the way. Marm says I got to be perlite to 'em——"

"And is that such a cross?"

"Don't know anything about no cross," growled Marty; "but a boy cousin that I could lick would ha' been a whole lot more to my mind."

"Oh, Marty! we're not going to quarrel."

"I dunno whether we are or not," returned the pessimistic youth. "Wait till there's only one piece o' pie left at dinner some day. You'll have ter have it. Marm'll say so. But if you was a boy—an' I could lick ye—ye wouldn't dare take it. D'ye see?"

"I'm not so awfully fond of pie," admitted Janice. "And I wouldn't let a piece stand in the way of our being good friends."

"Oh, well; we'll see," said Marty, grudgingly. "But ye can't hoe, ye say?"

"I don't believe so. I'd cut off more potato plants than weeds, maybe. Can't you cultivate your potatoes with a horse cultivator? I see the farmers doing that around Greensboro. It's lots quicker."

"Oh, we got a horse-hoe," said Marty, without interest. "But it got broke an' Dad ain't fixed it yet. B'sides, ye couldn't use it 'twixt these rows. They're too crooked. But then—as the feller said—there's more plants in a crooked row."

"What's all that?" demanded Janice, waving a hand toward the other half of the garden.

"Weeds—mostly. Right there's carrots. Marm always will plant carrots ev'ry spring; but they git lost so easy in the weeds."

"I know carrots," cried Janice, brightly. "Let me weed 'em," and she dropped on her knees at the beginning of the rows.

"Help yourself!" returned Marty, plying the hoe. "But it looks to me as though them carrots had just about fainted."

It looked so to Janice, too, when she managed to find the tender little plants which, coming up thickly enough in the row, now looked as livid as though grown in a cellar. The rank weeds were keeping all the sun and air from them.

"I can find them, just the same," she confided to Marty, when he came back up the next row. "And I'd better thin them, too, as I go along, hadn't I?"

"Help yourself," repeated the boy. "But pickin' 'tater bugs wouldn't be as bad as that, to my mind."

"'Every one to his fancy,
And me to my Nancy.'

as the old woman said when she kissed her cow," quoted Janice, laughing. "You can have the bugs, Marty."

"Somebody'll have to git 'em pretty soon, or the bugs'll have the 'taters," declared her cousin. "Say! you'd ought to have somethin' besides your fingers ter scratch around them plants."

"Yes, and a pair of old gloves, Marty," agreed Janice, ruefully.

"Huh! Ain't that a girl all over? Allus have ter be waited on. I wisht you'd been a boy cousin—I jest do! Then we'd git these 'taters done 'fore night."

"And how about getting the carrots weeded, Marty?" she returned, laughing at him.

Marty grunted. But when he finished the second row he threw down his hoe and disappeared through the garden gate. Janice wondered if he had deserted her—and the potatoes—for the afternoon; but by and by he returned, bringing a little three-fingered hand-weeder, and tossed on the ground beside her a pair of old kid gloves—evidently his mother's.

"Oh, thank you, Marty!" cried Janice. "I don't mind working, but I hated to tear my fingers all to pieces."

"Huh!" grunted Marty. "Ain't that jest like a girl?"

Grudgingly, however, as his interest in Janice was shown, the girl appreciated the fact that Marty was warming toward her. Intermittently, as he plodded up and down the potato rows, they conversed and became better acquainted.

"Daddy has a friend who owns a farm outside of Greensboro, and I loved to go out there," Janice ventured. "I always said I'd love to live on a farm."

"Huh!" came Marty's usual explosive grunt. "You'll git mighty tired of livin' on this one—I bet you!"

"Why should I? You've got horses, and cows, and chickens, and—and all that—haven't you?"

"Well, we've got a pair of nags that you can plow with. But they ain't fit for driving. Jim Courteval, who lives up the road a piece, now he's got some hossflesh wuth owning. But our old crowbaits ain't nothing."

"Don't you love to take care of them—and brush them—and all that?" cried the girl, eagerly.

"Not much I don't! I reckon if old Sam and Lightfoot felt a currycomb once more they'd have a fit. And you ought to see our cow! Gee! Dad tried to trade her the other day for a stack of fodder, and the man wouldn't have her. He'll have ter trade her off 'sight unseen' if he ever gits rid of her. Ye see, we never do raise feed enough, an' she certainly come through the winter in bad shape; an' our paster fence is down in places so we can't let her get the grass."

"Why, the poor creature!" murmured Janice. "Why don't you mend the fence, Marty, so the cow can feed in the pasture?"

"Me? Huh! I guess not," snarled Marty, starting down the potato row again. "Let the old man do it."

It was not long after this that Marty got tired of hoeing and threw down the implement altogether, to seek the shadow of the cherry tree in the fence corner.

"Why don't ye quit?" he asked Janice. "You're getting all hot and mucky. And for what? Them things will only have ter be weeded again."

Janice laughed. "I'll keep them clean as far as I can go. I won't let a lot of old weeds beat me."

"Huh! what's the odds?"

"Why, Marty!" she cried. "Don't you like to see 'a good task well done?'"

"Ya-as,—by somebody else," grinned that young hopeful. "Come on an' sit down, Janice."

"Haven't got time," laughed his cousin.

"Pshaw! 'Time was made for slaves'—that's what Walky Dexter says. Say! let's go up to see the Shower Bath."

"How about the potatoes?"

"Shucks! I've done a good stint, ain't I? Dad can't expect me to work all the time. An' I bet he ain't doin' a livin' thing himself but settin' down talkin' somewhere."

Janice, though shaking her head silently, thought this was more than likely to be true. And Marty would not leave her in peace; so she was willing to desert the carrot patch. But she had cleaned up quite a piece of the bed and was proud of it.

Marty sauntered along by her side as they passed through the barnyard and paddock. It was plain that what Marty had said about currying the horses was quite true. The beasts' winter coats still clung to them in rags. And the poor cow!

A couple of lean shoats squealed in a pen.

"What makes them so noisy, Marty?" asked his cousin.

"I guess they're thirsty. Always squealin' about sumthin'—hogs is. More nuisance than they're worth."

"But—I s'pose if you wanted water, you'd squeal?" suggested Janice.

"Huh! smart, ain't ye?" growled Marty. "I'd go down ter Dickerson's an' git a drink. So'll them shoats if Dad don't mend that pen pretty soon."

It was no use to suggest that Marty might make the needed repairs; so Janice made no further comment. The trail of shiftlessness was over everything. Fences were down, doors flapped on single hinges, roofs were caved in, heaps of rubbish lay in corners, here and there broken and rusted farm implements stood where they had last been used. Neglect and Decay had marked the Day farm for their own.

The fields were plowed for corn and partly worked up with the harrow. But nothing further had been done for several days past, and already the weeds were sprouting.

Most of the fences were of stone; but the pasture fence was of three strands of wire, and with a hammer and staples a good deal might have been done for it in a few brisk hours.

"Aw, what's the use?" demanded Marty. "It'd only be down again in a little while."

"But the poor cow——"

"Shucks! She's gone dry long ago. An' I'm glad of it, for Dad made me milk her."

The climb through the pasture and the woodlot above it, however, was pleasant, and when Janice heard the falling water she was delighted. This was so different from the prairie country to which she was used that she must needs express her appreciation of its loveliness again and again.

"Oh, yes," grunted Marty. "But these rocky old farms are mighty hard to work. I bet I picked up a million dornicks out o' that upper cornfield las' month. An' ye plow jest as many out o' the ground ev'ry year. Mebbe the scenery's pretty upon these here hills; but ye can't eat scenery, and the crops are mighty poor."

Over the lip of a smoothly-worn ledge the water sprayed into a granite basin. The dimpling pool might have been knee-deep, and was as cold as ice.

"It's like that the hottest day in August," said Marty. "But it's lots more fun to go swimmin' in the lake."

It was late afternoon when they came down the hillside to the old Day house once more. Mr. Day was puttering around the stables.

"Ye didn't finish them 'taters, Marty," he complained.

"Oh, I'll do 'em to-morrer," said the boy. "It most broke my back a'ready. And did ye see all the carrots we got weeded?"

"Uh-huh," observed his father. "Lots you had to do with weedin' the carrots, Marty," he added, sarcastically.

When Janice went into the house the dinner dishes were still piled in the sink; yet Aunt 'Mira was already getting supper. She was still shuffling around the kitchen in her list slippers and the old calico dress.

"I declare for't!" she complained. "Seems ter me I never find time to clean myself up for an afternoon like other women folks does. There's allus so much ter do in this house. Does seem the beatenes'! An' there ain't nobody nowheres likes nice clo'es better than I do, Niece Janice. I use ter dress pretty nifty, if I do say it. But that was a long time ago, a long time ago.

"No. Never mind 'em now. I'll wash the hull kit an' bilin' of 'em up after supper. No use in takin' two bites to a cherry," she added, referring to the dishes in the sink.

Janice climbed the stairs to her room, carefully stepping over the broken tread. There was water in her pitcher, and she made her simple toilet, putting on a fresh frock. Then she sat down in the rocker by the window. Every time she swung to and fro the loose rocker clicked and rattled.

The red light that heralded the departure of the sun behind the wooded hills across the lake seemed to make the room and its mismated furnishings uglier than before. The girl turned her back upon it with almost a sob, and gazed out upon the terraced hillside and the lake, the latter already darkening. The shadows on the farther shore were heavy, but here and there a point of sudden light showed a farmhouse.

A belated bird, winging its way homeward, called shrilly. The breeze sobbed in the nearby treetops, and then died suddenly.

Such a lonely, homesick feeling possessed Janice Day as she had never imagined before! She was away off here in the East, while Daddy's train was still flying westward with him, down towards that war-ruffled Mexico. And she was obliged to stay here—in this ugly old house—with these shiftless people——

"Oh, dear Daddy! I wish you could be here right now," the girl half sobbed. "I wish you could see this place—and the folks here! I know what you'd say, Daddy; I know just what you'd say about it all!"

CHAPTER V.

'RILL SCATTERGOOD AND HER SCHOOL.

With the elasticity of Youth, however, Janice opened her eyes the following morning on a new world. Certainly the outlook from her window was glorious; therefore her faith in life itself—and in Poketown and her relatives—was renewed as she gazed out upon the beautiful picture fresh-painted by the fingers of Dawn.

All out-of-doors beckoned Janice. She hurriedly made her toilet, crept down the squeaking stairs, and softly let herself out, for nobody else was astir about the old Day house.

The promise of the morning from the window was kept in full. Janice could not walk sedately—she fairly skipped. Out of the sagging gate and up the winding lane she went, her feet twinkling over the dew-wet sod, a song on her lips, her eyes as bright as the stars which Dawn had smothered when she tiptoed over the eastern hills.

And then at a corner of a cross-lane above her uncle's house, Janice came upon the only other person in Poketown astir as early as herself—Walkworthy Dexter, who led Josephus, the heavy harness clanking about the horse's ribs.

"Ah-ha! I see there's a new day," chuckled Mr. Dexter, his pale blue eyes twinkling. "And how do you find your Uncle Jase? Not what you'd call a fidgety man, eh? He ain't never stirred up about nothing, Jase Day ain't. What d'ye think?"

Janice didn't know just what to think—or, to say, either.

"Find Jase jest a mite leisurely, don't ye?" pursued the gossipy Dexter. "I bet a cooky he ain't much like the folks where you come from?"

"I couldn't give an opinion so soon," said Janice, shyly, not sure that she liked this fat man any more for the scorn in which he held his neighbors.

"There speaks the true Day—slow but sure," laughed Dexter, and went his way without further comment, leading the bony Josephus.

But the morning was quite spoiled for Janice. She wondered if her uncle's townsfolks all held Walkworthy Dexter's opinion of the Day family? It hurt her pride to be classed with people who were so shiftless that they were a byword in the community.

She went back to the house when she saw the smoke curling out of the chimney below her. Aunt 'Mira was shuffling around the kitchen in slow preparation for the morning meal. Mr. Day was pounding on the stairs with a stick of stove-wood, in an endeavor to awaken Marty.

"That boy sleeps like the dead," he complained. "Marty! Marty!" he shouted up the stairs, "your marm is waitin' for you to git her a pail of water."

Then he started for the stable to feed the stock, without waiting to see if his young hopeful was coming down, or not.

"I declare for't!" Aunt 'Mira sighed; "I'm allus bein' put back for water. I do wish Jason would mend that pump."

Janice took the empty pail quietly and departed for the neighbor's premises. It was an old-fashioned sweep-and-bucket well at the Dickerson's, but Janice managed it. The pail of water was heavy, however, and she had to change hands several times on her way up the hill. Marty came yawning to the door just as his cousin appeared.

He grinned. "You kin git up an' do that ev'ry morning, if ye want to, Janice," he said. "I won't be jealous if ye do."

"Ye'd oughter be ashamed, Marty," whined his mother, from the kitchen, "seein' a gal do yer work for ye."

"Who made it my work any more'n it's Dad's work?" growled Marty. "And she didn't have ter do it if she didn't want to."

Janice did her best to keep to a cheerful tone. "I didn't mind going, Aunty," she said. "And we'll get breakfast so much quicker. I'm hungry."

She endeavored to be cheerful and chatty at the breakfast table. But the very air her relatives breathed seemed to feed their spleen. Mr. Day insisted upon Marty's finishing the hoeing of the potatoes, and it took almost a pitched battle to get the boy started.

Mrs. Day was inclined, after all, to "take sides" with her son against his father, so the smoke of battle was not entirely dissipated when Marty had flung himself out of the house to attack the weeds.

"Ef you'd do a few things yourself when they'd oughter be done, p'r'aps the boy'd take example of ye," said Mrs. Day, bitterly.

Her husband reached for his pipe—that never-failing comforter—and made no reply.

"Ev'rythin' about the house is goin' to rack an' ruin," pursued the lady, slopping a little water into the dishpan. "No woman never had to put up with all I hafter put up with—not even Job's wife! There! all the water's gone ag'in. I do wish you'd mend that pump, Jason."

But Jason had departed, and only a faint smell of tobacco smoke trailed him across the yard.

Janice tried to help her aunt—and that was not difficult. Almira Day was no rigid disciplinarian when it came to housekeeping. By her own confession she frequently satisfied her housewifely conscience by giving things "a lick and a promise." And anybody who would help her could make beds and "rid up" as best pleased themselves. Aunt 'Mira was no housekeeping tyrant—by no means! Consequently she did not interfere with anything her niece did about the house.

The upstairs work was done and the sitting room brushed and set to rights much earlier than was the Day custom. When Janice had done this she came back to the kitchen, to find her aunt sitting in a creaky rocker in the middle of the unswept floor and with the dishes only half washed, deep in a cheap weekly story paper.

"Why! how smart you be, child! All done? Wa-al, ye see, I gotter wait for Jason, or Marty, to git me a pail o' water. They ain't neither of 'em been down to the house yit—an' I might's well rest now as any time."

It was this way all day long. Aunt Almira was never properly through her work. Things were always "in a clutter." She did not find time from morning till night (to hear her tell it) to "clean herself up like other wimmen."

Janice helped in the garden again; but Marty was grumpy, and as soon as the last row of potatoes was hoed he disappeared until supper time. Uncle Jason was marking a field for corn planting. A harness strap broke and he was an hour fixing it, while old Lightfoot dragged the rickety marker into the fence corner and patiently cropped the weeds. Later a neighbor leaned on the fence, and Uncle Jason gossiped for another hour.

The girl saw that none of the neighboring housewives came to call on Aunt 'Mira. In the afternoon she saw several of them exchanging calls up and down the lane; but they were in fresh print dresses and carried their needlework, or the like, in their hands, while Aunt 'Mira was still "down at the heel" and in her faded calico.

Janice was getting very lonely and homesick. Every hour made the separation from her father seem harder to bear. And she had scarcely spoken to a soul save the Days and Walky Dexter since her arrival in Poketown. Friday noon came, and at dinner Janice desperately broached the subject of 'Rill Scattergood's school again.

"I'd love to visit it," she said. "Maybe I'd get acquainted with some of the girls. I might even attend for the remainder of the term."

"Huh!" scoffed Marty. "That old maid can't teach ye nothin'."

"But it would be something to do," exclaimed Janice, with vigor.

"My goodness me, child!" drawled Aunt Almira. "Can't you be content to jest let things go along easy?"

"Yer must want sumthin' ter do mighty bad, ter want ter go ter 'Rill Scattergood's school," was again Marty's scornful comment.

"Just the same I'm going," declared Janice. "It's not far, is it?"

"Right up at the edge of town," said her uncle. "They built it there ter git the young'uns out o' the way. Hard on some of 'em in bad weather, it's sech a long walk. Some o' these here flighty folks has been talkin' up a new buildin' an' a new teacher; but taxes is high enough as they be, I tell 'em!"

"'Rill Scattergood ain't no sort er teacher," said Mrs. Day. "She didn't have no sort er control over Marty."

"Huh!" grunted that young man, "she couldn't teach nothin' ter nobody—that ol' maid."

"But 'most of the girls and boys of Poketown go to school to her, don't they?" asked Janice.

"Them whose folks can't send 'em to the Middleboro Academy," admitted her aunt.

"Then I'm going up to get acquainted after dinner," announced Janice. "I—I had so many friends in Greensboro—so many, many girls at school—and some of the boys were real nice—and the teachers—and other folks. Oh, dear! I expect it's Daddy I miss most of all, and if I don't pretty soon find something to do—something to take a real interest in—I'll never be able to stand having him 'way down there in Mexico and me up here, not knowing what's happening to him!"

The girl's voice broke and the tears stood in her eyes. Her earnestness made even Marty silent for the moment. Aunt Almira leaned over and patted her hand.

"You go on to the school, if ye think ye got to. I'd go with ye an' introduce ye ter 'Rill Scattergood if I didn't have so much to do. It does seem as though I allus was behindhand with my work."

A little later, when Janice, in her neat summer frock and beribboned shade-hat, passed down Hillside Avenue, she was conscious of a good many people staring at her—more now than when she had come up the hill with her uncle several days before.

Here and there some attempts had been made to grow flowers in the yards, or to keep neat borders and rake the walks. But for the most part Hillside Avenue displayed a forlorn nakedness to the eye that made Janice more than ever homesick for Greensboro.

The schoolbell had ceased ringing before she turned into High Street and began to ascend the hill again, so there were no young folks in sight.

Higher up the main street of Poketown there were few stores, but the dwellings were no more attractive. Nobody seemed to take any pride in this naturally beautiful old town.

Janice realized that she was a mark for all idle eyes. Strangers were not plentiful in Poketown.

She came at length in sight of the school. It was set in the middle of a square, ugly, unfenced yard, without a tree before it or a blooming bush or vine against its dull red walls. The sun beat upon it hotly, and it did seem as though the builders must have intended to make school as hateful as possible to the girls and boys who attended.

The windows and doors were open, and a hum came from within like that of a swarming hive of bees. Janice went quietly to the nearest door, mounted the steps, and looked in.

She had by chance come to the girls' entrance. The scholars' backs were toward her and Janice could look her fill without being observed.

There was a small class reciting before the teacher's desk—droning away in a sleepy fashion. The older scholars, sitting in the rear of the room, were mainly busy about their own private affairs; few seemed to be conning their lessons.

Several girls were busily braiding the plaits of the girls in front of them. Two, with very red faces and sparkling eyes, were undeniably quarreling, and whispering bitter denunciations of each other, to the amusement of their immediate neighbors. One girl had a bag of candy which she was circulating among her particular friends. Another had raised the covers of her geography like a screen, and was busily engaged in writing a letter behind it, on robin's-egg-blue paper.

At the far end of the room the teacher, Miss Scattergood, sat at her flat-topped desk. "That old maid," as Marty had called her, was not at all the sort of a person—in appearance, at least—that Janice expected her to be. Somehow, a spinster lady who had taught school—and such a school as Poketown's—for twenty years, should have fitted the well-known specifications of the old-time "New England schoolmarm." But Amarilla Scattergood did not.

She was a little, light-haired, pink-cheeked lady, with more than a few claims to personal attractiveness yet left. She had her mother's birdlike tilt to her head when she spoke, her eyes were still bright, and her complexion good.

These facts were visible to Janice even from the doorway.

When she knocked lightly upon the door-frame, Miss Scattergood looked up and saw her. A little hush fell upon the school, too, and Janice was aware that both girls and boys were turning about in their seats to look at her.

"Come in," said Miss Scattergood. "Scholars, attention! Eyes forward!"

She might as well have spoken to the wind that breathed at the open window and fluttered the papers upon her desk. The older scholars paid the little school-mistress no attention whatsoever.

Janice felt some little confusion in passing down the aisle, knowing herself to be the center of all eyes. Miss Scattergood dismissed the class before her briefly, and offered Janice a chair on the platform.

"I guess you're Jason Day's niece," said the teacher, pleasantly, taking her visitor's hand. "Mother was telling me about you."

"Yes, Miss Scattergood," Janice replied. "I am Janice Day, and when you have time I'd love to have you examine me and see where I belong in your school."

"You—you are too far advanced for our school," said the little teacher, with some hesitation and a flush that was almost painful. "Especially if you came from a place where the schools are graded as in the city."

"Greensboro has good schools," Janice said. "I was in my junior year at high."

"Oh, dear me!" Miss Scattergood cried, hastily. "We don't have any such system here, of course. The committee doesn't demand it of me. I have to teach the little folks as well as the big. We go as far as our books go—that is all."

She placed several text-books before Janice. It was plain that she was not a little afraid of her visitor, for Janice was much different from the staring, "pig-tailed" misses occupying the back seats of the Poketown school.

Janice was hungry for young companionship, and she liked little Miss Scattergood, despite the uncontradicted fact that "she didn't have no way with her."

While she conned the text-books the school-mistress had placed before her, Janice watched proceedings with interest. She had never even heard of an ungraded country school before, much less seen one. The older pupils, both girls and boys, seemed to be a law unto themselves; Miss Scattergood had little control over them.

The teacher called another class of younger scholars. This class practically took all of her attention and she did not observe the four boys who carried on a warfare with "snappers" and "spitballs" in the back seats; of the predatory campaign of the lanky, white-haired youth who slid from seat to seat of the smaller boys, capturing tops, marbles, and other small possessions dear to childish hearts, threatening by gesture and writhing lips a "slaughter of the innocents" if one of them dared "tell teacher."

Few of the older boys were studying, and none of the bigger girls. The latter were too much interested in Janice. Looking them over, there was not one of these Poketown girls to whom Janice felt herself attracted. Some of them giggled as they caught her eye; others whispered together with the visitor as the evident subject of their secret observations; and one girl, seeing that Janice was looking at her, actually stuck out her tongue—a pink flag of scorn and defiance!

Janice believed that in English, history and mathematics she might improve by reciting with Miss Scattergood's classes, and she told the little teacher so.

"You'll be welcome, I'm sure," said the school-mistress, nervously. "Are you coming Monday? That's nice," and she shook hands with her as the visitor arose.

Janice passed down the girls' aisle again, trying to pick out at least one of the occupants of the old-fashioned benches who would look as though she might be chummy and nice; but there was not one.

"Dear me—dear me!" murmured Janice, when she was outside and stood a moment to look back at the ugly, red schoolhouse. "It—'it jest rattles'—that's what it does; like everything about Uncle Jason's, and like everything about the whole town. That school swings on one hinge like the gates on Hillside Avenue.

"Oh, dear me! Poketown is just dreadful—it's dreadful!"

CHAPTER VI

AN AFTERNOON OF ADVENTURE

The late spring air, however, was delicious. The trees rustled pleasantly. The bees hummed and the birds twittered, and altogether there were a hundred things to charm Janice into extending her walk. Down at the foot of a side street a bit of water gleamed like a huge turquoise. There seemed to be no dwellings at the foot of this street, and Janice, with the whole afternoon before her, felt the tingle of exploration in her blood.

Just off High Street was another store. It was in a low-roofed building shouldering upon the highway, with a two-story cottage attachment at the back. Two huge trees overshadowed the place and lent a deep, cool shade to the shaky porch; but the trees made the store appear very gloomy within.

Of all the shops Janice had observed in Poketown it seemed that this little store was the most neglected and woeful looking. Its two show windows were a lacework of dust and flyspecks. In the upper corners were ragged spider webs; and in one web lay a gorged spider, too well fed to pounce on the blue-bottle fly buzzing in the toils within easy pouncing distance! Only glimpses of a higgledy-piggledy of assorted wares were to be caught behind the panes. Across the front of the building was a faded sign reading:

HOPEWELL DRUGG
GROCERIES AND DRY GOODS

Nothing about the shop itself would have held Janice Day's attention even for a moment; but from within (the front door stood ajar) came the wailing notes of a violin, the uncertain bow of the performer seeking out the notes of "Silver Threads Among the Gold."

Yet, with all its uncertainty, the fiddler's touch groped for the beauty and pathos of the chords:

"Darling, I am growing old,
Silver threads among the gold."

Janice heard the haunting sweetness of the tune all the way down the shaded lane and she wondered who the player might be.

There was a deep, grass-grown ditch on one side—evidently an open drain to carry the overflow of water from High Street. As the drain deepened toward the bottom of the hill, posts had been set and rails laid on top of them to defend vehicles from pitching into the ditch in the dark. But many of the rails had now rotted and fallen to the sod, or the nails had rusted and drawn out, leaving the barrier "jest rattling."

From a side road there suddenly trotted a piebald pony, drawing a low, basket phaeton, in which sat two prim, little, old ladies, a fat one and a lean one. Despite the difference in their avoirdupois the two old ladies showed themselves to be what they were—sisters.

The thin one was driving the piebald pony. "Gidap, Ginger!" she announced, flapping the reins.

She had better have refrained from waking up Ginger just at that moment. A fickle breath of wind pounced upon an outspread newspaper lying on the grass, fluttered it for a moment, and then, getting fairly under the printed sheet, heaved it into the air.

Ginger caught a glimpse of the fluttering paper. He halted suddenly, with all four feet braced and ears forward, fairly snorting his surprise. As the paper began flopping across the road, he began to back. The whites of his eyes showed plainly and he snorted again. The wind-shaken paper utterly dissipated the pony's corn-fed complacency.

"Oh! Oh! Gidap!" shrieked the thin old lady.

"He—he's backin' us into the ditch, Pussy," cried her sister.

"I—I can't help it, Blossom," gasped the driver of the frightened pony.

The phaeton really was getting perilously near the edge of the undefended ditch, when Janice ran out beside the pony's head, clutched at his bridle, and halted him in his mad career. The paper dropped into the ditch and lay still, and the pony began to nuzzle Janice's hand.

"Isn't he just cunning!" gasped the girl, turning to look at the two little old ladies.

From a nearby house appeared a lath-like man, who strode out to the road, grinning broadly.

"Hi tunket! Ye did come purty nigh backin' into the ditch that time, gals," he cackled. "All right now, ain't ye? That there leetle gal is some spry. Ginger ain't shown so much sperit since b'fore Adam!"

"Now, I tell ye, Mr. Cross Moore," declared the driver of the pony, sharply, "we came very near having a serious accident. And all because these rails aren't repaired. You're one of the se-lect-men and you'd oughter have sense enough to repair that railin'. Wait till somebody drives plump into the ditch and the town has a big damage bill to pay."

"Aw, now, there ain't many folks drives this way," defended Mr. Cross Moore.

"There's enough. And think o' Hopewell Drugg's Lottie. She's always running up and down this lane. Somebody's goin' to pitch head-fust inter that ditch yet, Cross Moore, an' then you'll be sorry."

She was a very vigorous-speaking old lady, that was sure. The sister by her side was of much milder temperament, and she was thanking Janice very sweetly while the other scolded Selectman Moore.

"We thank you very much, my dear. You are much braver than I am, for I'm free to confess I'm afraid of all cattle," said the plump old lady, in a somewhat shaken voice. "Who are you, my dear? I don't remember seeing you before."

"I am Janice Day, Ma'am."

"Day? You belong here in Poketown? There's Days live on Hillside Avenue."

"Yes, Ma'am," confessed Janice. "Mr. Jason Day is my uncle. But I am Broxton Day's daughter."

"Why, do tell!" cried the plump little old lady, who had pink cheeks and the very warmest of warm smiles, as she looked into the girl's hazel eyes. "See here, Pussy," she cried to her sister. "Do you know who this little girl turns out to be? She's Brocky Day's girl. Surely you remember Brocky Day?"

But "Pussy" was still haranguing the town selectman upon his crimes of omission and could not give her attention to Janice.

"Anyhow, dear, won't you come and see us? Pussy's disturbed a mite now; but she'll love to have you come, too. We live just a little way out o' town—anybody can tell you where the Hammett Twins live," said this full-blown "Blossom." "Yes. My sister an' I are twins. And we're fond of young folks and like to have 'em 'round us. There! Ginger's all right, Pussy. We can drive on."

"You'd oughter fix them rails, Cross Moore," repeated the lean sister, as the old pony started placidly up the hill again.

Mr. Moore languidly squinted along the staggering barrier. "Wa-al—I reckon I will—one o' these days," he said.

He grinned in a friendly way at Janice as she started on. "Them Hammett gals is reg'lar fuss-bugets," he observed. "But they're nice folks. So you're Broxton Day's gal? I heard you'd arove. How do you like Poketown?"

"I don't know it well enough to say yet, Mr. Moore," returned Janice, bashfully, as she went down the hill.

There were no more houses, but great, sweeping-limbed willow trees shaded the lower range of the hill. She came out, quite suddenly, upon a little open lawn which edged the lake itself. Here an old dock stuck its ugly length out into the water—a dock the timbers of which were blackened as though by a fire, and the floor-boards of which had mostly been removed. There was but a narrow path out to the end of the wharf.

Between the wharf and the opposite side of this little bay was a piece of perfectly smooth water; the softly breathing wind did not ruffle the bay at all. The long arm of the shore that was thrust out into the lake was heavily wooded. Rows of dark, almost black, northern spruce stood shouldering each other on that farther shore, making a perfect wall of verdure. Their deep shadow was already beginning to creep across the water toward the old wharf.

"What a quiet spot!" exclaimed Janice, aloud.

"'Iet spot!'" breathed the echo from the opposite shore.

"Why! it's an echo!" cried the startled Janice.

"'An echo!'" repeated the sprite, in instant imitation of her tone.

It was then that Janice saw the little girl upon the old wharf. At first she seemed just a blotch of color upon the old burned timbers. Then the startled visitor realized that the gaily-hued frock, and sash, and bonnet, garbed a little girl of perhaps eight or nine years.

Janice could not see her face. When she rose up from where she had been sitting and went along the shaking stringpiece of the dock, her back was still toward the shore.

Yet her gait—the groping of one hand before her—all the uncertainty and questioning of her attitude—shot the spectator through with alarm. The child was blind! More than this, her unguided feet were leading her directly to the abrupt end of the half ruined wharf!

CHAPTER VII

THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LOST THE ECHO

Shocked by the discovery of the child's misfortune, Janice scarcely appreciated at first the peril that menaced the blind girl. It was a mystery how her unguided feet had brought her so far along the wharf-beam without catastrophe. But there—just ahead—was the end of the half-ruined framework. A few more steps and the groping feet would be over the water.

With a sudden, stifled cry, Janice darted forward. At that moment the child halted; but she gave no sign that she was aware of Janice Day's presence. The child faced the not far-distant line of thickly-ranked spruce upon the opposite shore of the little inlet, and from her parted lips there issued a strange, wailing cry:

"He-a! he-a! he-a!" she repeated, three times; and back into her face was flung the mocking laughter of the echo.

Janice had stopped again—held spellbound by wonder and curiosity. The little girl stood in a listening attitude.

"He-a! he-a! he-a!" she cried again.

The obedient echo repeated the cry; but did the blind girl hear it? She seemed still to be listening. Janice crept on along the broken wharf, her hand outstretched, her heart beating in her throat.

The child ventured another step, and, indeed, she stamped upon the beam. "He-a! he-a! he-a!" she wailed again—a thin, shrill, unchildlike sound that made Janice shudder.

The cry was almost one of anger, surely that stamping of her foot denoted vexation. Janice could see the profile of the child's face, a sweet, wistful countenance. Her lips moved once more and, in a thin, flat voice, she murmured over and over again: "I have lost it! I have lost it!"

Janice spoke, her own voice shaking: "My dear! do you know it is dangerous here?"

Her hand reached to clutch the child's arm if she was startled. A little misstep would send the blind girl over the edge of the wharf. But it was Janice who was startled!

The child gave her not the least attention—she did not hear. Blind and deaf, and alone upon the shaking, broken timbers of this old wharf!

She raised her wailing cry again, and then listened for the echo that she could no longer hear. The older girl's hand was stayed. She dared not seize the child, for they were both in a precarious place and if the little one was frightened and tried to wrench away from her, Janice feared that they might both fall into the lake.

But the girl from Greensboro thought quickly; and this was an emergency when quick thought was needed. She remembered having read that blind people are very susceptible to any vibration or jar. She herself stamped upon the old wharf-beam, and instantly the child turned toward her.

"Who is it?" asked the little girl, in a flat, keyless tone.

"You don't know me, my dear," Janice said, instinctively; then, remembering the blind eyes as well as the deaf ears, she drew quite close to the child and gently took her hand.

The child responded and touched Janice lightly, gropingly. The latter could see her eyes now—deep, violet eyes, the appearance of which belied the fact that the light had gone from them. They were neither dull-looking nor with a film drawn over them. It was very hard indeed to believe that the little girl was sightless.

She was flaxen-haired, pink-cheeked, and not too slender. Yet Janice could not say that she was pretty. Indeed the impression the afflicted child made upon one was quite the reverse.

The little hand crept up Janice's arm to her shoulder, touched her hair and neck lightly, and then the slender fingers passed over the older girl's face. She did this swiftly, while Janice took her other hand and with a soft, urgent pressure tried to draw her along.

But although she seemed so sweet and amenable, Janice did not breathe freely until they were both off the old wharf. Then she demanded, quickly:

"Do they let you come here alone? Where do you live?"

The little girl did not answer; of course she did not hear. She was still looking back toward the tall wall of spruce across the inlet, from which the sharp echo was flung.

"He-a! he-a! he-a!" she wailed again, and the echo sent back the cry; but the little girl shook her head.

"I have lost it! And I don't hear what you say—do I? You can speak, can't you?"

Janice squeezed her hand quickly, and the child seemed to accept it as an affirmative reply.

"But, you see, I don't hear you," she continued, in that strange, flat voice. Janice suddenly realized that hearing had much to do with the use of the vocal cords. It is because we can hear ourselves speak that we attune our voices to pleasant sounds. This unfortunate child had no appreciation of the tones that issued from her lips.

"I used to hear," said the afflicted one. "And I could see, too. Oh, yes! I haven't forgotten how things look. You know, I'm Lottie Drugg. I can find my way about. But—but I've lost the echo. I used to hear that always. I'd run down there to the wharf and shout to the echo, and it would answer me. But now I've lost it."

Janice squeezed the little hand again. She found herself weeping, and yet the child did not complain. But it was plainly an effort for her to speak. Like most victims of complete deafness, it would not be long before she would be speechless, too. She "mouthed" her words in a pitiful way.

Blind—deaf—approaching dumbness! The thought made Janice suddenly seize the child in her arms and hug her, tight.

"Do you love me?" questioned Lottie Drugg, returning the embrace. "I wish I could hear you. But I can't hear father any more—nor his fiddle; only when he makes it quiver. Then I know it's crying. Did you know a fiddle could cry? You come home with me. Father will play the fiddle for you, and you can hear it."

Janice did not know how to reply. There was so much she wished to say to this poor little thing! But her quick mind jumped to the conclusion that the child belonged to the person whom she had heard playing the violin as she came down from High Street—the unknown musician in the store above the door of which was the faded sign of "Hopewell Drugg."

She squeezed the little girl's hand again and it seemed to suffice.

"I know the way. My feet are in the path now," said little Lottie, scuffling her slipper-shod feet about on the narrow footpath. "Yes! I know the way now. The sun is behind us. Come," and she put forth her hand, caught Janice's again, and urged her along the bank of the lake to the foot of the lane down which the girl from Greensboro had wandered.

Up the hill they went, Janice marveling that Lottie could be so confident of the way. She seldom hesitated, and Janice allowed herself to be led. Mr. Cross Moore was still smoking his pipe out in front of his house.

"I calkerlate that child's goin' to be drowned-ed some day," he said calmly, to Janice. "Jest a marcy that she ain't done it afore now. An' Hopewell—Huh! him sittin' up there fiddlin'——"

It seemed to Janice as though a spirit of criticism had entered into all the Poketownites. There was Walky Dexter scoffing at her Uncle Jason; and here was Selectman Moore criticising the father of little Lottie. Yet neither critic, as far as Janice could see, set much of an example for his townsmen to follow!

Lottie, with her hand in the bigger girl's, tripped along the walk as confidently as though she had her eyesight. She was an affectionate little thing, and she "snuggled" closely to Janice, occasionally touching her new friend's face and lips with her free hand.

"I guess I love you," she said, in her strange, little, flat voice. "You come in and see father. We are most there. Here is Mis' Robbins' gate. I used to see her flowers. Her yard's full of them, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes!" replied Janice, fighting her inclination to burst into tears. "Oh, yes, dear! beautiful flowers." She pressed the hand tightly.

"I can smell 'em," said the child, snuffing with her nose like a dog. "And now here is the shade of our big trees. It's darker and cooler under these trees than anywhere else on the street. Isn't it?"

Janice agreed by pressing her hand again, and little Lottie laughed—such a shrill, eyrie little laugh! They were before the gloomy-looking store of Hopewell Drugg. The wailing of the fiddle floated out upon the warm afternoon air.

The blind girl tripped up the steps of the porch and in at the open door. "Silver Threads Among the Gold" came to a sharp conclusion.

"Merciful goodness!" croaked a frightened voice. "I thought you was asleep in your bed, Lottie."

Janice had followed the little girl to the doorway. She saw but dimly the store itself and the shelves of dusty merchandise. From the back room where he had been sitting with his violin, a gray, thin, dusty-looking man came quickly and seized Lottie in his arms.

"Child! child! how you frighten me!" he murmured. Then he looked over the little girl's head and blinked through his spectacles at Janice in the doorway.

"I'm certainly obliged to ye," he said. "She—she gets away from the house and I don't know it. I—I can't watch her all the time and she ain't got no mother, Miss. I certainly am obliged to ye for bringing her home."

"She was down on the old wharf at the foot of the street, trying to wake the echo from the woods across the inlet," said Janice, gravely.

The gray man hugged his daughter tightly, and his eyes blinked like an owl's in strong daylight, as he peered through his spectacles at Janice. "She—she loved to go there—always," he murmured. "I go with her Sundays—and when the store is closed. But she is so quick—in a flash she is out of my sight."

"Can—can nothing be done for her?" questioned Janice, in a whisper.

"She cannot hear you—now," said Hopewell Drugg, gloomily, shaking his head. "And the doctors here tell me she is almost sure to be dumb, too. If I could only get her to Boston! There's a school for such as her, there, and specialists, and all. But it would cost a pile of money."

"You play the fiddle, father," commanded little Lottie. "And make it quiver—make it cry, father! Then I can hear it."

He set her down carefully, still shaking his head. Her strange little voice kept repeating: "Play for her, father! Play for her, father!"

Hopewell Drugg picked up the violin and bow from the end of the counter. He leaned against the counter and tucked the violin under his chin. There was only a brown light in the dusky store, and the dust danced in the single band of sunlight that searched out a knot hole in the wall of the back room—the shed between the store proper and the cottage in the rear.

"Darling, I am growing old,
Silver threads among the gold——"

The old violin wailed out the tune haltingly. The deaf and blind child caught the tremulo of the final notes, and she danced up and down and clapped her little hands.

"I can hear that! I can hear that!" she muttered, her lips writhing to form the sounds.

Janice felt the tears suddenly blinding her. "I'll come back and see you again—indeed I will!" she said, brokenly, and hugging and kissing little Lottie impetuously, she released her and ran out of the ugly, dark little store.

It is doubtful if Hopewell Drugg even heard her. The violin was still wailing away, while he searched out slowly the minor notes of the old, old song.

The old violin wailed out the tune haltingly.

CHAPTER VIII

A BIT OF ROMANCE

"Hopewell Drugg? Ya-as," drawled Aunt Almira. "He keeps store 'crosstown. He's had bad luck, Hopewell has. His wife's dead—she didn't live long after Lottie was born; and Lottie—poor child!—must be eight or nine year old."

"Poor little thing!" sighed Janice, who had come home to find her aunt just beginning her desultory preparations for supper, and had turned in to help. "It is so pitiful to see and hear her. Does she live all alone there with her father?"

"I reckon Hopewell don't do business enough so's he could hire a housekeeper. They tell me he an' the child live in a reg'lar mess! Ain't fittin' for a man to keep house by hisself, nohow; and of course Lottie can't do much of nothing."

"Is he an old man?" queried Janice. "I couldn't see his face very well."

"Lawsy! he ain't what you'd call old—no," said Aunt 'Mira. "Now, let me see; he married 'Cinda Stone when he warn't yit thirty. There was some talk of him an' 'Rill Scattergood bein' sweet on each other onc't; but that was twenty year ago, I do b'lieve.

"Howsomever, if there was anythin' betwixt Hopewell and 'Rill, I reckon her mother broke up the match. Mis' Scattergood never had no use for them Druggs. She said they was dreamers and never did amount to nothin'. Mis' Scattergood's allus been re'l masterful."

Janice nodded. She could imagine that the birdlike old lady she had met on the boat could be quite assertive if she so chose.

"Anyhow," said Aunt 'Mira, reflectively, "Hopewell stopped shinin' about 'Rill all of a sudden. That was the time Mis' Scattergood was widdered an' come over here from Middletown to live with 'Rill.

"I declare for't! 'Rill warn't sech an old maid then. She was right purty, if she had been teachin' school some time. Th' young men use ter buzz around her in them days.

"But when she broke off with Hopewell, she broke off with all. Hopewell was spleeny about it—ya-as, indeed, he was. He soon took up with 'Cinda—jest as though 'twas out o' spite. Anyhow, 'fore any of us knowed it, they'd gone over to Middletown an' got married.

"'Cinda Stone was a right weakly sort o' critter. Of course Hopewell was good to her," pursued Aunt 'Mira. "Hopewell Drugg is as mild as dishwater, anyhow. He'd be perlite to a stray cat."

Janice was interested—she could not help being. Miss Scattergood, it seemed to her, was a pathetic figure; and the girl from Greensboro was just at an age to appreciate a bit of romance. The gray, dusty man in the dark, little store, playing his fiddle to the child that could only hear the quivering minor tones of it, held a place in Janice's thought, too.

"What do you do Saturday mornings, Marty?" asked the visitor, at the breakfast table. Janice had already been to the Shower Bath and back, and the thrill of the early day was in her veins. Only a wolfish appetite had driven her indoors when she smelled the pork frying.

Marty was just lounging to his seat,—he was almost always late to breakfast,—and he shut off a mighty yawn to reply to his cousin:

"Jest as near like I please as kin be."

"Saturday afternoon, where I came from, is sort of a holiday; but Saturday morning everybody tries to make things nice about the yard—fix flower-beds, rake the yard, make the paths nice, and all that."

"Huh!" grunted Marty. "That's work."

"No, it isn't. It's fun," declared Janice, brightly.

"What's the good?" demanded the boy.

"Why, the folks in Greensboro vie with each other to see who shall have the best-looking yard. Your mother hasn't many flowers——"

"Them dratted hens scratch up all the flowers I plant," sighed Aunt 'Mira. "I give up all hopes of havin' posies till Jason mends the henyard fence."

"Now you say yourself the hens only lay when they're rangin' around, 'Mira," observed Uncle Jason, mildly.

"Ya-as. They lay," admitted Aunt 'Mira. "But I don't git more'n ha'f of what they lay. They steal their nests so. Ol' Speckle brought off a brood only yesterday. I'd been wonderin' where that hen was layin' for a month."

"But, anyway, we can rake the yard and trim the edges of the walk," Janice said to Marty.

"Ya-as, we kin," admitted Marty, grinning. "But will we?"

Janice, however, never lost her temper with this hobbledehoy cousin. Marty could be coaxed, if not driven. After breakfast she urged him out to the shed, and they overhauled the conglomeration of rusted and decrepit hand tools, which had been gathered by Uncle Jason during forty years of desultory farming.

"Here're three rakes," said Marty. "All of 'em have lost teeth, an'—Hi tunket! that one's got a broken handle."

"But there are two which are usable," laughed Janice. "Come on, Marty. Let's rake the front yard all over. You know it will please your mother. And then you can tote the rubbish away in the wheelbarrow while I trim the edges of the front walk."

"Huh! we don't never use that front walk. Nobody ever comes to our front door," said Marty.

"And there's a nice wide porch there to sit on pleasant evenings, too," cried Janice.

"Huh!" came Marty's famous snort of derision. "The roof leaks like a sieve and the floor boards is rotted. Las' time the parson came to call he broke through the floor an' come near sprainin' his ankle."

"But I thought Uncle Jason was a carpenter, too?" murmured Janice, hesitatingly.

"Well! didn't ye know that carpenters' roofs are always leakin' an' that shoemakers' wives go barefoot?" chuckled Marty. "Dad says he'll git 'round to these chores sometime. Huh!"

Nevertheless, Marty set to work with his cousin, and that Saturday morning the premises about the old Day house saw such a cleaning up as had not happened within the memory of the oldest inhabitant along Hillside Avenue. There was a good sod of grass under the rubbish. The lawn had been laid down years and years before, and the grass was rooted well and the mould was rich and deep. All the old place wanted was a "chance," for it to become very pretty and homelike.

Marty, however, declared himself "worked to a frazzle" and he disappeared immediately after the noon meal, for fear Janice would find something more for him to do.

"Wal, child, it does look nice," admitted Aunt Almira, coming to view the front yard. "And you do have a way with Marty."

"Just the same," giggled Janice, "he doesn't like girls."

"Sho, child! he doesn't know what he likes—a boy like him," returned her aunt.

Sunday was a rainy day, and Janice felt her spirits falling again. It really rained too hard at church time for her to venture out; but she saw that her relatives seldom put themselves out to attend church, anyway. Walky Dexter appeared in an oilskin-covered cart, drawn by Josephus (who actually looked water-soaked and dripped from every angle), delivering the Sunday papers, which came up from the city. The family gave up most of their time all day to the gaudy magazine supplements and the so-called "funny sections" which were a part of these sheets.

Janice finally retired to her depressing bedroom and wrote a long letter to her father which she tried to make cheerful, but into which crept a note of loneliness and disappointment. It wasn't just like talking to Daddy himself; but it seemed to help some.

It enabled her, too, to write shorter letters to friends back in Greensboro and she managed to hide from them much of her homesickness. She could write of the beauty of Poketown itself; for it was beautiful. It was only the people who were so—well! so different.

Janice welcomed Monday morning. Although she had nearly completed her junior year at the Greensboro High School, and knew that she would not gain much help from Miss Scattergood, the girl loved study and she hoped that the Poketown girls would prove to be better companions than they had appeared when she had visited the school.

So she started for the old red schoolhouse in quite a cheerful frame of mind, in spite of Marty's prophecy that "she'd soon git sick o' that old maid." It was not Miss Scattergood that Janice had reason to be "sick of!" The stranger in Poketown had to admit before the day was over that she had never in her life dreamed of such ill-bred girls as some of these who occupied the back seats in 'Rill Scattergood's school.

They had no respect for the little school-teacher, and had Miss Scattergood taken note of all their follies she must have been in a pitched battle with her older pupils all the time. Some of these ill-behaved girls were older than Janice by many months; and they plainly did not come to school to study or to learn. They passed notes back and forth to some of the older boys all day long; when Miss Scattergood called on them to recite, if they did not feel just like it, they refused to obey; and of course their example was bad for the smaller children.

Janice had determined to join such classes as were anywhere near her grade in her old school. But when she arose to accompany one class to the line in front of the teacher's desk, the girls who had started giggled and ran back to their seats, leaving the new pupil standing alone, with blazing cheeks, before Miss Scattergood. They would not recite with her. At recess when Miss Scattergood tried to introduce Janice to some of the girls, there were but a few who met her in a ladylike manner.

They seemed to think Janice must be stuck up and proud because she had come from another town. One girl—Sally Black—tripped forward in a most affected style, gave Janice a "high handshake," saying "How-do! chawmed ter meet yuh, doncher know!" and the other girls went off into gales of laughter as though Sally was really excruciatingly funny.

Janice was hurt, but she tried not to show it. Miss Scattergood was very much annoyed, and her eyes sparkled behind her glasses, as she said, sharply:

"I really did hope you girls could be polite and kind to a stranger who comes to your school. I am ashamed of you!"

"Don't let it bother you, Scatty," returned the impudent Sally. "We don't want anything to do with your pet," and she tossed her head, looked scornfully at Janice, and walked away with her abettors.

"I never did take ter them Blacks," declared Aunt Almira, when Janice related to her the unpleasant experience she had suffered at school, on her return that afternoon. "And Sally's mother, who was a Garrity, came of right common stock.

"Ye see, child," added Mrs. Day, with a sigh, "I expect ye won't find many of the children that go ter that school much ter your likin'. 'Rill Scattergood ain't got no way with her, as I sez before; an' folks that can afford it have got in the habit o' sendin' their young'uns over to Middletown School. Walky Dexter takes 'em in a party waggin, and brings 'em back at night."

"But there must be some nice girls in Poketown!" cried Janice.

"Ya-as—I guess there be. But wait till I kin git around an' interduce ye to 'em."

This promise, however, offered Janice Day but sorry comfort. If she waited for Aunt Almira to take her about she certainly would die of homesickness!

But she refused to be driven out of the Poketown School by the unkindness and discourtesy of the larger girls. Her unpopularity, however, made her respond the more quickly to 'Rill Scattergood's advances.

The school-teacher showed plainly that she appreciated Janice's friendliness. Janice brought her luncheon and ate it with the teacher. They walked down High Street together after school, and on Friday the pretty little school-mistress invited the new girl home for tea.

"Mother wants to see you again. Mother's took quite a fancy to you, Janice—and that's a fact," said Miss 'Rill.

"Of course, we're only boarding; but Mrs. Beasely—she's a widow lady—makes it very homey for us. If mother stays we're going to housekeeping ourselves. And I believe I shall give up teaching school. I'm really tired of it."

Janice gladly accepted the invitation, and she bribed one of the youngsters with a nickel to run around to Hillside Avenue and tell Aunt Almira where she was.

Miss 'Rill's boarding place was on the same side street where was located Hopewell Drugg's store. Janice had thought often of poor little Lottie and her father during this week; but as they neared the store and she heard the wailing notes of the man's violin again, she felt a little diffident about broaching the subject of the storekeeper and his child to the school-mistress. It was Miss Scattergood herself who opened the matter.

She half halted and held up her hand for silence, as she listened to "Silver Threads Among the Gold."

"That's a dreadful pretty tune, I think," she said. "It used to be awful pop'lar when—when I came here to Poketown to teach school."

"Mr. Drugg likes it, I guess," said Janice, lightly. "I've heard him play it before."

"Have you?" queried Miss 'Rill, with that little birdlike tilt of her head. "So you know Mr. Drugg—and poor little Lottie?"

"I've met them both—once," admitted the girl.

"Ah! then you know how little Lottie is to be pitied?"

"And isn't he to be pitied, too?" Janice could not help but ask.

Miss 'Rill blushed—such a becoming blush as it was, too! She answered honestly: "I think so. Poor Hopewell! And I think he plays the fiddle real sweet, too.

"But don't say anything before mother about him. Mr. Drugg's never been one of ma's favorites," added the teacher, earnestly.

CHAPTER IX.

TEA, AND A TALK WITH DADDY

As it chanced, it was old Mrs. Scattergood herself who broached the forbidden topic, almost as soon as Miss 'Rill and Janice were in the house.

"What do you suppose that great gump, Hopewell Drugg, let his young'un do to-day, 'Rill? I was tellin' Miz' Beasely that it did seem to be one mistake that Providence must ha' made, ter let that Drugg an' 'Cinda Stone have a gal baby—'specially if 'Cinda was goin' ter up and die like she done and leave the young'un to his care. Seems a shame, too."

"Why, mother! That doesn't sound a bit reverent," objected Miss 'Rill, softly. "Nor kind."

"Pshaw!" snorted the old lady. "You allus was silly as a goose about that Drugg. Sech shiftlessness I never did see. There the young'un was, out in a white dress an' white kid shoes this mornin'—her best, Sunday-go-ter-meetin' clo'es, I'll be bound!—sittin' on the aidge o' that gutter over there, makin' a mud dam! Lucky yesterday's rain has run off now, or she'd be out there yet, paddlin' in the water."

"I don't s'pose Hopewell knew of it," said the younger woman, timidly. "The poor little thing can dress herself, blind as she is. It's quite wonderful how she gets about."

"She ain't got no business to be out of his sight," grumbled Mrs. Scattergood.

Miss 'Rill sighed and shook her head, looking at Janice with a little nod of understanding. She changed the subject of talk quickly. The old lady began at once on Janice, "pumping" her as to her interests in Poketown, how she liked her relatives, and all. Then Mrs. Beasely, a very tall, angular figure in severe black, appeared at the sitting-room door and invited them in to supper.

Mrs. Beasely was a famous cook and housekeeper. She was a very grim lady, it seemed to Janice, and the enlarged crayon portrait of Mr. Beasely, its frame draped with crape, which glared down upon the groaning table in the dining-room, almost took the girl's appetite away.

Fortunately, however, the widow insisted upon facing the portrait of her departed husband, and Janice was back to him, so she recovered her appetite. And Mrs. Beasely's "tea", or "supper" as old-fashioned folks called the meal, was worthy of a hearty appetite.

Among old-fashioned New England housekeepers a "skimpy" table—especially when a visitor is present—is an unpardonable sin. There was hot bread and cold bread, sour-milk griddle cakes, each of a delicious golden brown with crisp edges, buttered, sugared, and stacked in tempting piles; sliced cold ham and corned beef; a hot dish of smoked beef and scrambled eggs; two kinds of jelly, and three kinds of preserves; plain and frosted cake, and last of all the inevitable pie and cheese.

With all this banquet Mrs. Beasely dared raise a moist eye to the grim crayon of the departed, and observe:

"I don't know what poor Charles would say to such a smeachin' supper, if he was alive. Oh, me! it does seem as though I didn't have no heart for cookery no more since he ain't here ter sample my work. A man's a gre't spur to a woman in her housekeepin'."

"Good Land o' Goshen!" ejaculated the outspoken Mrs. Scattergood. "I count 'em a gre't nuisance. If a body didn't have no men folks to 'tend to she could live on bread an' tea—if she so liked.

"Not but what I 'preciate a good lay-out of vittles like this o' yourn, Miz' Beasely. But thank the good Lord! I ain't been the slave to no man's appetite for goin' on fourteen year. An' that's about all men air, come ter think on it—a pair of muddy boots an' an unquenchable appetite!"

Mrs. Beasely looked horrified, shaking her widow's cap. "Poor Charles wasn't nothin' like that," she declared, softly.

"An' I don't s'pose a worse husband ever lived in Poketown," whispered the pessimistic old lady, when the widow had gone out of the room for something. "He's been dead ten year, ain't he, 'Rill?"

"About that, mother," admitted the school-teacher.

"An' I expect ev'ry year she makes more of a saint of him. I declare for't! sech wimmen oughter be made to marry ag'in. Nothin' but a second one will cure 'em of their fust!"

Mainly Janice and her friend, the little school-teacher, were engaged in their own particular conversation. The girl spent a very pleasant hour after tea, too, and started home just as dusk was dropping over the hillside town.

There was a light in Hopewell Drugg's store. He never seemed to have customers—or so it appeared to Janice. She hesitated a moment to peer into the gloomy place—more a mausoleum than a store!—and saw Hopewell leaning against the counter, while Lottie, in her pink sash and white dress, and the kid boots, sat upon it and leaned against her father while he scraped out some weird minor chords upon the fiddle.

Marty had come down the lane to the corner of High Street to meet Janice. Of course, he wouldn't admit that he had done so; but he happened to be right there when his cousin put in an appearance. There were no street lights on Hillside Avenue, and Janice was glad of his company.

"Huh! ain't yer gittin' pop'lar?" croaked the boy, grinning at her. "An' goin' ter 'Rill Scattergood's ter supper. Ye must ha' had a fine time—I don't think!"

"Of course I had a nice time," laughed Janice.

"With that old maid," scoffed Marty.

"Say, Marty, would you go to school again if they had a different teacher?" queried Janice.

"'Course I would!" returned the boy, stoutly.

"Maybe next Fall they'll have another one. Miss Scattergood talks of giving up teaching."

"I should think she would!" exploded Marty. "But she won't. You'll see. She'll be teachin' Poketown school when she has ter go on crutches."

The next day, after Janice had inveigled Marty into spending most of his forenoon in the yard and garden (and the latter was beginning to look quite like a real garden by now), the girl went shopping. Most of the stores were "general" stores, and she did not believe there was much choice between them. Only she had an interest in Hopewell Drugg; so she proceeded to his dark little shop.

Lottie sat upon a box nursing a rag doll, in the sunlight that came in at the side door. She was crooning to herself a weird little song, and rocking back and forth upon the box. Mr. Drugg seemed to be out.

Janice walked the length of the store very quietly, and the child did not apprehend her approach. But when she stepped upon one of the boards of the back-room floor, little Lottie felt the vibration and looked up, directly at Janice, with her pretty, sightless eyes.

"Papa Drugg be right back; Papa Drugg be right back," she said, forming the phrase with evident difficulty.

Janice went close to her and laid a hand upon Lottie's shoulder. The little girl caught at it quickly, ran her slim fingers up her arm to her shoulder and so, jumping up from the box, felt of Janice's face, too. The latter stooped and kissed her.

"I know you—I know you," murmured the child. "You came home from the lake with me. I was trying to find my echo. Did you find it?"

Janice squeezed her hand, and she seemed to understand the affirmative.

"Then it's really there?" she sighed. "It's only me that's lost it. Well—well—Do you think I can ever find it again?"

Janice squeezed the hand firmly, and she put into that affirmative all the confidence which could possibly be thus expressed. She did not believe it to be wrong to raise hope of again hearing in the poor child's heart.

Mr. Drugg came in from the back, wiping his hands and forearms of soapy water. He had evidently been engaged in some household task. Upon closer acquaintance he was improved, so Janice thought. He possessed the long, thin, New England features; but there was a certain calm in their expression that was attractive. His gray eyes were brooding, and there were many crow's-feet about them; nevertheless, they were kindly eyes with a greater measure of intelligence in them than Janice had expected to find.

It proved that Hopewell had a considerable stock upon his dusty shelves; but how he managed to find anything that a customer called for was a mystery to Janice. She selected the few notions that she needed; and as she did so she just ached to get hold of that stock of dry goods and straighten it out.

And the dust—and the flyspecks—and the jumble of useless scraps among the newer stock! The interior of that old store was certainly a heart-breaking sight. Two side windows that might have given light and air to the place were fairly banked up with merchandise. And when had either of the show windows been properly "dressed"?

However, Mr. Drugg was an attentive salesman and he really knew his stock very well. It mystified Janice to see how quickly he could find the article wanted in that conglomeration.

She remained a while to play with Lottie. Drugg came to look fondly at the little girl putting her rag-baby to sleep in a soap-box crib.

"She's just about ruined that dress and them shoes, I shouldn't wonder," mused the storekeeper. "But I forgot to put out her everyday clo'es where she could find them yesterday morning. There's so much to do all the time. Well!" He drew the violin and bow toward him and sighed. No other customer came into the store. Drugg tucked the fiddle under his chin and began to scrape away.

Lottie jumped up and clapped her little hands when he struck a chord that vibrated upon her nerves. There she stood, with her little, up-raised face flooded by the spring sunshine, which entered through the side doorway, a gleam of pleasure passing over her features when she felt the vibration of the minor notes. They were deeply engaged, those two—the father with his playing, the child in striving to catch the tones.

Janice gathered up her few small purchases and stole out of the old store.

It was more than a week later when Marty came home to supper one night and grinned broadly at his cousin.

"What d'ye s'pose I've got for you, Janice?" he asked.

His cousin flashed him a single comprehending look, and then her face went white.

"Daddy!" she gasped. "A letter from Daddy?"

"Aw, shucks! ain't there nothin' else you want?" the boy returned, teasingly.

"Not so much as a talk with Daddy," she declared, breathlessly. "And that's almost what a letter will be. Dear Marty! If you've got a letter from him do, do let me have it!"

"Don't you torment Janice now, Marty," cried his mother. "I hope he is all right, Janice. Is it writ in his own hand, Marty?"

"I dunno," said the plaguesome boy, looking at the address covertly. "It is postmarked 'Juarez'."

"Oh, yes! oh, yes!" cried Janice. "He would send it down there to be mailed. So he said. Mail service up in Chihuahua is so uncertain. Oh, Marty! p-l-e-a-s-e!"

"You give her that, Marty!" commanded Mr. Day.

Janice snatched the letter when the boy held it out to her; but she flashed Marty a "Thanks, awfully!" as she ran out of the room and upstairs. Supper? What did she care for supper? In the red light of the sunset she sat by the window in her room and read Mr. Broxton Day's loving letter.

It was almost like seeing and talking with Daddy! Those firm, flowing lines of black ink, displaying character and firmness and decision, looked just like Daddy himself! Janice kissed the open page ecstatically, and then began to read:

"Dear Daughter:

"The several thousand miles that separate us seem very short indeed when I sit down to write my little Janice. I can see her standing right before me in this barren, corrugated-iron shack—which would have been burned the last time a bunch of the Constitutionalists swept through these hills, only iron will not burn. If a party of Federal troops come along they may try to destroy our plant, too. Just at the present time the foreigner, and his property, are in no great favor with either party of belligerents. The cry is 'Mexico for the Mexicans'—and one can scarcely blame them. But although I have seen a little fighting at a distance, and plenty of the marks of battle along the railroad line as I came up here, I do not think I am as yet in any great danger.

"Therefore, my dear, do not worry too much about your father's situation. At the very moment you are worrying he may be eating supper, or hobnobbing with a party of very courteous and hospitable ranch owners, or fishing in a neighboring brook where the trout are as hungry as shoats at feeding time, or otherwise enjoying himself.

"And so, now, to you and your letter which reached me by one of my messengers from Juarez, by whom I shall send this reply. Yes, I knew you would find yourself among a people as strange to you as though they were inhabitants of another planet. Relatives though they are, they are so much different from our friends in and about Greensboro, that I can understand their being a perfect shock to you.

"I was afraid Jason and Almira lived a sort of shiftless, hopeless, get-along-the-best-way-you-can life. When I left Poketown twenty-five years ago I thought it had creeping paralysis! It must be worse by this time.

"But you keep alive, Janice, my dear. Keep kicking—like the frog in the milk-can. Do something. Don't let the poison of laziness develop in your blood. If they're in a slack way there at Jason's, help 'em out of it. Be your Daddy's own girl. Don't shirk a plain duty. Do something yourself, and make others do something, too!"

There was much in Mr. Broxton Day's letter beside this; there were intimate little things that Janice would have shown to nobody; but downstairs she read aloud all Daddy's jolly little comments upon the country and the people he saw; and about his eating beans so frequently that he dreamed he had turned into a gigantic Boston bean-pot that was always full of steaming baked beans. "They are called 'frijoles'," he wrote; "but a bean by any other name is just the same!"

The paragraphs that impressed Janice most, however, as repeated above, she likewise kept to herself. Daddy had expected she would find Poketown just what it was. Yet he expected something of her—something that should make a change in her relatives, and in Poketown itself.

He expected Janice to do something.

CHAPTER X

BEGINNING WITH A BEDSTEAD

Janice got up and took her usual before-breakfast run the next morning. The Days remained the last family to rise in the neighborhood. The smoke from the broken kitchen chimney crawled heavenward long after the fires in other kitchen-stoves had burned down to hot coals.

So when the girl got back to the house, Aunt 'Mira had scarcely begun getting the meal. Janice rummaged about in the tool-shed for some minutes before she went upstairs to her room again. Marty crawled down, yawning, and started for the usual morning pail of water from the neighbor's well. Mr. Day was smoking on the bench outside of the kitchen door. The pork began to hiss in the pan.

Suddenly, from upstairs, came a noisy pounding. Nail after nail was being driven with confidence and dispatch.

"For the land's sake!" gasped Aunt 'Mira, looking up from the stove, a strip of pork hanging from her up-raised fork.

Uncle Jason took his pipe from his lips and screwed his neck around so as to look in at the door.

"What d'you reckon that gal's up to?" he demanded.

Marty came back from the Dickerson's at almost a lope. "What in 'tarnation is Janice doin' up in her room?" he queried, slopping the water as he put the pail hurriedly upon the shelf.

"I haven't the least idea what it can be," said Mrs. Day, almost aghast.

"By jinks!" exclaimed the slangy boy. "I wanter see. By jinks! she socked that nail home—she did!"

The whole house rang with the vigor of Janice's blows. Marty started up the stairs in a hurry, and Mr. Day followed him. Mrs. Day came to the foot of the stairs with the piece of pork still dangling from her fork.

Marty reached his cousin's door and banged it open without as much as saying "By your leave."

"Hullo! What you doin'?" demanded the boy.

"Can't you see?" returned Janice, coolly. "I got sick of being rocked to sleep every night on that old soap-box. I'll wager, Marty, that this leg will stay put when I get through with it."

"Wal! of all things!" grunted Mr. Day, with his head poked in at the open door.

"What's Janice doing?" demanded his wife, too heavy to mount the stairs easily.

Uncle Jason turned about and descended the flight without replying to his wife; but at her reiterated cry Marty explained.

"Ain't that gal a good 'un?" said the boy. "She's gone and put on the old leg to that bedstead. That's been broke off ever since you cleaned house last Fall, Maw."

"Oh! Well! Is that it?" repeated Mrs. Day. Then, when she and her husband were alone in the kitchen, before the young folk came down, she said, pointing the fork at him: "I declare for't! I'd feel ashamed if I was you, Jason Day."

"What for?" demanded her husband, scowling.

"Lettin' Broxton's gal do that. You could ha' tacked on that leg forty times if you could once. Ain't that true?"

But Mr. Day refused to quarrel. He took a long drink from the pail of fresh water Marty had brought. Then he said, tentatively:

"Breakfast most ready, Almiry? I'm right sharp-set."

When Janice and Marty came down they were not talking of the bedstead at all. But Aunt 'Mira was rather gloomy all through the meal, and looked accusingly at her husband every time she heaped his plate with pork, and cakes, and "white gravey."

Mr. Day quite ignored these looks. He was even chatty—for him—with Janice. It was a school day, and Janice hurried to put on her hat and get her school bag, into which she slipped the luncheon that her aunt very kindly put up for her. Aunt 'Mira had really begun to "put herself out" for her niece, and the luncheon was always tasty and nicely arranged.

"Wait for me, Marty!" she cried, as her cousin was sliding out of the door in his usual attempt to get away unobserved, and so not be called back for any unexpected chores.

"Aw, come on! A gal's always behind—like a cow's tail!" growled the chivalrous Marty. "What you want?"

Janice gave him a quarter of a dollar secretly. "Now, you get that pump leather and you bring it home this noon. Just put it on the table by your father's plate," she commanded. "You going to do it for me?"

"Sure," grinned Marty. "And I'll see that he don't lose it, nuther. I know Dad. He'll need more than that suggestion to git him started on that old pump."

"We'll try," sighed Janice; and then Marty ran on ahead of her to overtake one of his boy friends. He would have been ashamed to be caught walking with his girl cousin by daylight, and on the public streets of Poketown!

After school that day, when Janice arrived again at the old Day house, the first thing she heard was her aunt's complaining voice begging Marty to go down to Dickerson's for a bucket of water.

"What's the matter with Dad?" demanded the boy. "Didn't I bring him that pump leather? Huh!"

"Mebbe your father will git around to fixin' the pump staff, and he kin make that in ten minutes. I believe he's got a stick for't out in the workshop now, he won't be driv'."

"Janice wasted her good money, then," said Marty, with fine disgust. "All else it needs is a pump staff, and he kin make that in ten minutes. I believe he's got a stick for't out in the workshop—had it there for months."

"Now, you git erlong with that pail, Marty," commanded his mother, "and don't stand there a-criticisin' of your elders."

Janice hid behind the great lilac bush until Marty had gone grumblingly down the hill. Then she heard some loud language from the barnyard and knew that her uncle had come in from the fields. After a little hesitation she made straight for the barn.

"Uncle Jason! won't you please mend the pump? Mr. Pringle has cut you a good pump leather."

"Goodness me, Janice! I'm druv to death. All this young corn to cultivate, an' not a soul to help me. Other boys like Marty air some good; but I can't trust him in the field with a hoss."

"But you don't work in the field all day long, Uncle," pleaded Janice.

"Seems to me I don't have a minute to call my own," declared the farmer. To hear him talk one would think he was the busiest man in Poketown!

"I expect you are pretty busy," agreed the girl, nodding; "but I can tell you how to find time to mend that pump."

"How's that?" he asked, curiously.

"Get up when I do. We can mend it before the others come down. Will you do it to-morrow morning, Uncle?"

"Wa-al! I dunno——"

"Say you will, Uncle Jason!" cried Janice. "We'll surprise 'em—Aunty and Marty. They needn't never know till it's done."

"I got ter find a new pump shaft——"

"Marty says you've got one put away in the workshop."

"Why—er—so I have, come to think on't."

"Then it won't take long. Let's do it, Uncle—that's a dear!"

The man looked around dumbly; he hunted in his rather slow mind for some excuse—some reason for withdrawing from the venture that Janice proposed.

"I—I dunno as I would wake up——"

"I'll wake you. I'll come to your door and scratch on the panel like a mouse gnawing. Aunt 'Mira will never hear."

"No. She sleeps like the dead," admitted Uncle Jason. "Only the dead don't snore."

"Will you do it?"

"Oh, well! I'll see how I feel in the morning," half promised Uncle Jason, and with this Janice had to be content. She did not, however, lose heart. She was determined to stir the sluggish waters in and about the old Day house, if such a thing could be done!

Uncle Jason was rather sombre that evening, and even Marty did not feel equal to stirring the quiet waters of the family pool. Janice stole away early to bed. Aunt Almira was always the last person in the household to retire. Long after the rest of them were asleep she remained swinging in her creaky rocker, close to the lamp, her eyes glued to one of the cheap story papers upon which her romance-loving soul had fed for years.

There was not a cloud at dawn. When Janice rubbed her eyes and looked out of her wide open window the sun was almost ready to pop above the hills. The birds were twittering—tuning up, as it were, for their opening chorus of the day.

This was the day on which Janice determined the Day family should turn over a new leaf!

She doused her face with cool water from her pitcher, and then scrambled into her clothes and tidied her hair. She tiptoed to the door of the bedchamber occupied by her uncle and aunt. At her first tap on the panel Uncle Jason grunted.

"Well! I hear ye," he said, in no joyful tone.

Janice really giggled, as she listened outside of the door. She was determined to have Uncle Jason up, and she waited, still scratching on the door panel until she heard him give an angry grunt, and then land with both feet on the straw matting. Then she scurried back to her own room and quickly finished dressing.

She was downstairs ahead of him, and quickly opened the doors and windows to the damp, sweet morning air. The cleaning up she and Marty had given the yard had made the premises really pleasant to look at. Flowers were springing along the borders of the path, and vines were creeping up the string trellis by the back door. The apple trees were covering the lawn with their last late shower of flower petals.

How the birds rioted in the tops of the trees! Singing, scolding, mating, they were really the jolliest chorus one ever listened to. The girl ran out into the yard and fairly danced up and down, she felt so good! Much of her homesickness had fled since she had received Daddy's letter.

She heard Uncle Jason heavily descending the stairs, his shoes in his hand. Janice broke off a great branch of lilacs, shook off the dew, and buried her face in the fragrant blossoms. Then, when Uncle Jason came yawning into the kitchen, closing the stair door behind him, she rushed in, with beaming face, bade him "Good-morning!" and put the lilac branch directly under his nose.

"Just smell 'em, Uncle! Smell 'em deep—before you say a word," she commanded.

He had come down with a full-grown grouch upon him—that was plainly to be seen. But when he had taken in a great draught of the sweet odor of the flowers, and found his niece with her lips puckered, and standing on tiptoe to kiss him on his unshaven cheek, he somehow forgot the grouch.

"Them's mighty purty! mighty purty!" he agreed, and while he pulled on his congress gaiters, Janice arranged the blossoms in a jar of water and set them in the middle of the breakfast table. Aunt 'Mira kept the table set all the time. The red and white tablecloth was renewed only once a week, and the jar of flowers served to hide the unsightly spot where Marty had spilled the gravy the day before.

"Come on and let's see what the matter is with the pump," urged Janice, in fear lest he should get away from her, for already Mr. Day's fingers were searching along the ledge above the door for his pipe.

"Wa-al—ya-as—we might as well, I s'pose. I'll make 'Mira's fire later. It's 'tarnal early, child."

"Sun's up," declared Janice. "Hurry, Uncle!"

He shuffled off to get his tools and the piece of oak he had laid aside for a pump staff so long ago. Janice tried to untie the pump handle, and, not succeeding, ran in for the carving knife and managed to saw the rope in two.

"I got ter take off a piece of tin in the roof of the porch—see it up yonder? Then I kin pull out the broken staff and put in a new one," said her uncle, coming back rather promptly for him. "These here wooden pumps is a nuisance; but the wimmen folks all like 'em 'cause they're easier to pump. Now! I bet that ladder won't hold my weight."

He searched the old, rough, homemade ladder out of the weeds by the boundary fence. It was built of two pieces of fence rail with rungs of laths,—a rough and unsightly affair; and two or three of the rungs were cracked.

"It'll hold me," cried Janice. "You let me try, Uncle Jason. Let me have the screwdriver. I can lift the tacks and pull off the tin. You see."

She mounted the ladder in a hurry and crept upon the roof of the porch. Uncle Jason started the nut at the handle, and soon removed that so that the staff could be pulled out. The sheet of tin had covered a hole in the shingles right above the pump. In a minute the cracked staff, with the worn leather valve, was out of the pump entirely, and Uncle Jason carried it out to the workshop where he could labor upon it with greater ease. Janice slid down the ladder, found the little three-fingered weeder, and went to work upon the rich mould around the roots of the vines—the sweet peas and morning glories that would soon be blooming in abundance.

Before Aunt 'Mira and Marty were up, the pump was working in fine style. Uncle Jason had taken an abundance of water out to the cattle. Usually the drinking trough was filled but once a day, and that about noon. Now the poor horses and the neglected cow could have plenty of water.

And so could the household. Aunt 'Mira need no longer give things "a lick and a promise," as she so frequently expressed it. When she came down it was to a humming fire, a steaming kettle, and a brimming pail on the shelf.

"I declare for't, Janice!" she exclaimed. "What you done now?"

"Nothing, Aunty—save to put a pretty bunch of lilacs on the table for you."

"An' them lilacs is always fragrant," agreed the lady. "Who went for the water? Is Marty up?"

"Marty wouldn't lose his beauty sleep," laughed Janice.

"For the mercy's sake!" gasped Aunt 'Mira. "The pump bench is wet. I declare for't! Jason never fixed that pump, did he?"

"Just try it, Aunty!" cried the delighted Janice. "See how easy it works! And the more it's pumped the better the water will be. It's not quite clear yet, you know. Moss will grow in the pipe."

"Janice, you're a wonder! You kin do more with your uncle than his own fam'bly can, an' that's a fact!"

"I hope you don't mind, Aunty?" she whispered, coming over to the large lady and hugging her. "You know, after all, it's for you he did it."

"Wal, it does lighten my labor, that's a fact," admitted Aunt 'Mira. "He use ter do a-many things for me, years ago. Oh, yes! Your Uncle Jason warn't allus like he is now. But we got kinder in a rut I 'xpec'. An' I ain't young and good-lookin' like I use ter be, an' that makes a diff'rence with a man."

"I think you're very pleasant to look at, Aunt 'Mira," declared the girl, warmly. "And I don't believe Uncle Jason ever saw a girl he liked to look at so well as you. Of course not!"

"But I be gittin' old," sighed the poor woman. "An' I ain't got a decent gown to put on no more. An' I'm fat."

Janice still hugged her. "We'll just overhaul your wardrobe, you and I, Aunty, and I believe we can find something that can be fixed over to look nice. You'd ought to wear pretty gowns—of course you had. Let's surprise Uncle Jason by dressing you up. Why, he hasn't seen you dressed up since—since I've been here."

"Longer'n that, child—much longer'n that," admitted Aunt 'Mira, shamefacedly. "P'r'aps 'tis my fault. Anyway, I'm glad about the pump," and she kissed her niece heartily.

CHAPTER XI

A RAINY DAY

Janice had learned that there were at least two senses left to Hopewell Drugg's unfortunate child that connected her with the world as it is, and with her fellow creatures. As she gradually had lost her sight and hearing, and, consequently, speech was more and more difficult for her, Lottie's sense of touch and of smell were being sharpened.

Her olfactory nerves were almost as keen as a dog's. How she loved the scent of flowers! She named many of the blossoms in the gardens about just by the odor wafted to her upon the air. And she was really a pretty sight, sitting upon the shady porch of her father's store, sorting and making into bouquets the flowers that neighbors gave her.

The old-fashioned shrubs and flowers in the Day yard were in bloom now in abundance, and one morning before school Janice carried to little Lottie a huge armful of odorous blossoms. It was a "dripping" morning. As yet it had not rained hard; but just as Janice turned off High Street toward the store, the heavens opened and the rain fell in torrents.

She ran laughing to the porch of the Drugg's store. For once the man was at the front, and he welcomed her with his polite, storekeeper's smile, and the natural courtesy which was usual with him. Janice remembered how the carping Mrs. Scattergood had declared that Hopewell Drugg would be "polite to a stray cat!"

"You must not go farther in this rain, Miss Janice," he said. "Do come in. Miss 'Rill went along to school half an hour ago—or she never would have gotten there without a wetting. Are these for little Lottie? How kind of you!"

"She's a dear, and she loves flowers so," replied Janice, brightly. "I will come in out of the rain, if you don't mind, Mr. Drugg."

"Yes. The roof of the porch leaks a little. I—I ought to fix that," said the storekeeper, feebly.

He followed his visitor in, and as his fiddle lay on the counter near at hand, he took it up. He was playing softly an old, old tune, when Janice came back through the passage from the house. She had found Lottie in the kitchen, and had left her, delighted with the posies, sitting at the table to make them up into bouquets.

The rain was pouring down with no promise of a let-up, and Janice did not have even an umbrella. She took off her coat and hung her hat to dry on the back of a chair.

"I shall have to be company for a while, I expect, Mr. Drugg," she said, laughing.

"You are more than welcome, Miss Janice," returned the storekeeper, as he put down his instrument again. "Is the child all right?"

"She will be busy there for an hour, I think," declared Janice.

"I—I am afraid I shall scarcely know how to entertain you, Miss," said Drugg, hesitatingly. "We have little company. I—I have a few books——"

"Oh, my, Mr. Drugg! you mustn't think of entertaining me," cried the girl, cheerfully. "You have your own work to do—and customers to serve——"

"Not many in this rain," he told her, smiling faintly.

"Why, no—I suppose not. But don't you have orders to put up? I supposed a storekeeper was a very busy man."

"I am not that kind of a storekeeper, I am afraid," returned Hopewell Drugg, shaking his head. "I have few customers now. Only a handful of people come in during the day. You see, I am on the side street here. We owned this property—mother and I. Mother was bedridden. I thought it would be easier to keep store and wait on her back in the house there, than to do most things; so I got into this line. It—it barely makes us a living," and he sighed.

"But you do have some business?"

"Oh, yes. Old customers who know my stock is always first-class come to me regularly,—especially out-of-town people. Saturdays I manage to have quite some trade, like the Hammett Twins, and the farmers. I can't complain."

"You never liked the business, then?" asked Janice, shrewdly.

"No. Not that it isn't as good as most livelihoods. We all must work. And I never could do the thing I loved to do. Not with mother bedridden."

"And that thing was?" asked Janice.

He touched the violin on the counter softly. "I had just music enough in me to be mad for it," he said, and his gray face suddenly colored faintly, for it evidently cost him something to speak so frankly. "Mother did not approve—exactly. You see, my father was a music teacher, and he never—well—'made good', as the term is now. So mother did not approve. This was father's violin—fiddle 'most folks call it. But it is very mellow and sweet—if I had only been taught properly to play it. You see, father died before I was born."

Out of these few sentences, spoken so gently, Janice swiftly built, in her quick mind, the whole story of the man. His had been a life of repression—perhaps of sacrifice! The soul of music in the man had never been able to burst its chrysalis.

"Mother died after I was of age. It seemed too late then for me to get into any other business," Hopewell Drugg went on to say, evenly. "You know, Miss, one gets into a rut. I was in a rut then. And we hadn't any too much money left. It was quite necessary that I do something to keep the pot a-boiling. There wasn't enough money left for music lessons, and all that.

"And then——"

He stopped. A queer look came over his face, and somehow the alert girl beside him knew what he was thinking of. 'Rill Scattergood was in his mind. He must have thought a great deal of the little school-mistress at one time—before he had married that other girl. Aunt Almira had said he had married 'Cinda Stone "out of spite!" Was it so?

"Well," sighed the storekeeper, finally coming back from his reverie as though all the time he had been talking to Janice. "It turned out this way for me, you see. And here's Lottie. Poor little Lottie! I wish the store did pay me better. Perhaps something could be done for the child at the school in Boston. They have specialists there——"

"But, Mr. Drugg! why don't you try?" gasped Janice, quite shaken by all she had heard and felt.

"Try what, Miss?" he asked, curiously.

"Why don't you try to make business better? Can't you improve it?"

"How, Miss?"

"Oh, dear me! You don't want me to tell you how, do you?" cried Janice, "I—I am afraid it would sound impudent."

"I couldn't imagine your being that, Miss Janice," he said, in his slow way, looking down at her with a smile that somehow sweetened his gray, lean face mightily.

"But why not put out some effort to attract trade here?"

"To this little, dark, old shop?" asked Drugg, in wonder. "Impossible!"

"Don't use that word!" the girl commanded, with vigor. "How do you know it is impossible?"

"People prefer the big shops on High Street."

"There's not much choice between them and yours, I believe," declared Janice.

"They're handier."

"You've got your own neighborhood. You used to have customers."

"Oh, yes. But that's when the store was new."

"Make it new again," cried Janice, feeling a good deal as though she would like to shake this hopeless man. Hopewell, indeed! His name surely did not fit him in the least. Wasn't old Mrs. Scattergood almost right when she called him "a gump"? At least, if "gump" meant a spineless creature?

Drugg was looking languidly about the store in the dim, brown light. Outside the rain still fell heavily. Occasionally the clouds would lighten for a moment as they frequently do in the hills; but the rain was still behind them and would burst through.

"Come, Mr. Drugg," said Janice, more softly. "Let me show you what I mean. You can't really expect folks to come here and trade when they can scarcely see through the windows——"

"Yes, yes," he murmured. "I had ought to clean up a bit."

"More than that!" she cried. "You want to have a regular overhauling—take account of stock, and all that—know what you've got—arrange your goods attractively—get rid of the flies—put on fresh paint——"

He was looking at her with wide-open eyes. "My soul!" he breathed. "How'd I ever git around to doin' all that?"

"You love little Lottie, don't you?" Janice demanded, with sudden cruelty. "I should think you'd be willing to do something for her!"

"What do you mean?" and a little snap, which delighted Janice, suddenly came into Drugg's tone.

"Just what I say, Mr. Drugg. You speak as though you loved her."

"And who says I don't?"

"Your actions."

"My actions? What do you mean by that?" and the man flushed more deeply than before.

"I mean if you truly loved her, and longed to get her to Boston and to the surgeons, and the school there, it seems to me you'd be willing to work hard to that end."

"You show me—" he began, wrathfully, but she interrupted with:

"Now, wait! Let me have my way for an hour here, will you? I want you to go back to Lottie and do up the housework; I see your breakfast dishes are still unwashed. Leave me alone here and let me do as I like for an hour."

"You mean to clean up?" he asked, gazing about the store hopelessly.

"Something like that. It rains so hard I can't get to school. I'll visit with you, Mr. Drugg," said Janice smiling and her voice cheerful again. "And instead of helping about the housework, I'll help in the store. Do let me, sir!"

"Why—yes—I don't mind. I guess you mean right enough, Miss Janice. But you don't understand——"

"Give me an hour," she cried.

"Why, yes, Miss," he said, in his old, gentle, polite way. "If you want to mess about I won't mind. Come in and I'll give you a big long apron that will cover your frock all over. It—it's dreadful dusty in here."

Janice would not be discouraged. She smiled cheerfully at him, found brush, pan, broom, pail, and cloths, and with some hot water and soap-powder went back to the store. The rain continued to fall heavily. There was no likelihood of her being disturbed at her work.

She chose the more littered of the two show windows and almost threw everything out of it in her hurry. Then she swept down the cobwebs and dead flies, and brushed away all the dust. It was no small task to scrub the panes of glass clean, and all the woodwork; but Janice knew how to work. The old black Mammy who had kept house for her and Daddy so many years had taught the girl domestic tasks, and had taught her well.

Within an hour the work was done. More light came through the panes of that window than usually ventured in upon a sunshiny day!

The balance of the task was a pleasure. Her bright eyes had noted the newer goods upon Mr. Drugg's shelves. She selected samples of the more recent canned goods—those of which the labels on the cans were fresh and bright. She arranged these with package goods—breakfast foods, and the like—so as to make a goodly display. She found colored tissue papers, too, and she brightened the window shelf with these. She festooned the flyspecked, T-arm light bracket in the window, and carried twisted strings of the pink and green paper to the four corners of the window shelf from the bottom of this bracket.

She went out upon the porch at last to look in at the display. From the outside the window was pretty and bright—it was like the windows she was used to seeing in the Greensboro stores.

"One thing about it," she declared, with confidence. "There's nothing like this in the whole of Poketown. There isn't another store window that looks so fresh and—yes!—dainty."

Then she went inside to Mr. Drugg. He was listlessly brushing up the cottage kitchen. Lottie had fallen asleep on the wide bench beyond the cookstove, a great bunch of posies hugged against her stained pinafore.

"Come in and see, sir," said Janice, beckoning the gray man into the store. Drugg came with shuffling steps and lack-lustre eyes. He seemed to be considering in his mind something that had nothing whatsoever to do with what she had called him for.

"Do you re'lly suppose, Miss Janice," he murmured, "that I could increase trade here? I need money—God knows!—for little Lottie. If I could get her to Boston——

"Good gracious, Miss! what you been doing here?" he suddenly gasped.

"Isn't that some better?" demanded Janice, chuckling. "Astonished, aren't you, Mr. Drugg? Don't you believe if both windows were like that, and the whole store cleaned up, folks would sit up and take notice?"

"I—I believe you," admitted the shopkeeper, still staring.

"And wouldn't it pay?"

"I—I don't know. It might."

"Isn't it worth trying?" demanded Janice, cheerily. "Now, please, I want you to do as I say—and you must let me have my own way to-day here. I've brought my lunch, and it's too late to go to school now, even if it does stop raining. You'll let me, won't you?"

"I—I—I don't know just what you want me to do—or what you want to do," stammered Hopewell Drugg, still staring at the transformed window.

"I want you to turn in and help me put your whole store to rights," she declared. "You don't understand, Mr. Drugg. I believe you can attract trade here if you will have things nice, and bright, and tidy. You carry a good stock of wares; and you are not any more behind the times than other Poketown merchants. Why not be ahead of them all?"

"Me?" breathed Drugg, in increasing wonder.

"And why not you? You've got as good a chance as any. Just get to work and make trade. Think of little Lottie. If your business can be increased and you can make money, think of what you can do for her!"

Drugg suddenly straightened his stooped shoulders and held up his head. "Just you show me what you want me to do," he said, with unexpected fire.

"Grand!" cried the excited Janice. "I can set you to work in a minute. First thing of all, you fix your screen doors; let's keep the fly family out of the store—and we'll kill those already in here. You commence on the screens, Mr. Drugg, while I tackle that other window."

About the time school was usually out, Janice removed her apron and the other marks of her toil, and put on her hat and coat. As she said, they had made a good beginning. Better still, Hopewell Drugg seemed quite inspired.

"You have done me a world of good, Miss Janice," he declared. "And already the shop looks a hundred per cent better."

"I should hope so," said Janice, vigorously. "And you keep right on with the good work, Mr. Drugg. I'll come in and dress your windows every week. And when you've torn those shelves away from the side windows and let the light and air in here, and done your painting as you promised, I'll come and arrange your wares on the shelves.

"Then you get out a little good advertising, and remind folks that Hopewell Drugg is still in Poketown and doing business. Oh! there are a dozen things I want you to do! But I won't tell you about all of them now," and Janice laughed as she picked up her bag and ran out.

The rain had ceased. The sun was breaking through the clouds, promising a beautiful evening. Janice almost ran into 'Rill Scattergood on the sidewalk.

"Why, Janice dear!" cried the little school-mistress. "I missed you to-day." Then her eyes turned toward the store. "Is—is anything the matter? Nothing's happened to little Lottie?"

"Not a thing," replied the girl, cheerfully.

"Nor—nor to Mr. Drugg? I don't hear him playing," said Miss 'Rill.

"And I hope you won't hear him playing so much for a while," laughed Janice. "The fiddle and the bow have been laid away on the shelf for a while, I hope."

"But I really do think Mr. Drugg plays very nicely," murmured the little schoolmistress, not at all understanding what Janice meant. But the girl ran on, smiling mysteriously.

CHAPTER XII

ON THE ROAD WITH WALKY DEXTER

Janice Day found the weeks sliding by more quickly after this. Although school soon closed, she had begun to find so many interests in Poketown that she could now write dear Daddy in Mexico quite cheerful letters.

She had "kept at" Hopewell Drugg until his store was the main topic of conversation all over town. The man himself was even "spruced up" a bit, and he met the curious people who put themselves out to see his rejuvenated store with such a pleasant and businesslike air, that many new customers were attracted to come again.

Neatly printed announcements had been scattered about Poketown, signed by Hopewell Drugg, and making a bid for a share of the general trade. His windows remained attractively dressed. He displayed new stock and up-to-the-minute articles. The drummers who came to Poketown began to pay more attention to this store on the side street.

But Janice Day believed, that, like charity, reformation should begin at home. The old Day house was slowly revolutionized that summer. Commencing with the cleaning up of the yard and the mending of the pump, Janice inspired further improvements. Marty and she spent each Saturday morning in the dooryard and garden, while Mr. Day mended the front porch flooring, where the minister had met with his accident, and reshingled the roof.

The boles of the fruit and shade trees about the house were whitewashed, and the palings of the fence renewed. Somehow a pair of new hinges were found for the gate. The sidewalk was raked, all the weeds cut away from the fence-line, and the sod between the path and the gutter trimmed and its edges cut evenly.

When Marty actually whitewashed the fence, Mr. Day admitted that it was such an improvement he wished he could go on and paint the house. "But, by mighty!" he drawled, "it's been so long since 'twas painted, it 'ud soak up an awful sight of oil."

Other people along Hillside Avenue began to take notice of the improvement about the old Day house. Mr. Dickerson built a new front fence, getting it on a line with the Days' barrier. Others trimmed hedges and trees, put the lawn mower to their grass, bolstered up sagging fences, and rehung gates. Hillside Avenue, up its whole length, began to look less neglected.

Janice had a fondness for the little inlet, with its background of tall firs, where she had first met little Lottie Drugg, and she often walked down there. So she became pretty well acquainted with "Mr. Selectman" Cross Moore. But as yet she did not get as far out on the Middletown Lower Road as the house where the Hammett Twins lived.

One day she found a long lumber-reach dropping new posts and rails along the length of the deep ditch into which the twins' pony had come so near to backing the little old ladies on that memorable day when Janice had first met them.

"Hi tunket!" ejaculated Mr. Moore, grinning in a most friendly way at Janice, "I hope you'll be satisfied now. You've jest about hounded me into havin' this fence put up again."

"Why, Mr. Moore! I never said a thing to you about it," cried the girl.

"No. But I see ye ev'ry time you go by, and I'm so reminded of the 'tarnal fence that I remember it o' nights. If somebody should fall inter the ditch, ye know. And then—Well, I've found out you've made little Lottie Drugg promise not to come down this way 'nless somebody's with her. 'Fraid she'll fall in here, too, I s'pose——"

"Well, she might," said Janice, firmly.

"She won't have no chance," growled Mr. Moore, but with twinkling eyes in spite of his gruffness. "Hi tunket! I'll build a railing along here that'll hold up an elephunt."

This day Janice had set forth for a long jaunt into the country. She took the turn where the Hammett Twins and their pony had first come into her sight, and kept walking on the Middletown Lower Road for a long way. It overlooked the lake, Janice had been told, for most of the distance to the larger town.

She passed several farmhouses but did not reach the Hammett place; instead she rested upon a rustic bridge where a swift, brawling brook came down from the hills to tumble into the lake. Then, as she was going on, a quick "put, put, put" sounded from along the road she had been traveling.

"It's a motorcycle," thought Janice. "I didn't know anybody owned one around Poketown."

Turning the bend in the road the 'cycle flashed into view, along with a whisp of dust. A young man rode the machine—a young man who looked entirely different from the youths of Poketown. Janice looked at him with interest as he flashed past. She thought he was going so fast that he would never notice her curiosity.

He was muscularly built, with a round head set firmly upon a solid neck, from which his shirt was turned well away, thus displaying the cords of his throat to advantage. He was well bronzed by the sun, and the heavy crop of hair, on which he wore a visorless round cap, was crisp and of a dull gold color. He really was a good-looking young man, and in his knickerbockers and golf stockings Janice thought he seemed very "citified" indeed.

"He's a college boy, I am sure," decided the girl, with interest, watching the rider out of sight. "I couldn't see his eyes behind those dust glasses; but I believe there was a dimple in his cheek. If his face was washed, I don't doubt but what he'd be good-looking," and she laughed. "Why! here's Walky Dexter!"

The red-faced driver of the "party wagon" drew in Josephus and his mate, with a flourish.

"Wal, now! I am beat," he ejaculated, his little eyes twinkling. "Can't be I've found a lost Day?"

"No, indeed, Mr. Dexter," she told him. "I was thinking I'd walk to the Hammetts'; but it's turned so hot and dusty——"

"And the Hammett gals live two good mile ahead o' ye."

"Oh! as far as that?"

"Surest thing ye know. Better hop in an' jog along back 'ith me," said Walkworthy Dexter, cordially.

"Can I, Mr. Dexter?"

"You air jest as welcome as the flowers in May," he assured her. "Whoa, Josephus. Stand still, Kate! My sakes! but the flies bite the critters this morning, an' no mistake."

Janice "hopped in," and Mr. Dexter clucked to the willing horses.

"I jest been takin' a party of our young folks over to Middletown to take examinations for entrance to the Academy," proclaimed Walky. "An' that remin's me," added he. "Did yer see that feller go by on one o' them gasoline bikes?"

"On the motorcycle?"

"Ya-as."

"I saw him," admitted Janice.

"Know him?"

"Of course not. He doesn't belong in Poketown, I'm sure."

"Mebbe he will," said Walky, his eyes twinkling with fun again.

Janice looked at him, puzzled.

"Ain't you heard?" he questioned. "'Rill Scattergood's resigned and the school committee is lookin' for a new teacher. That feller's got the bee in his bonnet, they told me at Middletown."

"The school-teaching bee?" laughed the girl.

"Yep. He'd been for his certif'cate. He's been writin' to the Poketown committee."

"But—but he isn't much more than a boy himself, is he?"

"They tell me he's been through college. Must be a smart youngster for, as you say, he's nothin' but a kid."

"I didn't say that!" cried Janice, in some little panic, for she knew Dexter's proneness to gossip. "Don't you dare say I did!"

He chuckled. "Wa-al, ye meant it. Come now—didn't ye? An' he is a mighty young feller ter be teachin' school. 'Specially with sech big girls an' boys in it. He'll have ter fight the boys, it's likely, an' I shouldn't wonder if the big gals set their caps for him."

"I'm afraid you're a very reckless talker, Mr. Dexter," sighed Janice. Then her hazel eyes brightened suddenly, and she added, "They ought to call you 'Talky' Dexter, instead of 'Walky', I believe."

"'Talkworthy Dexter', eh?" he grinned.

"I'm not sure that you do always talk worthy," she told him, shaking a serious head. "You're very apt to say things to 'stir folks all up,' as my Aunt says. Oh, yes, you do! You know you do, Mr. Dexter."

"Wal, I declare!" chuckled the man, but with a queer little side glance at the serious face of the girl. "Think I'm a trouble-breeder, do ye?"

"You just ask yourself that, sir," said Janice, firmly. "You know you're just delighted if you can say something to 'start things going,' as you call it. And it isn't worthy of you——"

"Whether I'm 'Talkworthy', or 'Walkworthy', eh?" he broke in, laughing.

"Oh, I didn't mean any offence!" exclaimed Janice, much disturbed now to think that she had criticised the man just as he was in the habit of criticising everybody else.

"I snum! mebbe you're right," grunted Walky Dexter. "And I reckon talkin' don't do much good after all. Now, look at Cross Moore. I been at him a year an' more to fix that rail fence along the ditch by his house. 'Tain't done no good. But, by jinks! somebody else got at him," added Walky, slyly, "an' I see this mornin' Cross was gittin' the rails and new posts there. He was right on the job."

Janice's cheeks grew rosy. "Why!" she cried, "I never said a word to him about it."

"No; but somehow he got the idee from you. He told me so," and Walky chuckled.

"I think Mr. Moore likes to joke—the same as you do, Mr. Dexter," said Janice, quietly.

"Ahem! You sartainly have got some of us goin'," said the driver, whimsically. "Look at Jase Day! I never did think nothin' less'n Gabriel's trump would start Jase. But yest'day I'm jiggered if I didn't see him mendin' his pasture fence. And the old Day house looks like another place—that's right. How d'you do it?"

"I—I don't just know what you mean," stammered Janice, feeling very uncomfortable.

He looked at her with his eyes screwed up again. "D'you know what they said about yer uncle las' year? He come down to Jefferson's store with a basket of pertaters. All the big ones was on top and the little ones at the bottom. Huh! He ain't the only one that 'deacons' a basket of pertaters," and Walky chuckled.

"But the boys said 'twas easy to see how come Jase's pertaters that-a way. 'Twas 'cause it took him so 'tarnal long to dig a basket, that the pertaters grew ahead of him in the row—that's right! When he begun they was little, but by the time he got a basket full they'd growed a lot," and the gossip guffawed his delight at the story.

"But he's sure gettin' 'round some spryer this year. An' I snum! there's Marty, too. He's workin' in his mother's garden reg'lar. I seen him. 'Fore you came, Miss Janice, if Marty was diggin' in the garden an' found a worm, he thought he was goin' fishin' and got him a bait can and a pole, an' set right off for the lake—that's right!" and Walky shook all over, and grew so red in the face over his joke that Janice was really afraid he was becoming apoplectic.

But something in the middle of the road, as they made another corner, stopped all this fun.

"Hullo!" exclaimed Walky. "That young feller on the gasoline bike has had an accident. Don't it look that way to you?"

CHAPTER XIII

NELSON HALEY

The team drew to a halt without any command, and directly beside the young man, who was working diligently over the overturned motorcycle. His repair kit was spread out at the roadside, and the cause of the trouble was self-evident, it would seem. But Walky was a true Yankee and had to ask questions.

"Had a puncture, Mister?" he drawled, as the young man looked up, saw Janice on the seat beside the driver, and flushed a little.

"Oh, no!" returned the victim of the accident, with some asperity. "I'm just changing the air in these tires. The other air was worn out, you know."

For a moment Walky's eyes bulged, and Janice giggled loudly. Then Mr. Dexter saw the point of the joke. He slapped his leg and laughed uproariously.

"You'll do! By jinks! you surely will do," he declared. "I reckon you air smart enough, young feller, ter teach the Poketown school. An' that's what they say you're in these parts for?"

"I am here to see the school committee about the position," said the young fellow. "Are you one of the committee?"

"Me? No—I should say not!" gasped Walky. "Old Bill Jones, an' 'Squire Abe Connett, and Elder Concannon air the committee."

"Oh!" returned the youth, quite coolly. "I didn't know but you were one of the number, and that I was already being put through my examination."

But Walky Dexter was not easily feazed. He just blinked twice over this snub and pursued the conversation:

"They tell me you've been ter college?"

"My! my!" exclaimed the young man, "they tell you a good deal, don't they? Is it just a habit folks have, or have the Poketown selectmen passed an ordinance that you are to be the recipient of all personal information?"

Janice was still amused, although she thought the young man was rather hard upon the town gossip. But Walky thought the observation over, and seemed finally to realize that the motorcyclist was making sport of him.

"Aw, well," he said, grinning broadly, "if you air tender about your pussonal record, I'll say no more about it. But I allus b'lieve in goin' right ter headquarters when I want ter know anything. Saves makin' mistakes. If you air ashamed of your criminal past, Mister, why, that's all right—we won't say no more about it."

At this the young fellow stood up, put his hands upon his hips, and burst into a hearty shout of laughter. Janice had to join in, while Walky Dexter grinned, knowing he had made a good point.

"You certainly had me there, old timer!" declared the youth at last. "Now providing you will be as frank, and do the honors as well, I'll introduce myself as Nelson Haley. I hail from Springfield. I have spent four years in the scholastic halls of Williamstown. I hope to go to law school, but meanwhile must earn a part of the where-with-all. Therefore, I am attacking the citadel of the Poketown School."

"Oh! That's the why-for of it, eh?" crowed Walky. "Much obleeged. I'll know what to say now when anybody asks me."

"I hope so," returned Nelson Haley, with some sarcasm. "But fair exchange, Mister. You might tell me who I have the honor of speaking to—and, especially, you might introduce me to the lady?"

"Oh! Eh?" and Walky looked at the blushing Janice, questioningly. The girl smiled, however, and the driver cleared his throat and gravely made the introduction. "And I'm Walky Dexter," he concluded. "If you git the Poketown school you'll come ter know me quite well, I shouldn't wonder."

"That is something to look forward to, I am sure," declared Nelson Haley, drily. Then he turned to Janice, and asked:

"Will you be one of my pupils, if I have the good fortune to get the school, Miss Day?"

"I—I am afraid not. I do not really belong in Poketown," Janice explained. "And the ungraded school could not aid me much."

"No, I suppose not," returned the young man. "Well! I hope I see you again, Miss Day."

Walky clucked to the horses and they jogged on, leaving Nelson Haley to finish his repairs. Walky chuckled, and said to Janice:

"He's quite a flip young feller. He is young to tackle the Poketown school. An' 'twill be an objection, I shouldn't wonder. Ye see, they couldn't find that fault with 'Rill Scattergood."

"But I venture to say that they did when she first came to Poketown to teach," cried Janice.

"Oh, say! I sh'd say they did," agreed Walky, with a retrospective rolling of his head. "An' she was a purty young gal, then, too. There was more on us than Hopewell Drugg arter 'Rill in them days—yes, sir-ree!"

Janice was curious, and she yielded to the temptation of asking the town gossip a question:

"Why—why didn't Miss 'Rill marry Hopewell, then?"

"The goodness only knows why they fell out, Miss Janice," declared Walky. "We none of us ever made out. I 'spect it was the old woman done it—ol' Miz' Scattergood. She didn't take kindly to Hopewell. And then—Well, 'Cinda Stone was lef' all alone, an' she lived right back o' Drugg's store, an' her father had owed Drugg a power of money 'fore he died—a big store bill, ye see. Hopewell Drugg is as soft as butter; mebbe he loved 'Cinda Stone; anyhow he merried her after he'd got the mitten from Amarilla. Huh! ye can't never tell the whys and wherefores of sech things—not re'lly."

A presidential election would have made little more stir in Poketown than the coming there of this young man who looked for the position of school-teacher. Marty brought home word at night to the old Day house that Mr. Haley had put up at the Lake View Inn; that he had let two of the older boys try out his motorcycle; that he could pitch a ball that "Dunk" Peters couldn't hit, even though "Dunk" had played one season with the Fitchburg team. Likewise, that Mr. Haley was to go before the school committee that evening. And after supper Marty hastened down town again to learn how the examination of the young collegian "came out."

"I do hope," sighed Aunt 'Mira, "that this young man gits the school. Mebbe Marty will like him, an' go again. I won't say but that the boy's a good deal better'n he was; he's changed since you've come, Janice. But he'd oughter git more schoolin'—so he had."

"I met Mr. Haley," said her niece, quietly. "He seems like quite a nice young man; and, if he has any interest in his work, he ought to give a good many of the Poketown boys a better start."

For Marty Day was not the only young loafer in the town. There was always a group of half-grown boys hanging about Josiah Pringle's harness shop, or the sheds of the Lake View Inn.

In Greensboro there had been a good library and reading-room, and the Young Men's Christian Association boys and young men had a chance there. Janice knew that her father's influence had helped open these club-like places for the boys, and so had kept them off the streets. There wasn't a thing in Poketown for boys to do or a place to go to, save the stores where the older men lounged. Sometimes, her aunt told her, men brought jugs of hard cider to the Inn tables, and the boys got to drinking the stuff.

"Now, if this Nelson Haley is any sort of a fellow, and he gets the school," murmured Janice to herself, "he may do something."

Marty brought home the latest report from the committee meeting before they went to bed. Mr. Haley seemed to have made a good impression upon the three old dry-as-dust committeemen, especially on old Elder Concannon, the superannuated minister who had lived in Poketown for fifty years, although he had not preached at the Union Church, saving on special occasion, for two decades.

"The Elder says he thinks this Haley'll do," said Marty, with a grin. "I heard him tell Walky Dexter so. He knows some Latin, Haley does," added the boy. "What's Latin, Janice?"

"Nothing that will help him in the least to teach the Poketown School," declared his cousin, rather sharply for her. "Isn't that ridiculous! What can that old minister be thinking of?"

"The Elder's great on what he calls 'the classics,'" said Mr. Day, with a chuckle. "He reads the Bible in the 'riginal, as he calls it. He allus said 'Rill Scattergood didn't know enough to teach school."

"I don't believe that Poketown really needs a teacher who reads Hebrew and can translate a Latin verse. That is, those studies will not help Mr. Haley much in your school," Janice replied.

"Wal," said Marty, "I'll go when school opens and give him a whirl. Maybe he'll teach me how to fling that drop curve."

"Now!" whined Aunt 'Mira, when Marty had stumped up to bed. "What good is it goin' ter do that boy ter go ter school an' learn baseball, I want ter know?"

CHAPTER XIV

A TIME OF TRIAL

Janice met Nelson Haley a couple of days later in Hopewell Drugg's store. The matter had been decided ere then; Haley had obtained the school and had quickly established himself in a boarding-place, as the school would open the next week.

'Rill Scattergood and her mother had already gone to housekeeping in three nice rooms just around the corner on High Street, and Mr. Haley had the good fortune to be "taken in" by Mrs. Beasely. The gaunt old widow was plainly delighted once more to have "a man to do for."

"If my digestion holds out, Miss Day," whispered the young man to Janice, "I'm going to do fine with Mrs. Beasely. Good old creature! But she may kill me with kindness. I don't see how I am going to be able to do full justice to her three meals a day."

"I hope you will like it as well in school as you do at your boarding-place," ventured Janice, timidly.

"Oh, the school? That's going to be pie," laughed Haley. "You know about how it's been run, don't you?"

"I—I attended for more than a month last spring," admitted the girl.

"Then you know very well," said the young man, smiling broadly, "that it won't be half a trick to satisfy the committee. They don't expect much. 'Just let things run along easy-like'; that will please them. If I can keep the boys straight and teach the youngsters a little, that will be about all the committee expects. Elder Concannon admitted that much to me. You see, the whole committee are opposed to what they term 'new-fangled notions.'"

"But there is some sentiment in town for an improvement in the school," declared Janice. "Don't you know that? Many people would like to see the children taught more, and the school more up-to-date."

"Oh, well," and Haley laughed and shrugged his shoulders. "The committee seem to be in power, and—Well, Miss Day, you can be sure that I know which side my bread is buttered on," he concluded, lightly.

Janice liked this bright, laughing young man very much. But she was sorry he had no more serious interest in his position than this conversation showed.

Then there suddenly came a time when Janice Day's own interest in Poketown and Poketown people—in everything and everybody about her—seriously waned. Daddy had not written for a fortnight. When the letter finally came it had been delayed, and was not postmarked as usual. Daddy only hinted at one of the belligerent armies being nearer to the mines, and that most of his men had deserted.

There was trouble—serious trouble, or Daddy would not have kept his daughter in suspense. Janice watched the mails, eagle-eyed. She wrote letter after letter herself, begging him to keep her informed,—begging him to come away from that hateful Mexico altogether.

"Broxton's no business to be 'way down there at all," growled Uncle Jason, who was worried, too, and hadn't the tact to keep his feelings secret from the girl. "Why, Walky Dexter tells me they are shootin' white folks down there jest like we'd shoot squirrels in these parts."

"Oh, Jason!" gasped Aunt 'Mira. "It can't be as bad as that!"

"Wuss. They jest shot a rancher who was a Britisher, an' they say there'll be war about it. I dunno. Does look as though our Government ought ter do somethin' to protect Americans as well as Britishers. But, hi tunket! Broxton hadn't ought ter gone down there—no, sir-ree!"

This sort of talk did not help Janice. She drooped about the house and often crept off by herself into the woods and fields and brooded over Daddy's peril. School had begun, and Marty went with several of the bigger boys that had hung around Pringle's harness shop and the Inn stables.

"That Nelse Haley is all right," the boy confided to his cousin. "We're going to have two baseball teams next year. He says so. Then we kin have matched games. But now he's goin' to send for what he calls a 'pigskin' and he's a-goin' to teach us football. Guess you've heard of that, eh?"

"Oh, yes," said Janice. "It's a great game, Marty. But what about school? Is he teaching you anything?"

Marty grinned. "Enough, I guess. Things goin' along easy-like. He don't kill us with work, that's one thing. Old Elder Concannon's been up once and sat an' listened to the classes. He seems satisfied."

Janice did not lose sight of Hopewell Drugg and little Lottie. The store was now doing a fairly good business; but the man admitted that the profits rolled up but slowly, and it would be a long time before he could take his little daughter to Boston.

These fall days Janice was frequently with Miss 'Rill. The little maiden lady seemed to understand better than most people just how Janice was troubled by her father's absence, his silence, and his peril. Besides, when old Mrs. Scattergood did not know, many were the times that 'Rill and Janice went to Hopewell Drugg's and "tidied up" the cottage for him. 'Rill would not go without Janice, and they usually stole in by the side door without saying a word to the storekeeper. He was grateful for their aid, and little Lottie was benefited by their ministrations.

Then another letter came from Broxton Day. He admitted that the two armies were very near—one between him and communication with his friends over the Rio Grande—and that operations at the mine had completely ceased. Yet he felt it his duty to remain, even though the property was "between two fires," as it were.

Ere this Janice had sent off for an up-to-date map of northern Mexico and the Texan border. She and Marty and Mr. Day had pored over it evenings and had now marked the very spot in the hills where the mine was located. The girl subscribed for a New York newspaper, too, and that came in the evening mail. So they followed the movements of the Federal and the Constitutionalist armies as closely as possible from the news reports, and Janice read about each battle with deeper and deeper anxiety.

Had her uncle and aunt been wise they would have interfered in this occupation, or at least, they would not have encouraged it. Janice lost her cheerfulness and her rosy cheeks. Aunt 'Mira declared she drooped "like a sick chicken."

"Ye mustn't pay so much 'tention to them papers," she complained. "I never did think much o' N'York daily papers, nohow. They don't have 'nuff stories in 'em."

But it was her own money Janice spent for the papers. Whenever Daddy had written he had usually enclosed in his envelope a bank note of small denomination for Janice. The bank in Greensboro sent the board money regularly to Uncle Jason (and Aunt 'Mira got it for her own personal use, as she declared she would), but Janice always had a little in her pocket.

Had she been well supplied with cash about this time the girl would have been tempted to run away and take the train for Mexico herself. It did seem to her, when the weeks went by without a letter reaching her from her father, as though he must be wounded, and suffering, and needing her!

But she did not have sufficient money to pay her fare such a long distance.

Aunt 'Mira was a poor comforter. Yet she fortunately aided in giving Janice something else to think about just then. The girl had helped "spruce up" Aunt 'Mira long since, so that they could go to church together on Sundays. But now the good lady was in the throes of making herself a silk dress for best—a black silk. It was the thing she had longed for most, and now she could satisfy the craving for clothes that had so obsessed her.

Aunt 'Mira loved finery. Janice had to use her influence to the utmost to keep the good lady from committing the sin of getting this wonderful dress too "fancy." Left to herself, Mrs. Day would have loaded it with bead trimming and cut-steel ornaments. At first she even wanted it cut "minaret" fashion, which would have, in the end, made the poor lady look a good deal like an overgrown ballet dancer!

Janice had been glad to go to church. Always, before coming to Poketown, the girl had held a vital interest in church and church work. But here she found there was really nothing for the young people to do. They had no society, and aside from the Sunday School, a very cut-and-dried session usually, there was no special interest for the young.

Mr. Middler, the pastor, was a mild-voiced, softly stepping man, evidently fearing to give offense. Although he had been in the pastorate for several years, he seemed to have very little influence in the community. Elder Concannon and several other older members controlled the church and its policies utterly; and they frowned on any innovation.

One Sabbath, old Elder Concannon—a grizzled, heavy-eyebrowed man, with a beak-like nose and flashing black eyes—preached, and he thundered out the "Law" to his hearers as a man might use a goad on a refractory team of oxen. Mr. Middler was a faint echo of the old Elder on most occasions. He seemed afraid of taking his text from the New Testament. It was Law, not Love, that was preached at the Poketown Union Church; and although the dissertations may have been satisfactory to the older members, they did not attract the young people to service, or feed them when they did come!

Janice often wondered if the loud "Amens!" of Elder Concannon, down in the corner, were worth as much to poor little Mr. Middler as would have been a measure of vital interest shown in the church and its work by some of the young people of the community.

There was a Ladies Sewing Circle. There is always a Ladies Sewing Circle! But, somehow, the making up of barrels of cast-off clothing for unfortunate missionaries in the West, or up in Canada, or the sewing together of innumerable ill-cut garments, which must, of course, be "misfits" for the unknown infants for whom they were intended,—all this never could seem sufficient to "feed the spirit," to Janice Day's mind.

Once or twice she went with Aunt 'Mira (who was proud of her new clothes and would occasionally go about to show them, now) to the sewing society meeting. But there were few other young girls there, and the gossip was not seasoned to her taste.

One day came a letter from Daddy's friend and business associate in Juarez. For three weeks Janice had not received a word from her father. The man in Juarez wrote:

"Dear Miss Janice:—

"Communication is quite shut off from the district in which your father's property lies. From such spies as have been able to get to me, I learn that a disastrous battle has been fought near the place and that the Constitutionalists have swept everything before them. They have overrun that part of Chihuahua and, that being the case, foreigners are not likely to be well treated or their property conserved.

"I write this because I think it my duty to do so. You should be warned that the very worst that can happen must be expected. I have not heard directly from Mr. Day for a fortnight, and then but a brief message came. He was then well and free, but spoke of being probably obliged to desert his post, after all.

"Just what has become of him I cannot guess. I have put the matter in the hands of the consul here, the State Department has already been telegraphed, and an inquiry will be made. But Americans are disappearing most mysteriously every week in Mexico, and I cannot hold out any hope for Mr. Day. He may get word through to you by some other route than this; if so, will you wire me at once?

"Sincerely yours,
"James W. Buchanan."

CHAPTER XV

NEW BEGINNINGS

The very worst of it was, there was nothing Janice could do! She must wait, and to contemplate that passive state, almost drove her mad!

Day after day passed without bringing any further news. She read the papers just as eagerly as before; but the center of military activity in Mexico had suddenly shifted to an entirely different part of the country. There was absolutely no news in the papers from the district where the mine was situated.

Mr. Buchanan wrote once again, but even more briefly. He was a busy man, and had done all that he could. If he heard from, or of, Mr. Day he would telegraph Janice at once, and if she heard she was to let him know by the same means.