THE TESTING OF JANICE DAY

“DID YOU COME TO LOOK FOR ME, TOO?” (see page [293])

THE SECOND “DO SOMETHING” BOOK

The Testing of
Janice Day

BY
HELEN BEECHER LONG
AUTHOR OF “JANICE DAY”

Illustrated by
CORINNE TURNER

NEW YORK
SULLY AND KLEINTEICH

Copyright, 1915, by
SULLY AND KLEINTEICH
All rights reserved

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE TESTING OF
JANICE DAY

CHAPTER I
WHAT DADDY HAD WRITTEN

Bang! bang! bang!

Three loud thumps sounded on the door of Janice Day’s bedchamber and were quickly followed by an eager rattling of the doorknob.

“Janice! I say, Janice, ain’t you ever going to wake up?” came in a strong boyish voice. “Don’t you know this is the day for the great surprise?”

“Oh, Marty, so it is!” replied his cousin, sitting up very suddenly and throwing the covers aside. “How stupid of me to lie abed when the sun is up! I’ll be dressed and downstairs in a jiffy.”

“Thought maybe you didn’t care fer that surprise,” went on the boy dryly. “If you don’t want it, o’ course you can pass it over to me!”

“Why, the idea! I do want it, whatever it is, Marty. Oh, what can it be, do you think?”

“Don’t ask me!” returned the youth, and then cut an odd grimace, which of course nobody saw. “I’ll tell ’em you’ll be down by dinner time,” he added, and then turned and clumped noisily down the narrow farmhouse stairs.

Janice had already hopped out of bed. Now she made her way across the neatly-kept bedchamber to the wide-open window. Her eyes met a most beautiful world, and a new day—a day with all the dew upon it!

She was at the window which overlooked the slope of the hill on which Polktown was built, the sheltered cove below, and the expanse of the broad lake beyond. Janice never wearied of this view—especially at sunrise.

The stern old fortress, far away on a rocky promontory of the other shore of the lake, was decked out with darts of golden sunshine. Gold, too, fresh from the sun’s mint, was scattered along the pastures, woodlands and farms of that western shore as far north and south as her bright eyes could search.

And Janice Day’s eyes were bright. They were the hazel eyes of expectancy, of sympathy, of inquiry. In all her countenance, her eyes attracted and held one’s attention.

Her face was intelligent, her smile confiding; Janice Day usually made friends easily and kept them long. If she had personal troubles she never flaunted them before the world; but she was ever ready with a sympathetic word or a helping hand for those who needed such comfort.

She was no sluggard. The sun had caught her abed on this morning; but he did not often do so. She was usually the earliest astir in the Day household, and on pleasant mornings often had a run in the woods or fields before breakfast.

Now she shook out her hair, brushed it quickly, did it up in a becoming little “bob” behind for the nonce, then took her “dip” at the chintz-hung washstand, which was the best means for bathing that the old-fashioned house afforded.

In a few minutes she left her room and ran downstairs and out upon the porch as fresh and sweet and clean as any lady from her luxuriously-appointed bathroom. On the porch she almost ran over a short, freckled, red-haired boy who was coming in with a great armful of stove-wood.

“Goodness sakes alive!” cried Janice, her eyes dancing. “You must have been up all night, Marty Day! What is the matter? Toothache? Or is there a circus in town, that you are up so early?”

“Naw—I haven’t been up all night,” drawled her cousin. “I got the start of you for once, didn’t I, Miss Smartie? This is going to be a great day for you, too. I wonder you slept at all,” and the boy chuckled as he staggered into the kitchen with his armful of stove-wood.

“I didn’t sleep well the first part of the night,” confessed Janice, hovering at the kitchen door to talk to him. “I was so eager, Marty, and so curious! What do you suppose is the surprise Daddy said in his last letter he was sending me?”

“Mebbe he’s captured one of those Mexicans—or a wild Indian,” ventured Marty, grinning, “and is sending it to you.”

“What nonsense!”

“Or one o’ them stinging lizards—or a horned toad, such as he was writing to you about,” suggested the fertile-minded youth.

“Now, Marty!”

“I’ll bet it’s something that’ll make Dad and me work, and we got that addition to the wagon-shed to finish,” and the boy grinned slily as he stooped, piling the wood neatly into the woodbox. There was a change in Marty. Formerly, if he had brought the wood in at all, he would have flung it helter-skelter into the box and run.

“I don’t see,” said Janice thoughtfully, “why you really need that new wagon-shed. And it’s only big enough for one vehicle.”

“Huh!” grunted Marty. “Don’t you like the looks of it?”

“Why—yes; it’s all right. Uncle Jason is a fine carpenter. But I don’t just see the use of it.”

“Mebbe we’re building it to keep that elephant in Uncle Brocky is going to send you—he, he!” chortled Marty, who seemed to be so full of “tickle” that he could not hold the expression of it in.

“Now! I wish you wouldn’t be so ridiculous, Marty Day,” declared Janice, more soberly. “You know Daddy will send me something nice. He says it is something to make me forget my loneliness for him. As though anything could do that!

“For two years, now, he has been down at that hateful mine in Mexico,” continued the girl, with a sigh, and speaking to herself more than to her cousin. “It seems a lifetime. And he says he may have to stay a long time yet.”

“Well, he’s making money,” said Marty bluntly. “Wish I had his chance.”

“Money isn’t everything,” said Janice earnestly. “It does seem as though there ought to be some other man in the mining company who could keep things running down there in Chihuahua, as well as keep peace with both the Constitutionalists and the Federals, and let Daddy take a vacation.

“Oh, Marty! sometimes I feel as though I’d just got to run away down there to see him. Two—long—years!”

“Well, you’d just better not!” ejaculated her cousin. “I’d just like to see you running away and going down there to where all those Mexicans are fighting. Huh! we wouldn’t let you, not much!”

Janice smiled on him suddenly, and if there was a little mist in her eyes, the smile was all the sweeter. It warmed her heart to hear Marty speak in this way, for the boy was not naturally of an affectionate nature.

“All right, Marty!” she exclaimed. “If you don’t want me to go, I’ll stop a while longer.”

“You’d better,” grunted her cousin. “Hi tunket! whatever would Polktown do without you?” he added, with a burst of feeling that was quite amazing, and brought a happy thrill of laughter from Janice Day’s lips.

“You are just as ridiculous as you can be, Marty. Polktown would get along very well without me. Polktown has waked up——”

“And who woke it up?” shot back Marty, belligerently, looking up from the fresh fire he was now kindling in the cookstove.

“Why—why—Mrs. Marvin Petrie and her ‘Clean-Up Day,’ I guess,” laughed Janice, her eyes dancing again. “I know that Polktown began to be Polktown from that very day, and was no longer ‘Poketown,’ as it used to be called.”

Marty shook his head in remembrance of those old times too.

“Don’t know how it all came about, Janice,” he said slowly. “Seems to me things began to happen just about as soon as Uncle Brocky sent you here to live with us. Crackey! We certainly were a slow crowd till you came and began to do something.”

He grinned again broadly. “Walky Dexter says you had the same effect on Polktown as a flea has on a dog. If the flea don’t do nothing else, it keeps the dog stirring!”

“Well, I declare!” exclaimed Janice. “I’m much obliged to Walky, I am sure—comparing me to a flea! I’ll be a bee and sting him next time I get a chance. Here comes Aunt ’Mira. I’m going to help her get breakfast.”

Marty went off, whistling, to help with the chores. His father was already out at the barn. Mrs. Day came heavily into the room—she was almost a giantess of a woman—to find a brightly-burning fire and her niece flitting about, setting the breakfast table.

“I declare for’t, Janice, you are a spry gal,” said the good lady, beginning the preparations for the meal in a capable if not particularly brisk manner. “Ain’t nobody going to get up ahead of you.”

“The sun was ‘up and doing’ before me this morning,” laughed Janice. “And I believe Marty and Uncle Jason were, too. At any rate, they were down before me.”

“It does seem good,” said Aunt ’Mira reflectively, “to come down and find a hot fire in the stove, and water in the bucket. Why, Janice! it never uster be so before you come. I don’t understand it.”

The girl made no reply. For a moment a picture of “the old Day house” and its inmates arose before her mental vision, as it was when first she had come to Polktown from her mid-western home at Greensboro.

The distress she had felt during the first few days of her sojourn with these relatives, who had been utter strangers to her, was not a pleasant thing to contemplate, even at this distance of time.

Until she had taken Daddy’s advice, and put her young shoulder to the local wheel and pushed, Janice Day had been very unhappy. Then her father’s do something spirit had entered into the young girl and she had determined, whether other folk were lazy and lackadaisical or not, that she would go ahead.

Polktown had changed, as Marty said. Slowly but surely it had progressed, and from a very unkempt, slovenly borough, as it was when Janice Day first stepped ashore from the little lake steamer, Constance Colfax, two years before this bright and beautiful summer morning, it had become a clean, orderly and very attractive New England village, with most people doing their best to make the improvement permanent.

Janice was looking forward to the arrival of the little lake steamer to-day with almost as much expectancy as she felt when she first saw Polktown. Daddy had written from Mexico that she could look on this day for a great surprise to arrive by the Constance Colfax.

“The greatest and most lovely surprise in the world,” sighed Janice, looking from the kitchen door as the pork was sizzling in the pan, and Mrs. Day was deftly turning the johnny-cakes, “would be dear Daddy himself coming to Polktown. But, of course, that cannot be for a long, long time.

“I must be patient. I mustn’t look for that. But, goodness me, how curious I am to know just what it is he’s sending me!”

CHAPTER II
A VISTA OF NEW POSSIBILITIES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why not?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER III
SOMETHING NEW

The usual loiterers on the dock were amused to see Janice Day’s eagerness; but she did not care. Walky Dexter hailed her cheerfully:

“I say, Janice, ye won’t miss the boat; don’t be in such a ’tarnal hurry. She’s going to stop long enough to take you aboard, I guess.”

“I don’t want to go aboard, Walky,” she declared, stopping breathlessly beside his wagon, and laying a kind hand on the bony hip of Josephus. “But I believe there is something aboard that belongs to me—Oh! I can hardly wait to find out if it’s mine.”

“If what’s yours, Janice?” asked the man, with waking interest.

“That! Right there on the deck! It’s partly covered with canvas, but you can see what it is,” cried Janice.

“Jefers pelters!” ejaculated the astonished Walkworthy, tipping back his cap and scratching his head to stir his slow wits. “You don’t mean that contraption with all the shiny brass and leather, and them other dinguses—lamps, d’ye call ’em?—down front, with an in-gine cowcatcher, into the bargain?”

“You know very well that’s a four-passenger automobile, Walky!” she cried. “And they’ve got it ready to run ashore here. It must be for me! And Daddy sent it!”

“Well, Ma’am!” exclaimed the driver of Josephus, “it’ll be sure something new in Polktown. We ain’t never had one o’ them things here before—not to stop, at any rate. Us’ally,” added Mr. Dexter, with a wink, “they go through Polktown like what the Chinaman said about his ’sperience slidin’ down hill on the bobsled: ‘Whiz-z-z! Walkee back!’

“I don’t s’pose some o’ them ortermobilists even see Polktown as they go through. Sometimes I meet one o’ them—there’s a cloud of dust—somethin’ squawks like a frightened hen—Josephus gits up on his hind legs—and it’s all over! Some day I ’spect Josephus is goin’ to ditch me because of one of ’em. And if this one is going to be right here in town——”

He had climbed lazily down from his seat while he rambled on. Now Janice seized his arm and shook it a little.

“Oh, Talkworthy!” she said, giving him the nickname she often used when he was more than usually garrulous. “Do, do find out if that’s for me!”

The man on the dock had already caught and fastened the two hawsers. The old Constance Colfax snuggled in close to the dock. The broad gangplank was being run ashore and the deckhands stood ready with laden trucks to run freight and express over it.

The captain of the steamboat came to lean upon the landward rail. “Say,” he asked of the assembled spectators, “anybody know ‘J. Day’? Got something here for him. He’ll hafter come and run it off the boat, or tow it off, or something. Can’t let him git up steam in the thing while she stands on our deck.”

Janice could scarcely keep from dancing up and down. She clasped her hands and cried fervently under her breath: “Oh, Daddy! Just the most delightful thing you could have sent me!”

Walky took charge at once. “That ain’t no man—‘J. Day’ ain’t, Cap,” he drawled. “She’s this young lady here,” and he jerked an identifying thumb toward Janice. “Don’t that merchine run of itself? Ain’t there no power in it?”

“Power enough,” grunted the steamboat captain. “But it’s ag’in rules to run it ashore under her own power. Hitch a line to her and tackle that old crow-bait of yourn to her, Walky. You kin snake her ashore in a minute.”

“What! Josephus?” demanded the startled Walky. “My mercy! if Josephus should see that contraption tackled to him, I dunno what he would do!”

“He might move faster than a toad funeral for once in his life, eh, Walky?” suggested one of the interested spectators on the dock, and a laugh was raised against the talkative expressman.

“No, sir,” said Walky firmly; “we’ll just put Josephus out of the question, if you please. If there ain’t men enough here to run this young lady’s ortermobile ashore——”

Several came forward. Janice caught sight of Marty standing aside, grinning delightedly. She made a rush for him while the men were pushing the car ashore.

“Marty Day!” she exclaimed, seizing that youth by the shoulders. “You knew all about this—you did! you did!”

“Ouch! Ouch!” yelled Marty, in mock injury. “Don’t be so rough with a feller! Have a heart, Janice!”

“You knew about it—you did!” reiterated Janice.

“Oh! Uncle Brocky let us know it was coming,” said the boy, in an off-hand way. “That’s why Dad and me got busy on the gar-bage, Janice.”

“Garage! Goodness!” laughed Janice. “You talk as though it was something that the cat had brought in! ‘Garbage,’ indeed! But how nice of you and Uncle Jason to build it!”

“Dad kicked,” sniffed Marty. “Not about building the shack for you,” he hastened to add; “but because Uncle Brocky was wasting his money to buy one o’ them buzz-carts. But Marm—well, you know, Marm’s getting to be a reg’lar sport.”

“Oh, Marty!”

“Sure she is. She’s a dif’rent woman since she has had your board money to spend. She told Dad that she had sent to a catalogue house out west for an ortermobile coat and veil, and all the fixin’s, and she was just as anxious to wear ’em as she could be.”

“I knew how poor Aunt ’Mira was disappointed,” sighed Janice, “when I had to give up the idea of buying a car.”

“Yep,” agreed Marty. “She kalkerlates to make the other wimmen on Hillside Avenue—if not all over Polktown—sit up and take notice when she ’pears out in them new duds.”

“But it’s a mystery to me,” said Janice slowly, and more to herself than to her cousin, “just how Daddy knew I wanted a car so, and still couldn’t buy one. It’s just as though he read my mind.”

She failed to see Marty’s face. That lad looked as though he knew a whole lot that he was not ready or willing to divulge.

“Now, Miss Janice!” puffed Walky Dexter, the new car being run on the dock, “what do you kalkerlate’s to be done with this here do-funny? Whoa, Josephus! if that critter ever turns around and sees this thing, I dunno what he will do!”

“I know what he’ll do,” scoffed Marty. “He’ll wink his other eye; he winked the first one half an hour ago and hasn’t woke up since.”

“Now, now! you be more respectful to old age, sonny,” advised Mr. Dexter. “The old hoss bears an honorable name——”

“And has borne it a long time,” finished Marty. “Do you re’lly think, Walky, that a stick of dynamite would startle him?”

But Janice was not interested in this rough and ready repartee. She was wondering about the new car. The canvas had been stripped off and she looked all about it, admiring its shiny surface, the wonderful brass trimmings, and the mechanism that was in sight.

She knew something about a car. One of her friends in Greensboro had owned a similar vehicle, and she had often ridden in it, and had learned some of the technical terms, and what the parts of the machine looked like. But that had been more than two years before and, of course, at that time Janice had been too young to get a license and had not learned to run the car.

She longed to jump in behind the wheel and send the beautiful machine spinning up the long, easy hill into Polktown, and up Hillside Avenue to the old Day house.

“But there isn’t any gasoline in it, of course,” she sighed. “We can’t run it up ourselves. And Walky’s old horse would never be able to drag it up the hill.”

“I’ll go git our team and haul it up,” proposed Marty, with an uncanny eagerness to do this favor.

“No,” said Janice. “It must go home under its own power. We won’t insult such a beautiful car by towing it like a derelict.”

“Many a time I ’xpect will I find ye broke down on the road, Miss Janice,” prophesied Walky, “and glad to have Josephus give first aid to the injured.”

“Don’t you believe it!” cried Janice. “I’m going to learn all about this car, and how to drive it and repair it. You wait and see!”

“But how?” demanded Marty, grinning. “Going to take a correspondence school course and learn to be a shuffer?”

“Oh!” cried Janice. “It has a self-starter. Why! it’s just the very up-to-datest thing!”

“Crackey! I’m going to run and git some gasoline. They keep it up the street. Let’s fill the tank, Janice, start her going, and try to work our passage up to the house.”

“Oh, Marty! I hardly dare,” gasped the girl, yet tempted sorely to try his desperate suggestion.

“Get the gasoline, anyway,” urged Marty.

“All right,” she agreed, and took out her purse and handed him some money. “You get it, Marty. But, after we get the engine to running, I don’t see what we shall do. Isn’t there a single person in town who knows how to manage an automobile?”

“I say!” exclaimed Marty suddenly. “I bet I know just the feller.”

“Who is that?” queried his cousin anxiously.

But the boy was off with a yell and without other reply. Meanwhile Walky and other willing workers had rolled the machine into the freight shed, and there it stood, the cynosure of the spectators in general.

The comments upon the first auto to be owned in Polktown would have amused Janice at another time. But many of them escaped her ear because she was so much interested herself in the machine and how she was going to get it home. But she did hear Mel Parraday observe:

“I opine one o’ them things is mighty handy to have around. I allus look at the pictures of ’em in the advertising pages of the magazines them drummers leave up to the ho-tel. If the Inn makes me enough out o’ the boarders this summer, I kalkerlate to have me one.”

“What for, Mel?” drawled Lem Pinney of the hotel-keeper. “You ain’t got no more use for an ortermobile than a cat has for two tails, I vow!”

“Save payin’ Walky, here, for carting stuff up to the ho-tel,” grinned Parraday. “And me and the old woman can ride to church in it on Sundays.”

“Go to church in it!” scoffed Walky. “If old Elder Concannon ever seen one o’ them things stop in front of the Union Church, he’d throw a conniption right there, in his best suit. He calls ’em ‘devil wagons,’ and says they was prophesied against in the Book of Daniel.”

Just then Marty reappeared, coming down the long dock. He was staggering under the weight of a five-gallon gasoline can. Beside him walked the tall, well-set-up young man whom Janice had seen with her cousin before.

“Oh, dear me!” thought she, with a little flutter. “That must be the civil engineer, Frank Bowman. Marty is bringing him right here! Perhaps he knows how to run an automobile.”

CHAPTER IV
A VERY CIVIL ENGINEER

When her cousin and the young man came near enough, Janice saw that Mr. Bowman was a good-looking person in countenance as well as in figure. He had very blue eyes and very pink cheeks, without being at all effeminate in appearance. His light hair he wore pompadour and brushed up straight over his forehead.

He wore his clothes differently, too, from anybody Janice had seen about Polktown. Even Nelson Haley, the school teacher, did not boast garments of such cut and quality—nor Mr. Middler, the minister.

Marty banged down the gasoline can with a satisfied air and said, in his off-hand way:

“Say, Janice! this is Frank Bowman I was telling you about. He can run an ortermobile. Can’t you, Frank?”

“Good-day, Miss Janice,” said the young civil engineer, lifting his hat.

Janice could have shaken Marty for not properly introducing the young man. The careless introduction had given Mr. Bowman the advantage of calling her by her first name right at the start, and Janice felt that she would like to be “really grown up” in her association with this new acquaintance.

“I am afraid Marty overrates my ability as a mechanician,” the young civil engineer continued. “There are some automobiles, I believe, that not even their manufacturers can make run properly. But these Kremlins are very good machines. I have a friend in New York who has one and I have often driven it. I believe you have made a wise selection for this hilly country.”

“I am sure I know very little about it,” said Janice, smiling. “I have always believed that cars were like typewriters, or bicycles, or—or physicians and ministers! Every one stands up for his own particular possession in all those lines, you know.”

“That is so, too,” agreed Frank Bowman, with a laugh. “At any rate, you will be an enthusiastic admirer of this Kremlin car, I am sure; and I shall be a partizan myself. Marty says you have no idea how to run it?”

“I am a regular ignoramus,” admitted Janice. “If—if I’d known Daddy was going to surprise me with such a very wonderful gift, I would have gone to Middletown, or somewhere where there is a garage, and have taken lessons in running the car.”

“Say, you ain’t got a license, either, Janice,” said Marty suddenly. “They’ll pinch you, mebbe, if you drive it around here without one.”

“Don’t try to scare your cousin, Mart,” said the young man good-naturedly. “That’s easily remedied, for sure. As I happen to have a license myself, I’ll drive the car home for you—if you will permit me, Miss Janice?”

“My goodness! ain’t that just what I’ve been telling you she wants?” demanded the boy. “You folks are eaten up with politeness!”

Marty’s boyish and characteristic outburst put Janice and young Bowman immediately at their ease. Two young people who have laughed heartily together cannot remain strangers.

Frank Bowman stripped off his coat and went to work. The gasoline tank was filled and also the water radiator and the oil box, and he tried out the various parts of the mechanism that could be observed while the car stood still. Something might have become jarred since the car left the factory, and as this very civil engineer said:

“We want to go through Polktown with colors flying. It would be too bad to have a mishap—say about in front of Massey’s drug store—and have all the town gather around and make derisive comments.”

Janice laughed at this, and watched his skillful hands as he went about what seemed to her and Marty a very mysterious task. But the car had been tried out just before it left the salesrooms of the company, and nothing had happened to the mechanism in transit. It seemed to be in perfect condition.

The self-starter acted promptly, and when Marty heard the engine whir and buzz, he tore off his cap, threw it into the air, and cheered.

“Hurrah! that’s the bulliest sound I’ve heard in a long time! Crackey!” cried the young barbarian, “won’t we scare the hosses and hens into fits along these old roads? Say, Frank! you’ll teach me to run it, too, won’t you?”

“You’ll have to fix that with your cousin,” laughed the young civil engineer. “I am going to teach her, if she will allow me, first of all. Get in, Miss Janice. I believe we shall be able to make Hillside Avenue in fine style.”

“Hold on!” cried Marty. “Don’t leave a feller behind,” and he pulled open the door of the tonneau and jumped in. “I only hope we meet Walky Dexter. I’d like to see if that old crow-bait of his could be scared into a show of life for once.”

“Mercy, Marty!” said Janice. “Don’t hope for such perfectly horrid things to happen. I want to have a good time with this car; but I don’t want anybody else to have a bad time because of it.”

Marty chuckled. “What do you suppose will happen if you ever meet the Hammett Twins on the road with their old Ginger?”

“Nothing will happen. I shall stop the car and lead poor Ginger around it, of course,” declared Janice, laughing.

Frank Bowman slipped the clutch into low gear. The car jarred, lurched forward, and slowly and smoothly rolled out of the shed.

Most of the spectators had departed, save some small boys. They yelled at Marty, sitting proudly in the tonneau; he was too excited to answer their gibes.

Gradually, but quickly, so as to save the engine, Frank slipped the clutch to higher speed—then highest. The automobile rolled easily off the dock and into the principal street of Polktown.

The car took the hill smoothly and without trouble for the engine. Janice was delighted. Her eyes shone; the little tendrils of hair about her brow were tossed by the breeze; the pink in her cheeks deepened.

Everybody on the street stopped to watch the novel sight; but perhaps they looked as much at Janice and Frank as they did at the shiny Kremlin car.

“Hullo!” exclaimed Marty. “Here comes Nelse Haley.”

Janice did not hear. The young schoolmaster came out of a side street and stopped, amazed to see Janice Day beside a very fine-looking young man, driving up High Street in an automobile!

Nelson Haley considered himself Janice Day’s nearest and dearest friend. He felt a little stab of jealousy to see her in the new car with this stranger. And she did not notice him!

It was from the bystanders that the teacher obtained his first information regarding the ownership of the new car. He had no means of knowing that the present was a surprise to Janice.

It seemed odd that she had said nothing about expecting the automobile. And to let this strange fellow run it for her!

Nelson Haley could not drive an automobile himself; just the same he felt a little hurt. When Janice had spent the money Mr. Day sent her to help Lottie Drugg, she had told Nelson all about it, and he had sympathized with her, and admired her all the more for her unselfishness.

He wondered who the young fellow was who drove the new machine, and he asked questions. A young man from out of Polktown would be likely to interest Janice Day, Nelson believed. He felt chagrined that he had never learned to drive a car.

The conversation that went on between Frank Bowman and Janice as the car rolled smoothly up the hilly streets, might have troubled Nelson Haley, too; but all that was said came as a matter of course.

“Your car runs very nicely, Miss Janice,” Frank Bowman observed.

“Oh! I’d love to handle it as you do,” cried the girl. “I’m afraid it will be like a balky horse for me until I have a lot of experience.”

“If you let me give you a few lessons in my spare time, I will guarantee you will run it as well as I do,” laughed Frank. “I’d be glad to lend you my small experience.”

“Oh, Mr. Bowman! I couldn’t take your time.”

“Only some of my leisure,” he hastened to say. “It will keep me out of mischief. You know the old saw about ‘idle hands’?”

“And would you really be getting into mischief?” asked Janice, with mock seriousness.

“Like enough,” returned Frank, with twinkling eyes. “This Polktown place is such a wicked and reckless town. Wait till my sister sees it! She will want to pack up and leave after the first day. In fact, I tell her she’ll never unpack her trunk when she once sees the place.”

“Oh! have you a sister? And is she coming here?” cried Janice eagerly.

“So she says. Annette has just been ‘finished’ (Frank made a little grimace over the word) at a fancy boarding school. We’re orphans, you know. She is determined to come here and live with me. She’s several years younger than I am; but she feels it her sisterly duty to oversee my bachelor existence.”

“You’ll love to have her with you,” Janice said confidently.

“Oh, Annette’s a good kid,” said the civil engineer carelessly. “But she’ll be bored to death here in a week, and will go down to our relatives in New York. She was not made for a rural life, I assure you.”

“And you do not take much delight in country places, either?” suggested Janice slily. “You look down upon our simple pleasures.”

“Well, if the ‘simple pleasures’ you speak of include driving a nice little car like this,” laughed Frank Bowman, “I don’t think there is much to complain of.”

After a while he added: “I shan’t have much idle time on my hands. I am laying out the route for the new branch of the V. C., you know. And when my reports are ratified at headquarters, I hope to go ahead and build the bridges and trestles necessary to bring the line into Polktown.

“It will be something of a job, and I shall be around Polktown for a long time. I thought it would be ‘poky,’ like its name,” and Bowman laughed. “But I find there are some very interesting people here.” He looked sideways at Janice. “Surely this beautiful car is an interest I did not expect. You must let me teach you what I know about running it,” he reiterated.

“Thank you,” said Janice demurely. “If Aunt ’Mira is willing, you may. And I am grateful enough for your driving us home, I assure you!”

“Oh, this mustn’t count as a lesson,” laughed Bowman. “You haven’t learned anything yet.”

But Janice thought she had. She had learned considerable about this very civil engineer, and what she had learned piqued her interest in him.

Perhaps his sister, too, would prove to be pleasant. A girl right from boarding school might stir the sluggish pool of Polktown society—bring modern ideas and new thoughts into the place.

There was still room for progress in Polktown along these lines, as Janice very well knew. She was interested in Frank Bowman; but much more so in the coming of his sister, Annette.

CHAPTER V
“THE WORLD’S RUN MAD!”

The approach to the old Day house was a triumph. Not only Aunt ’Mira and Uncle Jason, but most of the neighbors were out to see the homecoming of Janice’s new car.

Molly, the brindle cow, put her head over the corner of the pasture fence, caught sight of the car and its glistening brass work and dust-guard flashing in the sunlight, and immediately set out for the upper end of the pasture, tail up and head down.

The dogs barked a welcome; the sorrel ponies put their heads out of their stable windows and snorted disapproval; and the Day tabby cat, with its tail twice as big as usual, went up the poplar tree in fright as Frank turned the car into the lane.

“My goodness me!” gasped Aunt Almira, coming down the porch steps in her eagerness to view the car. “Ain’t that the han’somest thing you ever see? My soul and body, Janice! I am glad I spent my money for them ortermobile fixin’s, after all!”

Janice introduced Frank Bowman.

“And he knows all about the car and is kind enough to offer to teach me to run it. If you approve, Auntie,” the girl added.

“There! that’s neighborly, I declare for’t!” agreed Mrs. Day, wiping her hand on her apron before she offered it to the young engineer. “Sure, I’ve no objection. I expect to l’arn to run it myself after a while.”

“Good Land of Goshen, Almiry!” gasped Uncle Jason. “You’d look harnsome sittin’ up there a-drivin’ that contraption.”

“Why not, I’d like to know?” demanded she, bridling at his sarcasm.

“One thing sure,” grunted her husband, after a moment. “You can’t make that kind of a spectacle of yourself, even if ye want to.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause you couldn’t git in behind that wheel in the fust place to steer it. You’re too fat.”

Janice tried to smooth over this very plain speaking on her uncle’s part by introducing him to Frank Bowman.

“Yes,” put in Marty. “He’s the chap I was telling you about. He’s working for the V. C. Railroad Company, and is going to build the bridge over Mr. Cross Moore’s brook.”

“Glad to meet you, Mr. Day,” said the young man, shaking the farmer’s hardened hand. “Marty and I are already great friends and your niece is kind enough to call me an acquaintance. Hope we shall know each other better.”

“It’ll be your fault, young man, if we don’t. You’ll be welcome here when you fancy coming. Won’t he, Almiry?”

“That’s right,” agreed Mrs. Day heartily.

Janice saw that both her uncle and aunt were much taken with the manner and good looks of Frank Bowman. She was glad of this for she did so want to learn all about running the new Kremlin car—and in a hurry!

Frank backed the automobile around and they rolled it into the new shed. The latter made a very good garage, indeed; and although Uncle Jason saw fit to consider the automobile an extravagance on his brother’s part, Janice kissed him soundly for his work in preparing for the reception of the gift.

The young civil engineer promised to come the very next day to give Janice her first lesson in the actual handling of the car, and then took his leave.

“Mighty smart-actin’ young feller,” commented Uncle Jason. “Got some git-up-an’-git about him—don’t ye say so, Almiry?”

“He’s got such pretty eyes!” exclaimed Mrs. Day. “And he says he ain’t never had a mother since he was nine years old. Wouldn’t his mother be proud of him now?”

“I’ve heard you say, ‘Handsome is as handsome does,’ Aunt ’Mira,” said Janice roguishly. “He’s too new a friend to praise yet.”

“Huh!” said Marty. “He got us home in the buzz-cart, didn’t he? Shows he’s a good feller. But crackey! wouldn’t it make him sore if he knew Marm said he had pretty eyes?” and the boy giggled.

Janice was off in a brown study again. She was wondering, wondering, wondering! And the burden of her surmises and suspicions was: “How did Daddy know I still wanted the car, when he had once sent me money to get it? He must know about little Lottie.”

Yet she had been very careful to say nothing in her letters regarding her help toward paying for the operation that had aided Lottie Drugg to see again. Janice Day had never hoped “to have her cake and eat it, too.”

Through supper that evening she watched Marty closely. He began to notice her observation and wriggled under it. No other word could just express his fidgeting.

“Do keep still, Marty,” begged his mother. “Can’t you be quiet in your chair long enough to eat a meal of victuals?”

“Well! what’s Janice looking at me like that for?” grumbled the boy. “I ain’t a penny peep-show; am I, now?”

“Nobody would give a penny to look at you,” said his father tartly. “You’re like an eel.”

“Marty!” exclaimed Janice suddenly, “when was it you wrote last to my father? I forget.”

“It was right after Christmas, wasn’t it, sonny?” suggested his mother, “when you thanked Mr. Broxton Day for the present of the gold piece?”

“Aw, I wrote him since then,” said Marty cheerfully. “You know, he sent me a rattlesnake skin for a band to my hat.”

“That was in May,” Janice said quickly. “Did you thank him for that, too?”

“Yep,” returned the boy.

“And that was after I’d spent my thousand dollars—or most of it,” said Janice softly. “It was so thoughtful of Daddy to notice that I didn’t spend my money for a car.”

“Huh! why wouldn’t he notice it?” retorted Marty, dipping half a doughnut in his tea and then eating it quickly so as not to lose any of the soft confection.

“I told him I’d got something different—and he never even asked me what it was,” continued Janice.

Marty began to giggle.

“Look out, young man!” warned his father, “you’ll choke yourself again.”

“He giggles every time I speak about Daddy’s giving me the car and asking no questions,” said Janice reflectively. “I smell a mouse, Marty! You told!”

“Told what? I never!” demanded and denied the boy in a breath, but all one broad grin.

“You wrote Daddy about my—my helping Lottie Drugg.”

“Aw, shucks! You don’t know so.”

“Yes, I do.”