← catalogue

Janice Day, the Young Homemaker

by Helen Beecher Long · English · Gutenberg #2483 · 376,676 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Janice Day, the Young Homemaker
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Janice Day, the Young Homemaker

Author: Helen Beecher Long


        
Release date: January 1, 2001 [eBook #2483]
                Most recently updated: April 4, 2015

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2483

Credits: Scanned by Aaron Cannon


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JANICE DAY, THE YOUNG HOMEMAKER ***
Ver.04.29.93*END*




Scanned by Aaron Cannon <cannona@fireantproductions.com>





Janice Day, The Young Homemaker

by Helen Beecher Long




CHAPTER I. WHEN MOTHER WAS A GIRL

"Why, that is Arlo Junior.  What can he be doing out of doors so
early?  And look at those cats following him. Did you ever!"
Janice Day stared wonderingly from her front bedroom window at
the boy crossing the street in the dim pre-dawn light, with a cat
and three half-grown kittens gamboling about him.  Occasionally
Arlo Junior would shake something out of a paper to the ground
and the cats would immediately roll and frolic and slap playfully
at one another, acting as the girl had never seen cats act
before.

The pleasantly situated cottage belonging to Mr. Broxton Day
stood almost directly across the way from the Arlo Weeks' place
on Knight Street.  Therefore Janice often said that, "the days
and nights and weeks are very close together!"

Knight Street, as level as the palm of one's hand, led straight
into Greensboro, where it crossed Market and Hammond Streets,
making the Six Corners--actually the heart of the business
district of this thriving mid-western town.

The Day cottage was a mile and a half from the Six Corners and
the Farmers & Merchants Bank in which Mr. Broxton Day held an
important salaried position. Besides his house and his situation
in the bank, Mr. Day considered another of his possessions very
important indeed, although he did not list it when he made out
his tax return.

This that he so highly valued possessed the very brightest hazel
eyes in the world, wore a wealth of free brown hair in two plaits
over her shoulders, and was of a slender figure without bordering
upon that unfortunate "skinniness" which nature abhors as she
does a vacuum.

Janice possessed, also, even teeth that flashed when she smiled
(and she smiled often), a pink and white complexion that the sun
was bound to freckle if she was not careful, and a cheerful,
demure expression of countenance that went a long way toward
making her good to look upon, if not actually good looking.

In a spick and span blue-checked bungalow apron, she stood at her
window just as Dawn swept a brush of partially-hued color across
the eastern horizon.  Having had it in her mind when she went to
bed the night before to arise early, she had of course awakened
long before it was really time to get up to make sure that daddy,
for once, got a proper breakfast.

For the Days, father and daughter, were dependent on hired
service, and such service in the form of Olga Cedarstrom was
about as incapable and stupid as fate had yet produced.

Having caught the first glimpse of that mischievous youngster,
Arlo Weeks, Junior, with the cats, Janice raised her window
softly as far as the lower sash would go, to peer out at the
strange procession.  The boy and the cats entered the Day's side
gate and disappeared around the comer of the kitchen ell.

"Now! what can that rascal be about?  If he does anything to
bother Olga there will be trouble.  And everything here goes
crossways enough now, without Arlo Junior adding to it, I
declare!"

Janice could very clearly remember when the cottage had been a
real home instead of "just a place to stay"; for her mother had
been dead only a year.  The experiences of that year had been
trying, both for the sorrowing widower and the girl who had been
her mother's close companion and confidant.

Janice was old enough and well trained enough in domestic affairs
to have kept house very nicely for her father.  But she had to go
to school, of course; an education was the most important thing
in the world for her.  And the kind of help that came into the
Days' kitchen often balked at being "bossed by a slip of a
gur-r-rl," as one recent incumbent of the position had said.

Olga Cedarstrom was stupid and often cross in the morning; and
she was careless and slatternly in her ways.  But she did not
object when Janice came down early to get her father's breakfast,
and serve it daintily, as her mother had taught her.

Only, Olga could not be taught to do these things.  She did not
want to learn.  She said she had a "fella" and would be married
soon; and under the circumstances she did not consider that she
needed to learn anything more about domestic work!

Janice did not wish to go down into the kitchen so early, for
that would awaken Olga who would come from her room, bleary-eyed
with sleep and with her temper at a saw-tooth edge, to ask, "why
she bane get oop in de middle of de night?"

Janice had washed and dressed and read her morning Bible chapter,
which she always managed to find time for, even when she did not
get up as early as on this occasion.  For her age, and perhaps
because of her mother's death, which still seemed recent to
Janice, she was rather serious-minded.  Yet she was no prig,  and
she loved fun and was as alert for good times as  any girl of her
age in Greensboro.

The talk she had had overnight with daddy had perhaps put her in
a rather more serious mood than usual.  The talk had been all
about her mother and the hopes the mother and father had had and
the plans they had made for their little girl's future.

To carry through those plans necessitated the proper schooling of
Janice Day.  She was already in the upper grade of the grammar
school.  Even if the household affairs were all "at sixes and at
sevens," she must stick to her books, for she had ambitions.  She
was quite sure she wanted to teach when she grew up.

There was another reason that spurred Janice Day to the point of
early rising, although daddy had not even hinted that he missed
the comfortable, daintily served breakfasts which he used to
enjoy when Mrs. Day was alive.  It was something he had said
about an entirely different matter that started this serious
train of thought in the girl's mind.

She had expressed herself as so many of us do when we are in
difficulties, or when we see conditions we would like to have
changed: "Oh, if things were only different!"

Broxton Day had looked at her with his head held sideways and a
quizzical smile in his eyes as well as on his lips.

"Different? Do you want to know how to bring about a change?  Do
something.  Don't just talk, or think, or wonder, or wish, or
hope; but do!  It is all right to say that good things become a
reality because somebody has a good thought.  Actually, thinking
does not bring things about.  It is doing.  Do something in the
world, my dear.  Don't wait for somebody else to set the example,
or to lead.  Do what you can yourself while you are waiting for a
leader.  Do something.

"Of course thought must precede action, and, furthermore, must
accompany action if action is not to run wild.  But in the end
thought must become action and we must all of us--little girls,
as well as adults--do something if the conditions we do not like
are to be changed."

That was really what had got Janice Day out of bed so early on
this morning.  Poor daddy!  He sometimes had most awful meals
served to him.  And the house was usually in a state of confusion
if it was not actually dirty.

Olga had come straight from a peasant cottage in her

country, and her idea of scrubbing the kitchen floor was to dash
pails of water over it and then sweep the water out of the back
door with a broom.

There was a Swedish colony established around the pickle
factories on the northern edge of the town, and Olga went over
there with her "fella" to a dance or downtown or to a picture
show almost every evening. No wonder she was not fit for work in
the morning.

When Janice had come up to bed the previous evening she had
brought with her the "treasure-box" which daddy usually kept in
the wall safe in the living room.  It contained certain heirlooms
and trinkets that had been her mother's, and were now Janice's
most sacred possessions.

She had had to beg daddy for the treasure-box, for he, too,
prized its contents beyond words.  But Janice was a careful girl,
and daddy trusted her, and he knew, too, that the mementoes of
her dead mother seemed to bring the woman closer to the little
daughter; and so, in the end, he had allowed Janice to carry the
treasure-box to her room to be kept for the night, but to be
returned to its usual place after the girl had had it by her and
looked at its contents for a while.

There were a few pieces of jewelry--more valuable for their
associations than for their intrinsic worth, the gold framed
photographs of Grandfather and Grandmother Avion, which clasped
like a little book, and the miniature of Janice's mother painted
on ivory when she was a girl by a painter who had since become
very famous.

This last was the girl's dearest possession--the memento of her
mother which she cared for above everything else.  Daddy had put
it into her keeping with a reverence that could not fail to
impress Janice Day, young as she was.  Broxton Day had worshipped
his wife for her higher qualities as well as having loved her for
her human attributes.

Something of this attitude toward his dead wife Janice, young as
she was, understood.  She knew, for instance, that there was no
other woman in the world as a mate for Broxton Day now that her
mother was gone.  All the more must she try, therefore, to fill
her mother's place in his life.

She had taken the miniature out of the treasure-box and was
looking with dimming eyes at it by the window when, shifting her
glance, she had seen Arlo Weeks, Junior, crossing the street.
This was her mother when she was a girl!  What a sweet, demure
face it was.  Janice did not realize that much of the expression
of the countenance in this miniature was visualized in the flesh
in her own face.

No wonder daddy had fallen in love with such a pretty, pretty
girl! So thought Janice Day.  And--

What was Arlo Junior, the mischievous torment of the
neighborhood, doing with those cats?  This sudden query shattered
her dream completely.  She returned the miniature to the
treasure-box, and closed and latched the cover.

"Goodness knows," murmured Janice Day, "there are cats enough
around this house without Arlo Junior bringing any more upon the
premises.  Sometimes I hear them squalling and fighting when I
wake up in the night."

With the treasure-box in her hand, she opened her bedroom door
and crossed the hall to the storeroom.  The window of this room
was over the back porch.  She heard a step on the porch flooring.
The door of the summer kitchen was seldom locked.  Was Arlo
Junior down there?

That boy was constantly getting into trouble with the neighbors.
There was a regular feud between Olga Cedarstrom and Arlo Junior.
Olga had chased him half a block only the other day, threatening
him with a broom.

And the cats!  Here they came from all directions--over
the back yard fences and from the barn.  Fat cats, lean cats,
shabby "ash-barrel" cats, and pet cats with ribbons and collars.
Amazedly, Janice Day owned to herself that she had never seen so
many cats gathered in a more or less harmonious group before.

Instead of fighting or "mauling," they approached the back porch
of the Day house as though on pleasure bent. Was that Arlo Junior
giggling down there?

She put down the treasure-box and tried to open the window.  But
the sash stuck.  She distinctly heard the door below close and
footsteps receding from the porch.

Wishing to make sure that it was Arlo Junior who had been below,
the girl ran back to her bedroom.  Yes! there he was scuttling
across the street in evident haste to get under cover.

"Now, isn't that odd?"  murmured Janice.  Suddenly a sound
floated up from below--an echoing wail that seemed wrenched from
the very soul of a tortured cat. The cry reverberated through the
house in a most eerie fashion.

Fortunately her father slept in the front of the house and there
was a closed door between the front and the back halls on both
floors.  But Janice heard Olga's big, flat feet land upon the
floor almost instantly. That feline wail had evidently brought
the Swedish girl out of her dreams, all standing.

That sound sent Janice out of the room on a run.  She must reach
the seat of trouble before Olga got to the place!  Otherwise, the
trouble was bound to increase and become--what?  Even Janice's
imagination, trained, as it was, by the succession of incompetent
and unwilling kitchen helpers, could not picture that.

Before Janice Day could reach the hall, Olga was padding down the
stairs to the kitchen.  From the rear arose increasing howls.
The cats may have mysteriously gathered in apparent amity; but so
many of them shut up in that outer kitchen with no escape could
not possibly dwell for long in harmony.

There certainly was no harmony in these mounting wails. The
principle motif seemed to be furnished by the cat that had first
voiced his complaint.  But now, as Janice plunged down the stairs
after Olga, the thin, high scream of the initial feline chorister
was crossed, in warp and woof, by basset strains.

The sounds rose and fell, as though proceeding from cats in
torment--an agonizing oratorio like nothing Janice had ever heard
before.  She screamed to the Swedish girl, but her voice was
drowned by the caterwauling in the back kitchen.  Olga wrenched
open the door.  Janice, arriving to look over her shoulder at the
very moment she did so, saw the back kitchen practically filled
with cats.

When one cat loses its temper it seems as though every other cat
within hearing gets excited.  In the corners, out of the way of
the battlefield, kittens and tabbies were rolling and playing
upon the dried twigs and leaves that Janice knew must be catnip
that Arlo Junior had flung upon the floor to bait the cats into
the kitchen.  But the cats in the middle of the room were
preparing for the representation of a busy day at Donnebrook
Fair.

"Them cats!  In de clean kitchen what I scrubbed last night only
I bane kill them cats!"  And there was not a cat in the lot as
mad as Olga Cedarstrom.

There was a hod of coal beside her.  Olga seized the good-sized
lumps of stove coal, one after another, and began volleying with
a strong overhand throw at the excited animals.

Olga proved to be an excellent shot.  She hit a cat with almost
every lump of coal she threw.  But she could not, after all, have
easily failed to do this, there were so many cats in the kitchen.

"Oh, don't!  Don't, Olga!  Stop!" shrieked Janice. "You will hurt
them"

"Hurt them?"  repeated the girl. "I bane mean to hurt dem" and,
slam! went another lump of coal.

"But they can't get out!" gasped Janice.

"Den how dey get in, huh?" demanded Olga, and threw another lump
with terrific force.

There was a howl, higher and more blood-curdling than any that
had heretofore assailed their ears.  One big cat scrambled up the
wall, and up the window panes, seeking an exit.  One of the
creature's legs dragged limply.

"Olga Cedarstrom!" shrieked Janice, "you have broken that poor
cat's leg."

"I bane break all his legs!"  rejoined this quite ferocious girl.
"How dese cats coom here?  I bane sure you know!"

She turned to glare at Janice Day so savagely, a lump of coal
poised in her smutted hand, that the girl was really frightened.
She backed away from the angry woman.

Then she thought of something she might do to save the cats and
the back kitchen from complete wreck.  Janice darted out of the
room to the porch.  In a moment she had unlatched the
summer-kitchen door and flung it wide open.

Instantly there boiled out of the room cats big and cats little,
cats of all colors and every degree of fright.  One of the last
to escape was the poor cat with the broken leg.  There was
nothing Janice Day could do for it.  She did not dare to try to
touch it.

She ventured back into the house to find Olga Cedarstrom still
breathing out threatenings and slaughter.  Olga was in her
nightgown and a wrapper. She had not even stopped for slippers
when she came from her bed.  Now she padded to the back stairs,
turning to shake her clenched fist at Janice and cry:

"I leave!  I leave!  I bane going to pack my troonk. The man pay
me oop to last night, and I leave!"

"I am glad of it!" gasped Janice, finding her voice again.  "It
wasn't my fault, and it wasn't the poor cats' fault.  I am glad
you are going, so there!"

But she became more serious as she prepared the nice breakfast
she had promised herself the night before her father should have.
She heard Olga go to the telephone in the hall.  She called a
number and then talked in Swedish for several minutes to whoever
answered.

Janice's father came into the dining room just as his little
daughter brought in the breakfast.  When he saw the steaming
coffee pot and the covered dishes and toast-rack his face
brightened.  But he had to be told of the domestic catastrophe
impending.

"Well," he said cheerfully, "we couldn't get anybody any worse
than Olga, that is sure.  I will see what they have at the
intelligence office, and I may send a woman up after you get home
from school this afternoon. I'll 'phone you first, daughter.  I
don't have to see Olga, do I? She was paid last night."

No, Janice told him, he need not bother about a servant who was
on the point of going.  Before it was time for Janice to leave
for school, a taxicab appeared, driven by a man of Olga's own
nationality.  He went upstairs for the girl's trunk.

This he shouldered and carried out to the cab.  Olga followed
him, wearing the red hat with the green plume which had so amused
Janice when the Swedish girl had arrived.  She drove away in the
cab without even looking back at Janice Day.

The latter had tidied up the kitchen and dining room. The back
kitchen would have to remain as it was until later.  And Janice
felt that she would like to get hold of Arlo Weeks, Junior, and
make him clean up that kitchen!

She changed to her school dress, strapped together the books she
had studied the night before, put on her hat, and stood a moment
in the hall, wondering if all would be right until she should
return at three o'clock.

And then for the first time, and suddenly, Janice remembered the
treasure-box.

She darted upstairs to her bedroom.  How careless of her to have
left it there!  She knew the simple combination of the wall safe
in the living room, and She determined to open the safe and put
the box away.

But when she entered her bedroom she found that the treasure-box
was not there.  Instantly she remembered having taken it with her
when she ran into the storeroom to see what Arlo Junior was doing
with the cats.

In trying to open the window in the storeroom she had set the box
down on a trunk--on Olga's trunk.

Startled, indeed alarmed and shaking, Janice Day went as fast as
she could to, the storeroom.  Olga's trunk was gone.  She did not
see the treasure-box anywhere in the room.

She searched the room diligently.  She ran from room to
room--Olga's, her own, even the other bedrooms.  She halted at
last in her own room, sobbing and alarmed.

The treasure-box was gone.  Olga's trunk had gone. Olga herself
had gone.

And the photographs of Grandfather and Grandmother Avion, the
old-fashioned jewelry, the diary her mother had kept as a little
girl, the miniature Janice thought so much of--all, all the
keepsakes her father had entrusted her with the night before,
seemed to have gone With Olga and the trunk.



CHAPTER II. THE HUNT FOR THE TREASURE-BOX

This was a very tragic happening in Janice Day's life. She had
never been regardless of important matters; that was why daddy
had not even warned her to be careful of the treasure-box.

He assumed that she would consider its precious contents and
guard it accordingly.  Why!  He had not even mentioned it this
morning, he had been so confident of her good sense.

And because of Arlo Junior and a bunch of cats she had forgotten
all about her mother's miniature and all the other heirlooms in
the treasure-box!  Her tears were those of anger at herself as
well as sorrow because of the disappearance of the heirlooms.
Yet at the moment she did not fully appreciate the full weight of
the happening.

Janice could not stand and cry about it.  She had assured herself
that the treasure-box was not where she had left it--was not in
the storeroom at all, as far as she could see.  Olga certainly
had not picked it up and placed it in any of the rooms on this
second floor, or anywhere else where it could be easily seen.

Janice could only believe that the Swedish girl, either by
intention or in some involuntary way, had carried the
treasure-box off with her.  Yet it did not seem as though Olga
Cedarstrom, bad temper and all, could be a thief!  That was an
awful thought.

"Maybe she has done it to plague me," Janice thought. "She is
awfully mad at me.  She thought it was my fault that the cats got
into the back kitchen.  And now she means to pay me back.  She
means to return it."

"But where has she gone?  And what shall I do?" were the final
queries formed in Janice Day's mind.

She must not stand idle.  It was nearing school time. Nor could
she neglect the matter until she came home from school at three
o'clock.  If Olga Cedarstrom were really dishonest, she might be
getting farther and farther away from Greensboro while Janice
remained inactive!

She must do something.

Janice went slowly downstairs.  First Of all it was her duty to
communicate with her father at the bank.  She hated to tell him
of this happening, for she realized keenly her fault in the
matter.  But not for a moment did the girl consider hiding the
unfortunate affair from Broxton Day.

She went to the telephone and called the bank When she asked for
Mr. Day.  She could almost see him taking the receiver from the
hook when the bell on his telephone rang.

"Yes?" Daddy's voice sounded clearly and courteously over the
wire.  "This is Day."

"Often when he said this over the telephone Janice would respond,
giggling: "And this is Knight--Street! Number eight-forty-five."

But she did not feel at all like joking on this occasion.  All in
a rush she told him of the tragic happening.

"And I don't know what to do, Daddy," was the way in which she
ended her story.

Even over the telephone the girl realized that her father was
more startled than she expected him to be, His voice did not
sound at all natural as he asked:

"Do you mean to tell me that everything that was in that box is
lost, Janice?  Everything?"

"Oh, Daddy!" choked the girl, "I put everything back before I
closed the box--mamma's picture, and her diary, and all."

"There were other things--"

"Oh, yes! The jewelry and the photographs," said Janice.

"More than those," her father's hoarse voice said quickly.  "I
cannot explain to you now, my child. Didn't you know there was a
false bottom in that box?"

"A false bottom to the treasure-box, Daddy?" she cried
wonderingly.  "A secret compartment."

"Oh! I didn't know--"

"No, of course not.  I blame myself, my dear," he added, and she
knew that he was striving to control his voice.  "Do not cry any
more.  I will explain when come home."

"Oh, Daddy!"

"Are you sure you have looked carefully for the box?" and he now
spoke more moderately.

"Oh, yes, Daddy."

"Looked everywhere?"

"Indeed I have."

"Then, daughter, by the face of the clock in front of me, I
advise you to hurry away to school.  I will see what can be done.
You say Olga went away in a taxicab?"

"Yes, Daddy."

"Of course, you did not notice the number of the car?"

"Oh, no, sir.  But the man was a Swede like Olga.  And he came in
and carried down her trunk." '

"I will see what can be done.  Go to school like a good girl and
do not let anxiety spoil your recitations. Good-bye."

He hung up the receiver and Janice followed his example.  There
seemed nothing else she could do.

She would have been late for school had not Stella Latham driven
by the Day cottage in her father's car just as Janice came out.
Stella lived some distance out of town, her father being a
well-to-do farmer, and she was driven in daily by either her
brother or one of the farm hands.

Janice saw the automobile coming in the distance and soon
recognized the Latham car.

"Dear me!" she sighed, "I hope Stella will not turn down Hester
Street.  If she comes this far she'll be sure to ask me to ride,
and then I can get to school on time"

With rather anxious eyes Janice watched the oncoming car.  Yes,
it passed Hester Street and came on down Knight Street to make a
later turn off toward the schoolhouse.  The car almost shot past
Janice before the girl inside saw her on the sidewalk.  Then the
girl suddenly leaned out of the swiftly moving car.

"Oh, Janice Day!" screamed Stella, warning her driver to stop
with one hand while she beckoned to Janice with the other.
"Hurry!  You'll be late.  Get in here."

Janice ran after the car, glad of the lift.  Stella was a buxom
girl, a year or two older than Janice, but in the latter's grade
at school.  "Ever so nice" Janice thought her.  But, Janice
thought most of her school friends were "nice." She was friendly
toward them, so they had no reason to be otherwise than kind to
her.

Not that Janice Day was either namby-pamby or stupid. She had
opinions, and expressed them frankly; and she possessed a strong
will of her own.  But she not to hurt other people's feelings;
and if she stood up for her opinions, she usually did so without
antagonizing anybody.

"You're just the girl I wanted to see, anyway, Janice, before
school," Stella said, as the younger girl hopped into the tonneau
and the chauffeur let in the clutch again.

"Now you see--all of me!" said Janice brightly, trying to put the
trouble of the lost treasure-box behind her.

Her eyelids were just a little red, and she took one more long,
sobbing breath.  But Stella was so very much interested in her
own affairs that she noticed nothing at all strange about her
friend.

"Oh, Janice!" Stella said, "I'm to have a birthday party.  You
know, I told you all about it before." "Yes, Stella, you told
me," agreed Janice.

"Of course I did.  And I want you to come.  I couldn't really
have a party without you, Janice.  But I am not so sure about
some of the girls."

"Oh, dear me!" murmured Janice.  "If I was going to have a
regular party I'd invite all the girls in our class--or else none
at all."

"Now, that's just like you!  You always are so quick. How did you
know I didn't want to invite her?" complained Stella, pouting.

"I didn't know.  Whom do you mean to leave out?" Janice asked,
smiling.

"There!  That's what my mother says! You are always so shrewd and
sly."

"Oh!"  cried Janice not at all pleased, "does your mother think I
am sly?"

"We-ell, she said you were shrewd," admitted Stella, changing
color.  "Now, don't get mad, Janice Day.  I want you to help me."

"You go about it in a funny way," said Janice, rather piqued.  "I
am not sly enough to be of any use to you, I guess."

"Now, don't be angry!" wailed the other girl.  "What I mean is,
that you always see through things and can get out of
difficulties."

"I didn't know I got into difficulties--not many anyway," Janice
added, with a little sigh.

"Dear me, Janice!  don't split hairs--please," said the very
selfish and self-centered Stella.  "I want your help.  Do tell me
how to get out of asking that girl to my party without offending
her friends--for she has got friends, curiously enough."

"For goodness' sake!" gasped Janice.  "What girl do you wish to
snub, Stella?"

"There you go with your nasty insinuations!" exclaimed Stella,
whiningly.  "I don't want to snub anybody.  But some people are
impossible!"

"Meaning me?" Janice asked with twinkling eyes.

"Of course not.  Why will you so misunderstand me?  I wouldn't
snub you, Janice Day.  I am speaking of Amy Carringford."

"Oh!  It is Amy you wish to snub, is it?"  Janice said, with a
change of tone.

Even Stella noted the change.  She seized Janice's arm.

"Now, don't!  You made me say that.  I don't really want to snub
her.  I don't want to hurt her feelings. But, of course, I can't
have those pauper children at my party--Amy and Gummy.  'Gummy!'
What a frightful name!  And his pants are patched at the knees.
They wouldn't--either of them--have a decent thing to wear, of
course."

Janice said nothing for a long minute.  Stella's blue eyes, which
were actually more staring than pretty, began to cloud ominously.
Instinctively she sensed that Janice was not with her in this.

"Amy Carringford is a nice girl, I think," Janice Day said
mildly.  "And perhaps she has a party dress, Stella."

"There you go!  Always standing up for anything mean or common,"
stormed Stella.  "I might have known you wouldn't help me."

"Why did you ask me then?"  Janice inquired with some rising
spirit.

"Because you're always so sharp about things; and you can help me
if you want to."

Stella Latham was certainly much more frankly spoken than
politic.  Janice Day excused her schoolmate to a degree.  She
usually found excuses for every one but herself.

"I was only trying to help you," Janice said slowly. you haven't
really anything against Amy, have you?"

"She's a pauper--a regular pauper."

"Why, that's not so," interrupted Janice.  "A pauper must be one
who is supported at the public expense.  We had that word only
the other day in our lesson, you know, Stella.  And Amy
Carringford--or her folks-- aren't like that."

"Nobody knows what or who they are.  They've only just come here
and from goodness knows where.  And they live in that little
tumble-down house in Mullen Lane, and--"

"Oh, dear me, Stella!"  interrupted Janice, with a sudden laugh.
"That list of crimes will never send anybody to jail.  You are
awfully critical.  Amy has awfully pretty manners, and just
wonderful hair.  She sings and dances well, too.  And
Gummy--'Gumswith' is his full name--"

"'Gumswith!'  Fancy!" ejaculated the farmers critical

daughter.

"Yes, isn't it awful?" returned Janice.  "Anybody would be sorry
for a boy with such a name.  And he hasn't even a middle one they
can call him by.  You know it isn't his fault, Stella, that he
has such a horrid name."

"No, I don't suppose it is.  But--"

"And Amy is so nice.  She is just about my size, Stella, and if
you promise never to tell--"

"What is it?  A secret?" eagerly demanded Stella, as Janice
hesitated.

"Yes.  Or it will be a secret if you promise."

"Cross my heart, Janice," declared Stella, who loved secrets.

"Well--now," said Janice Day, most seriously, "if you invite Amy,
and she can't come because she hasn't any party dress, I'll lend
her one of mine that was made for me just before my mother died.
I am wearing only black and white.  I've outgrown those new
dresses that were made for me then, I guess.  And Amy is just a
weeny bit smaller than I am."

"But Janice Day! you--you're helping Amy Carringford. You're not
helping me at all!"

"Why, yes I am helping you," said Janice warmly.  "At least, I am
trying to.  If you will invite Amy with the rest of us girls,
I'll see that she has a party dress. I should think that was
helping you a whole lot, Stella Latham.  You said you didn't want
to hurt her feelings."

The car reached the schoolhouse.  Janice was out of it like a
flash with her schoolbooks and lunch.  The bell was tolling.

"Now, isn't that just like Janice Day?" grumbled Stella,
following her from the automobile.  "She is a sly little thing!"

Mr. Broxton Day felt much more troubled than Janice possibly
could feel about the disappearance of the treasure-box and the
keepsakes it contained. Intrinsically, the value of the articles
that she named was not very great, although nothing could replace
the diary or the miniature of his dead wife.  But as he had
intimated to Janice over the telephone there was something else.
There was that lost with the so-called treasure-box that meant
more to him than the mementoes his daughter had known about.

During this lonely year that had passed since his wife's death,
Mr. Day's experiences with domestic help had been disheartening
as well as varied.

Olga Cedarstrom had been with them two months.  She had come
rather better recommended than some of her predecessors.  Instead
of obtaining her services through an agency, Mr. Day had found
her in "Pickletown," as the hamlet at the pickle works was
called.

There Olga, recently arrived in Greensboro, had been living with
friends.  Mr. Day went over there first of all to search for the
girl.

But her whilom friends knew nothing about Olga since the previous
evening.  They did not know that she contemplated leaving Mr.
Day.  And she had not appeared at Pickletown after she had
departed from eight hundred and forty-five Knight Street that
morning.

Mr. Day did not wish to put the police on the trail of the absent
Olga.  In the first place there was no real evidence that the
Swedish girl had stolen the box of mementoes.

If she had taken them at all, she must have done so just to pique
Janice, not understanding how really valuable the contents of the
box were.  If possible, Mr. Day wished to recover the lost box
without the publicity of going to the police, both for Olga's
sake and for his own.

And then as Janice had told him, the taxicab driver had been in
the house.  He had gone upstairs to the storeroom for Olga's
trunk--to the very room in which Janice had last seen the
treasure-box.

It might be that the driver was the person guilty of taking the
box.  Olga might know nothing about it.  Yet her disappearance
without informing her friends of her intention to leave
Greensboro looked suspicious.

Mr. Day had to search further.  He had two other persons to
discover.  One was Olga's "fella"; the other was the Swedish
taxicab driver.

From people who knew Olga around the pickle factories it was easy
to learn that Olga's friend was a hard working and estimable
young man named Willie Sangreen. Just at this time Willie was
away from home.  They could tell Mr. Day nothing about Willie's
absence either at his boarding-house, or where he was employed.
But in both instances they were sure Willie would be back.

In hunting for the Swedish taxicab driver Mr. Day had even less
good fortune.  There were two taxicab companies in Greensboro and
less than a dozen independent owners of cabs.  Before noon he had
learned, beyond peradventure, that there was not a cab driver in
town of Swedish nationality.

He presumed that the cab must have come from out of town.  Where
it had come from, and where it had gone with Olga, and Olga's
trunk, and, possibly, with the treasure-box, seemed a mystery
insolvable.

If Olga or the cab driver had stolen the box of heirlooms it
seemed that all trace of their whereabouts had been skillfully
covered.



CHAPTER III. DELIA

In spite of her anxiety Janice fixed her mind upon her
recitations with her usual success.  During the past few months
so many, many things had happened to trouble the home pool that
the girl was pretty well used to seeing it ruffled.

"Help" came and went at the Day cottage on Knight Street in a
procession of incompetents.  Some incumbents of the domestic
situation remained but a week.  Olga Cedarstrom had been longer
than any in Mr. Day's employ.

Often, when they were without a girl, Janice had spent her
Saturday holiday trying to clean house and set things to rights,
and when daddy had come home from the bank he had donned a
kitchen apron and helped.

The house was by no means kept as it had been when Mrs. Day was
alive.  For she had been a trained housewife, and she knew how to
make the domestic help do the work properly.

Now there was dust under the furniture and in the corners.  Pots
and pans were grimy.  Because of the rough methods of cleaning
pursued by Olga, the baseboards of the kitchen were streaked with
a "high-tide" mark of soapy water.

The stove and the gas range were smeared with grease. Scarcely a
cooking utensil but was sticky.  The silver went unpolished.  The
yolk of egg ("the very stickingest thing there was" Janice
declared,) could be found on the edges of plates and spoons.

And the laundry!  The "wet wash," the "flat work" laundry, and
the complete service laundry were all only a little worse than
the attempts of the hired help to wash clothes properly.

Bed and table linen wore out twice as fast as it should, Janice
knew.  Nobody would wash and turn socks and stockings as they
should be washed and turned. Fruit stains were never removed.

Either the girls used kerosene in boiling the clothes and the
odor of it clung to them even after they were laid away in the
bureau drawers, or she threw chloride of lime into the water
which ate holes in the various fabrics.  Mother used to make
Javelle water to whiten the clothes, but Janice did not know how
it was made, nor had she time to make it.

Indeed, with school-closing in the offing and lessons and
examinations getting harder and harder, the girl scarcely had
time to keep her own clothing neat and mended.  She knew that
right now daddy was wearing socks with holes in them.

So, when her mind was not fixed upon her lessons, it was not
likely that even Stella Latham's birthday party occupied much of
Janice's thought.  She started home from school as soon as she
was released, considering if she could get the back kitchen
cleaned up before it was time to get supper for daddy.  The lumps
of soft coal Olga Cedarstrom had thrown at the cats had made an
awful mess of the place, Janice very well knew.

As she turned the corner into Knight Street there was Arlo Weeks,
Junior, just ahead of her.  Arlo Junior, the cause of the
morning's trouble!  Arlo Junior, the cause of Olga's leaving the
Days in the lurch!  More, Arlo Junior, who was the spring of
Janice Day's deeper trouble, for if it had not been for that
mischievous wight, Olga Cedarstrom could not have run off with
the treasure-box!

Arlo Junior had black, curly hair like his father.  He had
snapping brown eyes, too, and was quick and nervous in his
movements.  Of all the Weeks' children (Daddy said there was a
"raft" of them!) Arlo Junior was the worst behaved.  He was
forever in trouble.

To report him to his parents was just like shooting cannon balls
into a stack of feathers.  His mother, tall, cadaverous, and of
complaining voice and manner, only declared:

"He's too much for me.  I tell Arlo that Junior ought to be
locked up, or handcuffed, or something.  And that's all the good
it does."

To complain to Mr. Weeks of his namesake was quite as
unsatisfactory.

"What?  The young rascal!"  Mr. Weeks would emphatically say.
"Arlo did that?  Well, I tell you what.  If you catch him at any
of his tricks, you thrash him.  That's what you do--thrash him!
You have my full permission to punish him as though he were your
own boy.  That's the only way to deal with a rascal like him."

So, you see, both parents shed responsibility, both for Arlo
Junior's mischief and punishment, just as easily as a duck sheds
rainwater.  Under these circumstances
,
Arlo Junior usually went without punishment, no matter what he
did.

And here he was, swaggering along the walk with some of his
mates, hilariously telling them, perhaps, of how he had tolled
all the cats of the neighborhood into the Days' back kitchen.

Janice Day was a very human girl indeed.  The thought of Junior's
trick and all it had brought about made her very, very angry.
She rushed right into the group of boys, all fully as big as she
was, soundly boxed Arlo Weeks' ears, and just as many times as
she could do so before he outran her and left her, panting and
still wrathful, on the curb.

The other boys backed away, leaving Arlo Junior to fight his own
battle--or run, if that seemed to him the part of wisdom, as
evidently it had.

"I hope that will teach you to bring cats into our kitchen, Arlo
Junior!" Janice cried after him.

"No, 'twon't," declared the boy, rubbing the ear that had
received the greater number of her blows.  "I knew how to do it
before, didn't I?  My, Janice Day! but you can slam a fella."

"I wish I could hurt you more," declared the girl. "You've made
me enough trouble."

She marched on, leaving the scattered crowd of urchins to gather
again about Arlo Junior, but now in a scoffing rather than in an
admiring crowd.  The bubble of Arlo Junior's conceit had been
punctured.  He had been whipped by a girl!

"Now," thought Janice, as she went along home, "I would not want
Daddy to know I did that.  Fighting a boy on the street!  I guess
Miss Peckham, who is always peering through her blinds at what I
do, if she had seen me would be sure to say I was misbehaving
because I had no mother to make me mind.  As though I wouldn't
behave just as well for Daddy as I used to for dear mother!

"Only I haven't really behaved very well to-day," she went on,
reviewing the matter to herself.  "I don't care!  Yes, I do too!
No matter what Arlo Weeks, Junior, did, I oughtn't to have fought
him on the street like that.  Oh, dear!" mused the girl, "I don't
know whether I am sorry I hit Arlo Junior or am sorry that I'm
not sorry.  It's awfully confusing."

She choked back a sob, dashed the tears from her eyes, and
suddenly saw that the hazy object she had been looking at for the
past minute was really a human figure squatting on the side porch
steps of the Day's cottage.

"Why! who can that be?" thought Janice Day, staring with all her
might at the odd-looking creature perched thus on the steps, with
a bulging old-fashioned black oilcloth bag beside her.

It was a woman in a cheap, homemade calico dress, and with rows
upon rows of flounces on the skirt.  She sat on the
next-to-the-top step of the porch while her shoes were planted
flat-footed on the walk.  She was very short-waisted, while her
limbs, accentuated by the model of the flounced skirt seemed
enormously long.

Indeed, she looked like the halves of two people mysteriously
glued together.  Her nether limbs without doubt belonged to a
giantess; her body although broad and sturdy, was almost
dwarflike.  Her arms were very short.

Above this strange figure was a fat, baby-like face, with
staring, light-blue eyes and whisps of straw-colored hair laid
flat to her, head under a close fitting hat.

"It's another one," groaned Janice, her heart sinking. "I know
she must be from the intelligence office, because--well--she
looks so unintelligent, I
 guess!"

Janice opened the gate and approached the ungainly woman
doubtfully.  Surely daddy could not have seen her before hiring
this very peculiar-looking person.  He must have accepted her
services over the telephone, and "sight, unseen."

The newly hired girl wreathed her flabby face in a vacuous smile.
She bobbed up from her seat, bringing the oilcloth bag with her,
and towering over Janice Day in a most startling manner.

"How-de-do!  I guess you are after bein' Mr. Day's little girl,
heh?"

The voice from the giantess made Janice jump.  It was high and
squealing, like a bat's voice; and some people's ears are not
attuned to the bat's cry and cannot hear it at all.

"Ye-es.  I am Janice Day," admitted the girl.

"Well," squealed the newcomer, "I'm the lady your paw sent up to
do the work.  You're a right pretty little girl, ain't you?"

Janice ignored this bit of flattery as she mounted the steps and
drew forth the door key.

"What is your name, please?" she asked the woman.

"Why, I'll tell you," said the other in a most confidential tone,
blundering up the steps after Janice and stooping to get her lips
near the girl's ear.  "My real name is Mrs. Bridget Burns; but my
friends all call me Delia.  I don't like 'Bridget.' Would you
mind callin' me Delia, or else Mrs. Burns, heh?"

"I think father would prefer to call you by your first name,"
Janice said, trying not to show her surprise and amusement.  "We
will call you Delia if that pleases you."

"You're a real nice little girl, I can see that," said Delia,
with a huge sigh of satisfaction, following Janice, bag and all,
into the house.

Janice led the way up the back stairs to the girl's room.  It was
just as Olga had left it--as untidy and "mussed up" as ever a
room was.

Delia uttered a high, nasal ejaculation.  "I guess your last girl
wasn't very clean," she said.  "Who was she?"

"She was a Swede," Janice replied wearily.

"Heh! Them Swedes!" sniffed Delia, voicing a pronounced national
prejudice.

"She left in a hurry," Janice explained.  "She--she got mad.  One
of the neighbor's boys played a trick on her and she left."

"Ye don't be tellin' me?  Couldn't she spank the boy? Sure, 'tis
no sinse them foreigners has."

"I hope you will not take offense so easily," Janice rejoined.
"Here is clean linen for your bed.  We send the flat work to the
laundry.  There is a broom and carpet sweeper in the storeroom,
and plenty of dust cloths.  You would better put your own room in
order first.  Then you can come down and I will show you about
getting dinner."

"Sure, you is very young to be so knowin' about housework.  Is
your mother dead?"

"Yes."

"I didn't know but she'd gone off and left you and your

paw," observed this strange creature, "So many of them be's doin'
that now."

"Oh!" gasped the girl.

"So that's why your paw did the hirin' through Murphy's Agency!
Well, I like to work where there's no lady boss," said Delia.
"You and me is goin' to get on fine."

Janice wondered if that were so.  In no very enthusiastic frame
of mind, she descended the stairs to put away her hat and coat
and to place her books on the table in the living room.



CHAPTER IV. MORE TROUBLES THAN ONE

Janice dreaded to have this new houseworker look into  that back
kitchen and see its condition.  What Olga had  done with the soft
coal ammunition was enough to make  Delia depart before she had
even taken up her new  duties.

Yet Janice shrank from cleaning the room herself.  She had a lot
of home work to do for school, and she would have to show the new
girl, too, just where everything was kept and what was expected
of her.

Fortunately the dinner-getting would be a simple matter.  There
was a roast already prepared for the oven, potatoes and another
vegetable, and a salad.  The latter were in the house.  Olga had
been no dessert maker, but there were canned pears in the
refrigerator and some baker's cake (Daddy called it "sweetened
sawdust") in the cupboard.

The girl would have to be told about these things. Fortunately
they had not begun to use the summer kitchen as yet.  It was true
that Olga had only the day before cleaned the place, as well as
she knew how, in preparation for the approaching warm weather.

But to put things to rights in that room again, and to remove all
traces of the bombardment of the cats, would take half a day or
more.  And Janice Day shrank from the use of the scrubbing brush
and strong soda-water.

She decided that the back kitchen could not be cleaned this
afternoon.  She put on her bungalow apron and took the salad from
the icebox where it had lain on the ice in a cheesecloth bag.
She usually prepared the salad herself, for daddy was fond of it
and most of the itinerant help they had had considered "grass
only fit for horses and cows."

She was decanting the oil, drop by drop, into the salad dressing
when Delia appeared in the kitchen.  There was one good point
about the giantess; her face and hands looked as though they were
familiar with soap and water.  She had removed the ruffled
monstrosity and had put on a more simple frock.  It did not serve
to make her look less ungainly; but nevertheless it, likewise,
was clean.

"Are you doing the cooking?" asked the new incumbent, her weak,
squeaky voice quite above high C.  "An' do I help you?"

"I am fixing the salad because my father likes it prepared in a
certain way.  I will show you what, else there is to do, Delia."

Janice spoke in rather a grown-up way because she had had so much
experience with a class of houseworkers only too willing to take
advantage of her youth and inexperience.

"Isn't that nice!"  sighed Delia, with her rather, foolish smile.

Janice wondered whether the woman was making fun of her, or if
she was quite as silly as she appeared.  But if Delia would only
do the work and do it half-way right, Janice told herself she did
not care if Delia was actually an idiot.  At least the new girl
seemed good-natured.

And she was not all thumbs!  But Janice stuffed the end of a
kitchen towel into her mouth more than once to stifle her giggles
when she chanced to think Of how daddy would look when he caught
his first glimpse of the gigantic Delia.

When the vegetables were peeled and on the stove, and the roast
was cooking in the covered roaster, Janice led Delia through the
lower part of the house.  She tried to explain what there was to
do on the morrow when Delia would be alone all day, with daddy at
business and herself at school.

"Yes, ma'am," said Delia, after each item was explained.  "And
then what do I do?"

Her vacant face advertised to all beholders that she promptly
forgot what she was told.  One particular formula for work drove
the previously explained item immediately out of Delia's head.

"Isn't it a nice house?" was her final whistling comment as they
came back to the kitchen.  "And where does this door lead?"

She opened the back kitchen door.  She stared at the
coal-littered floor, at the streaked and smutted walls, at the
overturned chairs and a broken flower-pot or two that had come to
ruin during the bombardment.

"Sure! whativer struck the place?" asked Delia in her high,
squeaking voice.  "What happened?"

Janice told her.  Delia shook her head and slowly closed the
door--slowly but firmly.  "If folks will hire them Swedes, 'tis
all they can expect," was her comment.

There was a finality to this that was uncanny.  Janice became
sure, right then and there, that Mrs. Bridget Burns would never
clear up the wreck Olga Cedarstrom had made of the back kitchen.
The girl wished with all her heart that she had boxed Arlo
Junior's ears harder.

Miss Peckham, her sharp chin hung upon the top rail of the
boundary fence, called Janice just before daddy came home.  As
the Day house was on the corner of Love Street, Miss Peckham was
the nearest neighbor.

She was a weazened little woman, with very sharp black eyes, who
had assumed the censorship of the neighborhood years before.
Living alone with her cats and Ambrose, her parrot, Miss Peckham
rigidly adhered to the harshest precepts of spinsterhood.

Even Janice could understand that Miss Peckham considered daddy
not at all fit to bring up, or have the sole care of, a daughter,
and that Mr. Broxton Day was not to be altogether trusted.

Miss Peckham's nature overflowed with tenderness toward animals,
and it was regarding one of her pets she now called to Janice
about.

"You haven't seen him, have you, Janice?  You haven't seen my
Sam?"

"Your Sam?" murmured Janice, rather non-plussed for the moment.
"You don't mean the dog you bought of the butcher, do you, Miss
Peckham?"

"No, indeed.  That's Cicero.  But Sam, the cat.  He's got black
and yellow on him, Janice.  You've seen him, I know."

And suddenly Janice remembered that she had seen him. He had been
one of those cats tolled into the back kitchen by Arlo Junior.
Worse than all, Sam was the cat Olga Cedarstrom had hurt with a
lump of coal.  She remembered that he was the last to escape when
she opened the kitchen door, dragging his injured leg behind him.

How could Janice tell her of this awful thing that had happened
to Sam?  The poor cat had probably dragged himself off into some
secret place to lick his wounds --to die, perhaps.

"You've seen him! I know you have, Janice Day," cried the shrewd
maiden lady.  "What have you done to poor Sam?"

"Why, Miss Peckham!  I haven't done a thing to him," declared
Janice

Miss Peckham, however, had read the girl's face aright. She saw
that Janice knew something about the missing cat.

"You tell me what you know!" she stormed, her clawlike hands
shaking the top rail of the fence.  "I wouldn't trust none of you
young ones in this neighborhood.  You are always up to some
capers."

"But really, honestly, I haven't done a thing to your Sam,"
Janice said, shrinking from telling all she knew about the
injured animal.

"You know where he is?" Miss Peckham accused.

"Oh, I don't, either."

"When did you see him last?" probed the other, sharply.

"This--this morning."

"What time this morning?"
 "Before breakfast.  Early," gasped Janice, wondering what she
would say next.

"Humph! Something funny about the way you answer," said the
suspicious spinster.  "where was Sam when you saw him that
early?"

"Running across our back yard," Janice gasped, telling the exact
truth--but no more.

"Ha!" exploded the other, "What made him run?"

After all, Janice Day did not want to "tell on" Arlo Junior.
Arlo Junior was the child of all others in the neighborhood whom
Miss Peckham carried on guerrilla warfare with.  She had
threatened to go to the police station and have Arlo Junior
locked up the very next time he crossed her path in a mischievous
way.

Janice knew that Miss Peckham was a very active member of the
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and if she knew
that Arlo Junior had been in any way connected with Sam's injury,
she would be all the more bitter toward the young rascal.

And really, after all, it was Olga Cedarstrom who had hurt the
cat.  But to tell Miss Peckham that, and how it all came about,
would do little to pacify the spinster.  So Janice kept silent.
It seemed to her that she had gone about as far in the path of
deceit as she could go.

"You saw him running; what made him run?" repeated Miss Peckham.

"He--he was frightened, I guess, Miss Peckham.  There were other
cats.  It was early this morning before anybody else was up
around here.  The cats all ran out of our yard."

"And I warrant you'd done something to make 'em run," declared
the tart-tongued neighbor.  "Oh, I know all you young ones around
here.  You ain't no better than the rest of 'em, Janice Day."

"Oh, Miss Peckham!" murmured the girl.

"And if I find out that you done something outrageous to those
cats--to my Sam, 'specially--it'll be the sorriest day of your
life.  Now, you see if 'tisn't!"

She turned and flounced into her house.  Janice came slowly back
to the kitchen door where she found the new houseworker frankly
listening.

"Guess she's a sharper, ain't she?" squeaked the woman. "Well, I
won't tell her 'bout the cats in the back kitchen.  But o'
course, if folks will hire them  Swede--"



CHAPTER V. FATHER AND DAUGHTER

It did seem to Janice Day at this time as though trouble after
trouble was being heaped upon her young shoulders.  Miss Peckham
and her search for her Sam was, of course, a small matter
compared to the loss of the treasure-box and the heirlooms in it.

Janice waited eagerly for daddy to come home and report on this
matter; and his report, when he did come, sunk Janice's heart
fathoms deep in an ocean of despair.

"Oh, Daddy, it can't be!" she cried, sobbing against his coat
sleeve in the hall.  "Olga wouldn't be so wicked!  How could
she?"

"It is pretty sure that she has left town and has left no address
behind her.  It looks as though she had deliberately tried to
efface herself from the community," said Mr. Broxton Day slowly.
"Are you sure, Janice, that the box cannot be found?"

"Oh, Daddy! I've looked everywhere.  Dear Mamma's picture that I
loved so much!  And her, diary I"

"More than that, daughter, more than that," said her father, his
own voice breaking.  "I should have been more careful about
allowing you to take the box.  There was something else--"

"Oh, Daddy! what?  I didn't know there was a secret compartment
in the treasure-box," she added wonderingly.

"You would scarcely understand, my dear," he told her with a
heavy sigh.  "It was but a shallow place.  There were letters in
it--letters which I treasured above everything else in the box.
Letters your Mamma wrote me before you were born, when I was away
from home and she thought she might never see me again.  We were
young, then, my dear; and we loved each other very much."

His voice trailed away into silence.  The girl, young as she was,
was awed by his grief.  She suddenly realized that her own sorrow
over the lost treasure-box was shallow indeed beside her father's
despair.

It was some time later that she told him just how well she had
searched for the missing  box.  She narrated, too, all the
particulars of the early morning cat episode and the trouble
brought about by the mischief-loving Arlo Junior, which she had
been unable to tell him earlier in the day.

"It would seem, then," Mr. Day observed, not unamused by the
account of the neighbors' boy's practical joke, "that if Olga
took the box it was on the spur of the moment.  She certainly had
not planned to leave us, but lost her temper and went because she
was in a rage."

"Yes, sir.  I suppose so," admitted Janice.  "And she was mad at
me, too.  I could see she thought I had shut the cats in the back
kitchen."

"Yet Olga's going," said Mr. Broxton Day, still thoughtfully,
"was skillfully planned--just as though she had everything
arranged for it before the row this morning.  Don't just
understand that."

"Oh, Daddy!  You don't suppose Olga was one of those awful crooks
we read of in the papers?"

Mr. Broxton threw back his head and laughed in his very heartiest
fashion.

"Whatever else she was," he said, finally, "I don't think she was
a lady buccaneer.  Olga Cedarstrom appeared to be almost as
stupid a person as I ever saw. But she was bad tempered--no doubt
of that."

"Yes, Daddy, her disposition was not very sweet,"

admitted Janice, with a sigh.

"But it looks queer," her father pursued.  "Sending for an
out-of-town taxi, and all I say, daughter which way did it
drive?"

"The taxicab?"

"Yes."

"Toward town, Daddy.  Right along Knight Street."

"Humph! might have gone right through town and taken the Napsburg
pike.  Yet, they could have turned off at Joyce Street and got
into the Dover pike.  Or gone to Clewitt, or Preston.  Oh, well,"
finished Broxton Day, "that cab could have come from, and
returned to, any one of a dozen places within a few miles of
Greensboro."

"But how do you know she was not driven right to the railroad
station, as long as you are sure she did not go to Pickletown?"

"I found out," said Mr. Day, quietly, that there isn't a Swede in
town who drives a taxi.  And you say the driver was a Swede, and
that it was a regular taxicab."

"Oh, yes, Daddy.  He was one of her own kind of folks. I heard
them talking together when he went up for her trunk.  I wish I
had taken the number of that cab!" cried Janice woefully.

"Never mind.  Don't blame yourself too harshly, girly."

"But I do blame myself, Daddy," she cried, wiping her eyes.
"Those dear pictures and the diary!  And most of all mother's
miniature!  Why, Daddy Day!  I'd give a million dollars rather
than have lost the treasure-box."

"No use crying over the spilled milk," he said, reflectively.
"It does seem to me as though Olga was not just the sort of
person who would steal--I say! You told me she telephoned for the
taxi?'

 "Yes.  At least, she telephoned and talked to somebody over the
'phone in Swedish."

"You don't say!" repeated Mr. Day thoughtfully using a Yankeeism
that betrayed his birthplace if nothing else did, although he had
long since come from New England to the Middle West.  "Then in
all probability she telephoned to a friend, and the friend sent
the taxicab.  I wonder if that Willie Sangreen is in this?

"I tell you!"  he exclaimed finally.  "In the morning I will go
and see the superintendent of our telephone exchange personally.
Perhaps, when I explain the case, he will tell me the number Olga
called up."

"Oh, Daddy! can you do that?"

"There is a record made of every call," he told her. "Now don't
worry more than you can help, Janice.  We'll do something about
it.  Never fear."

His encouraging "do something" was bound to cheer his little
daughter.  She hurried away to see if dinner was not ready, and
caught Delia frankly listening at the door.

"Why, Delia, why didn't you knock or speak?" Janice asked.

But Delia was absolutely unruffled.  She drawled:

"I didn't know but you wanted to talk to your Paw some more, and
the dinner could wait."

When, a little later, they were seated at table and Delia
appeared with the first hot dishes, it must be confessed that her
appearance somewhat startled Mr. Broxton Day.

Their anxiety about the lost treasure-box had precluded his
having asked any questions regarding the new houseworker; her
appearance was as startling as though she had come straight from
a sideshow.

Janice put her napkin to her lips to hide their trembling.  But
her eyes danced.  Daddy's amazement was quickly smothered.  He
was silent, however, until Delia was out of the room again.

"What do you think of her, Daddy?" giggled the little girl.

"I certainly did not see her before hiring her.  In fact, I did
my business over the phone with the manager of the intelligence
office.  I gathered from him that

she was a woman of middle age, and "settled," whatever that may
mean.  If it means that she can work and stay settled here--  But
what a queer looking creature!  How does she seem to take hold,
Janice?  Does she seem intelligent?"

"I haven't made up my mind yet," murmured his little daughter.
"She doesn't look as though she knew anything at all.  But maybe
she does.  You said yourself that we couldn't have anybody worse
than Olga."

"I don't know about that," he retorted.  "I may have to take that
back.  Sh!  Here she comes again."

Aside from the fact that she served cold plates for the roast and
vegetables, and hot ones for the salad; that from her great
height she was almost certain to spill food on the table before
she got a dish set down before them; and that she kept bouncing
in and out of the dining room to ask them if they were ready for
dessert; she managed to get through the meal without making Mr.
Day and Janice any great discomfort.

In the living room, later, when Mr. Day was in his comfortable
chair and Janice had her school books spread out upon the table
under the reading lamp, the father said softly:

"Well, my dear, it is not the sort of life I hoped we would lead
when we built this house.  Your dear mother was such a wonderful
housekeeper, and could manage so well.  I never had a thought or
a care about the housekeeping affairs.  But now--"

"I know, Daddy," broke in Janice earnestly.  "If only I didn't
have to go to school!"

"That is something that cannot even be discussed," he rejoined,
smiling at her gravely.  "As I told you last night, my dear, what
your mother and I planned regarding your education must be
carried through if possible."

"But college is a long way ahead," said Janice wistfully.  "And
meanwhile you are not comfortable and the house is going to rack
and ruin, just as Miss Peckham says."

"Did the old girl say that?" he wanted to know, with rather a
rueful smile on his lips.

 "Yes.  She was in here the other day and she is so nosey.  She
was bound to go all through house, although I did not want her
to.  I know it doesn't look spick and span as it should--"

"That is not your fault, Janice," her father said quickly.
"Don't let it worry you.  You must stick to your books.  And if
we can get nobody better than this woman--or Olga--to help, we
must expect things to be in rather bad shape about the house.

"I suppose there are good housekeepers for  hire--somewhere.
They certainly do not seem to be in Greensboro.  And, then, I
cannot afford to pay a very high wage.  You see, my dear, we are
not rich."

"No, Daddy," Janice agreed.  "I quite know that.  But we have
enough, and to spare, I am sure."

"So far we have managed to pull along," he said smiling at her
quizzically.  "And perhaps we shall be even better off in time.
I am up to my neck, as the boys say, in an investment in Mexican
mines.  I was able to get into it before your dear mother died,
and she quite approved.  Several Greensboro men have invested in
the same string of mines and there is ore being got out--ore  of
good quality.

"But thus far there have been no dividends.  Rather, we have had
to put in more money for improvements.  But when once we get
started producing, you and I may have something like riches."

"Oh, won't that be nice, Daddy!" she exclaimed, wide-eyed and
red-cheeked in her excitement.  "To be really rich!"

"Well, we shall be able to engage somebody better fitted perhaps
for the position of housekeeper," sighed Mr. Day, turning to his
newspaper again.

"That's all right, Daddy," she said.  "But meanwhile I am going
to do all I can to make things go smoother. Just as you said last
night, it can only be brought about by somebody's doing
something.  I'll do something, you see if I don't."

She made this declaration cheerfully.  But when she closed her
books, kissed daddy, and went up to bed, her countenance was
overcast with an expression far from cheerful.

Only the evening before she had sat here and looked her treasures
over.  The diary which mother had kept when she was a little
girl--all the innocent little secrets she had written on the
pages which Janice so delighted to read!

And the lovely miniature, with mother in the very dress she wore
the evening she and Broxton Day were betrothed.  Janice knew all
about that.  Her mother had talked freely of her courtship and of
what a splendid young man daddy had appeared to be in her eyes.

Her mother's frequently expressed admiration for the young man
who came from New England to win his fortune in the Middle West
was doubtless the foundation of Janice Day's unusual fondness for
her father.

That by her carelessness she should have brought about the loss
of the treasure-box and those things which both she and daddy
considered of such personal value, was the thought that weighed
most heavily on the girl's heart.

Without turning on her light, she went to the window and looked
out into the soft spring darkness!  Daddy's letters!  Mother's
miniature!  The treasured old diary that Janice so loved!

Her troubled little heart overflowed.  She flung herself down
with her face hidden in her arms folded upon the window sill,
while ungovernable sobs shook her body.

The loss of the treasure-box was a disaster for, which she could
not easily forgive herself.



CHAPTER VI. THE CARRINGFORDS

Janice Day was a friendly little soul; but she was not a girl who
made those close friendships that so many girls make during their
schooldays.  There was no one girl from whom she was almost
inseparable.

Janice was just as good friends with Amy Carringford as she was
with Stella Latham; only Amy had been attending the grammar
school a much shorter time than had the farmer's daughter.

Now circumstances attending Stella's proposed birthday party
caused Janice to become much better acquainted with Amy
Carringford.  In seeking to do something for Stella, Janice was
determined to do something for Amy.

The Carringford family had taken up their residence during the
winter in Mullen Lane; and it must be confessed that Mullen Lane
was not considered an aristocratic part of the town.  Of course,
poor people have to live where living is cheap; but it was said
that Mrs. Carringford, who was a widow, had bought the little
cottage--not much better than a hut--in which she and her little
family had taken up their dwelling.

Why people like the Carringford, manifestly well bred and
intelligent, had chosen Mullen Lane to live in puzzled not only
the busybodies, like Miss Peckham, of this part of Greensboro,
but amazed other people as well.

Wherever Mrs. Carringford appeared--at church, Or in the
neighborhood stores on Knight and Cassandra  Streets--people saw
that she was a well bred woman, though plainly, even shabbily,
dressed.

There were several children besides Amy and the
Unfortunately-named Gumswith, and they dressed poorly, too.  But
even if Gummy's trousers were patched at the knees, as Stella
Latham had pointed out, they were patched neatly, and his linen
was fresh.

Of course, nobody called on Mrs. Carringford; at least, almost
nobody.  The rickety little cottage in Mullen Lane did not
attract callers by its outward appearance, that was sure.  That
it was a shelter for a family that had been sorely tried by fate,
none of the neighbors knew.

It was Janice Day, when she made a frank attempt to know Amy
Carringford better, who began first to learn particulars about
the Carringford family.  There was not much queer or mysterious
about them; merely they were people who failed to advertise their
private affairs to the community at large.

Janice had gained Stella Latham's promise that she would not tell
the secret of the party dress, if Amy should consent to borrow
it, before she sounded Amy as to whether she was going to accept
the invitation to

the party or not.  According to Stella, who was really very silly
about such things, the birthday party was to be a very "dressy"
affair.  Stella talked about this phase of it in season and out.

First of all, Janice demanded that one of the highly ornate
invitations Stella's mother had had printed in the Greensboro
Bugle printing office should be sent to Amy.  There should be no
hedging, Janice determined, after that.  Amy was to be asked like
the other girls and boys of their grade.

"But if she hasn't got a decent dress?" murmured Stella, when she
was mailing the invitation to Amy.

"I told you I'd see that she did have a party dress," Janice said
sharply.  "I can't agree to find whole trousers for Gummy," and
she giggled; "so you needn't invite him if you don't want to.
But Amy will be all right."

"Maybe she will be too proud to wear your dress, Janice Day!"
exclaimed Stella.

"Then she won't come," rejoined Janice.  "But you are not to tell
a soul that the dress is mine, if she does wear it."

"We-ell," sighed Stella, somewhat relieved.

The farmer's daughter knew that there would be much comment if
she left Amy off the invitation list.  She was glad to leave the
matter in Janice Day's hands. And she did not remark again, at
least, not openly, upon Janice being "so sly."

Without being at all sly, Janice did go about doing something for
Amy Carringford with considerable shrewdness.  She had never
walked home with Amy from school.  She did not like the purlieus
of Mullen Lane. But this afternoon she attached herself to Amy
with all the power of adherence of a mollusk, and they were
chattering too fast to stop abruptly when they came to the comer
of Knight Street, where usually Janice turned off.

Mullen Lane touched Love Street at its upper end, so Janice could
go all the way to the Carringford house without going much out of
her way.  She went on with Amy, swinging her books; and at first
Amy did not seem to notice that Janice was keeping with her right
into the muddy, littered lane on which she lived.

"Why, Janice!" said Amy, finally, "you are away out of your way."

"Oh, I can go up the lane to Love Street," returned Janice
carelessly, and just as though she were used to doing that.

Amy, who was a pretty, blonde girl, gazed at her companion rather
curiously; but Janice was quite calm.

"That is the house where I live," said Amy, in a changed tone, as
they came in sight of the cottage.

"Oh, yes," replied Janice.

Aside from the fact that the house needed paint and new window
shutters, and a new roof, and new planks for the piazza, and
numerous other things, it was not such a bad looking house.
Janice noticed something at first glance: it was only things that
poor people could not get or that a boy could not tinker that was
needed about the Carringford house to make it neat and
comfortable.

The fences were on the line, had been braced, and there were no
pickets missing.  The gates hung true.  The walks were neatly
kept and there were brilliant flower beds in front, for flower
seeds cost little.  What the Carringford could do to make the
place homelike without spending money, had certainly been done.

"It's an awful place to live," ventured Amy, still gazing
sidewise at Janice.

"Oh," said the latter brightly, "you don't mean that! You are all
together and are all well."

"Yes, there are a lot of us." And Amy said it with a sigh.  "It
seems as though there were an awful lot of children, now that
father's dead."

"Did you lose your father recently--just as I did my mother?"
asked Janice softly.

"Year and a half ago.  That is why we came here, There was some
insurance money.  Somebody persuaded mother to buy a home for us
with it.  I don't know whether it was good advice or not; but she
bought this place because it was cheap.  And she could not pay
for it all, at that; so I don't know but we're likely to lose the
money she put into it, and the old shack, too."

Amy spoke rather bitterly.  Janice, with natural tact, thought
this was no time to probe deeper into the financial affairs of
the Carringfords.  She saw Gummy, who was a year older than Amy,
in the yard.  He had got home from school first, and he stared
when he saw Janice.

"Hullo, Gummy!" the latter called to the boy with the patched
trousers.  "What are you doing there?  Are you laying sod for a
border to that garden-bed?"

"No.  I'm trimming an opera cloak with green ermine," said the
boy, but grinning.  "What are you doing around here in Dirty-face
Lane?"

"Oh, Gummy!" exclaimed Amy.

"What a name to call the street!" objected Janice.

"Well, that's what it is," returned the boy, continuing to pound
the sod into place.  "Nobody in this street ever washes his
face."

"Why Gummy Carringford!" exclaimed his sister again.

"I'm sure Amy washes her face whether you do or not," chuckled
Janice.

"Oh, me!" sniffed the boy, but his eyes still twinkling.  "I'm
always 'gummy'!"

Janice's laughter was a silver peal that brought three or four
younger Carringfords, including the twins, to the side door.
They peered out at their sister and the girl with her, but were
bashful.

"What a jolly lot of little ones!" sighed Janice. "You know, Amy,
I'm all alone.  I haven't any brothers or sisters."

"Don't you want to adopt me?" asked Gummy, who overheard her.

"I certainly would have to change your name," declared Janice.

"No," and he shook his head, his freckled face becoming grave.
"Got to stick to the old name--just like gum sticks."

"Oh, my dear, is that you?" cried Mrs. Carringford, coming to the
door, her brown face flushing pink.  "And one of your
schoolmates?"

She came out on the porch.  She had a very pleasant smile, Janice
thought, and her brown eyes were as bright as a woodpecker's.

"This is Janice Day.  She's in my class, Mother," said Amy,
rather hesitatingly, it must be confessed.

"Yes, I know her name," said Mrs. Carringford, and now Janice was
near enough to take the hand of Amy's mother.  "How do you do, my
dear? I have seen you before.  I am always glad to meet Amy's
school friends."

Had it not been for the warmth of the good woman's greeting
Janice would have felt that she was unwelcome at the little
cottage on Mullen Lane.  Amy seemed to hang back, and not invite
her schoolmate into the house.

"Here is something the postman brought you, Amy," her mother went
on briskly.

She reached inside the door to a shelf and brought forth an
object that Janice recognized.  It was the big white envelope
containing the invitation to Stella Latham's party.

"Hi! I know what that is," cried Gummy, rising to look at the
envelope.  "Lots of the fellows got 'em.  That Latham girl that
lives out on the Dover pike is going to have a party.  Crickey!
I didn't suppose she would invite us."

"She hasn't invited you I guess," his mother told him. "It is
addressed to your sister."

"Oh!  I see."

Amy had flushed brightly, and her eyes sparkled.  She was tearing
open the envelope eagerly.

"Oh!" she sighed, "I didn't expect this.  Did you get yours,
Janice?"

"Yes, Stella asked me.  But she didn't send out: all the
invitations at once," said Janice slowly,

"You'll go of course, won't you?"

"Why--"

Then suddenly Amy's voice stopped.  She looked at her mother.
The glow went out of her face.  She let one of the smaller
children take the invitation out of her hand.

"I don't know," she said slowly.  "I'll have to see."

"Won't you come in, Janice?" asked Mrs. Carringford, seeking to
cover her daughter's embarrassment.

"I will for a minute, thank you," was Janice Day's smiling reply.
"You know, I like Amy, Mrs. Carringford, and I have never been to
her house before, and she has never been to mine."

Her speech helped to cover her friend's hesitation.  Amy tripped
in behind Janice and suddenly gave her a hearty squeeze.

"She's an awfully nice girl, Mumsy!" she said to her mother.

Janice laughed.  But her bright eyes were taking in much besides
the smiling expression on her friends' faces.  The Carringford
kitchen was like wax.  Mrs. Carringford had been washing in one
comer of the room, and there was a boiler drying behind the
stove.  But there was nothing sloppy or sudsy about the room.
The woman had whisked off the big apron she had worn when Janice
entered, and now the latter saw that her work dress was spotless.

"Oh, dear me!" thought Janice, "how nice it would be if our
kitchen--and our whole house--were like this. How delighted Daddy
would be."

But there was something else she did not at first see. She had to
get acquainted with all the younger Carringfords.  She must talk
with Mrs. Carringford. Gummy came in after washing his hands and
rubbing his shoes clean on the doormat to talk to the caller.
Then Amy carried Janice off upstairs to her own tiny room under
the eaves.

There was no carpet on the stairs.  The matting on the floor of
Amy's room was much worn.  There was nothing really pretty in the
room.  Janice suddenly realized that this spelled "poverty."

Yet it was cheerful and speckless, and there were pictures of a
kind, and little home-made ornaments and a few books.

The window curtains were of the cheapest, but they were looped
back gracefully.  There was a workbox and stand that Gummy had
made for Amy, for the brother was handy with tools.

Altogether there was something about the room, and about the ugly
little house as well, that Janice Day realized she did not have
at home.  She had had it once; but it was not present now in the
Day house.  In the Carringford dwelling the magic wand of a true
homemaker had touched it all.

The two girls chatted for almost an hour.  It was mostly about
school matters and their friends and the teachers.  Amy talked,
too, about friends in Napsburg, where the Carringfords had lived
before moving to Greensboro.  Janice was adroit in keeping the
conversation on rather general topics, and did not allow the
question of Stella's party to come to the fore and never once did
she speak of what any of the girls would wear on that occasion.

The time to leave came, and then Janice felt she should enter the
wedge which would afterwards gain for her the desired end.

"You'll go to Stella's party, won't you?" asked Janice as she
prepared to go home.

"Oh, I don't know.  I'll see,"  Amy hurriedly said.

"Of course you will go," Janice declared firmly.  "I want you to
go with me.  I sha'n't feel like going at all if you stay away,
Amy."

They kissed each other on the stairway, and then Janice ran home,
swinging her books.  She thought the Carringford were very
pleasant people.  But there were several mysteries about them.
First of all she wanted to know how Gummy came to have such an
awful, awful name!



CHAPTER VII. ARLO JUNIOR AGAIN

Just as Janice was running in at the Love Street gate she was
halted by Arlo Junior.  Junior kept well out of the way at first,
but his tone was confident well as ameliorating.

"Aw, I say, Janice?' he begged, "you ain't mad at me, are you?"

"Why shouldn't I be?" she demanded, her face flushing and the
hazel eyes sparking in an indignant way.

"Well, I mean--  Well, I hope you ain't," stammered Arlo Junior,
unable entirely to smother a grin, and yet plainly anxious to
pacify Janice.  "You see, Janice, my mother was coming up from
downtown and she Saw you whacking me the other day."

"Oh!"

"Yes, she saw you," said Junior, nodding.  "So I had to tell her
something of what made you do it."

"Indeed?" demanded Janice scornfully.  "And what did you tell
her?"

"I told her about the cats.  Anyway, I told her left your back
kitchen door open and that the cats got in there and fought.  Oh,
Je-mi-ma, how they did fight! didn't they?  I heard 'em after I
got back into the house that morning," and Junior began to
giggle.

"They didn't fight," said Janice shortly.  "What you heard was
Olga pitching coal at 'em.  And then she up and left us.  We had
to get another girl.  And this new girl won't clean up the mess
in the back kitchen. That's what you did Arlo Weeks and I've got
to clean up that room because of you."

"Oh, Je-mi-ma!" gasped Junior, giggling no more now. "Is that how
Miss Peckham's Sam-cat got hurt?"

"What do you know about that?" demanded Janice quickly.

"Miss Peckham's been all over the neighborhood talking about it.
She found the cat with a broken leg.  Got a veterinary.  Put it
in a plaster cast.  Did you ever?"

"Well!" murmured Janice.

"I tell you what; don't let's say anything about it," begged
Junior eagerly.  "I tell you what I'll do.  I'll come over
Saturday and help you clean up all the mess the cats and the girl
made.  But don't say a word."

"Well," said Janice again.

"Now you promise, Janice," wheedled Junior.  "If my mother learns
all about the cat business, there will be a big row.  And all I
did--really--was to open that back kitchen door and then shut it
again after the cats got inside."

"They would never have gone in if you hadn't thrown the catnip in
there," declared Janice warmly.  "You know that very well,
Junior."

"Well, you won't say anything about it, will you, Janice, if I
come and clean up the kitchen?"

"Well," said Janice for a third time, "let's see you do it.  I
won't promise until the kitchen is cleaned."

But Arlo Junior went off with a grin on his face. He knew Janice
would not tell if he kept his share of the agreement.

Janice was anxious to know how Delia, the new girl, was getting
on with the housework.  There was a strong smell of scorching
vegetables the moment Janice opened the back door.  The kitchen
was empty, but the pots on the stove foretold the fact that
dinner was in preparation at least two hours before it was
necessary.

And the vegetables!  Janice ran to save them.  There was a
roaring fire under them; but it was the water that had boiled
over, after all.  Delia knew nothing, it was evident, about
simmering vegetables.  Boiling them furiously was her way.

"Oh, dear," sighed the girl, "I wonder if anything else can
happen to the Days!  There must be something the matter with me
or someone would sometime do something right in this house.
Daddy's dinner will not be fit to eat.

"That book on dietary that I got out of the library and tried to
read said that good cooking was most important.  I don't know,
for I guess I didn't understand much of the book--not even of
that part I read--but I do know that a well-cooked meal tastes
better than a dried-out one.  Oh, dear!"

Janice shoved the pots back on the stove, and shut off the drafts
so that the fire would die down.  She

wondered where Delia could be.  She had not seen her outside the
house.  She ran up the back stairs and looked in the girl's room
before she went to her own.

Delia was not upstairs.  Janice could not see that much had been
done in the way of housework--at least on the upper floor.  Then,
suddenly, she discovered where the new girl was.

From the living room came the loud drumming of the player piano.
The instrument had not been much in use since the death of
Janice's mother.  Somehow it seemed to both Janice and daddy that
they did not care to hear the piano that mother played so
frequently for them in the evening.

But the instrument was in use now--no mistaking it. There are
different ways of playing a mechanical piano. Delia's way was to
get all the noise out of it that was possible.

Janice ran downstairs in some vexation.  There was no particular
crime in the new girl's using the instrument, even without asking
permission.  Yet when there was so much to do about the house
and, as she saw plainly, there had been so little done, Janice
was vexed enough to give Delia a good talking to.

And then she hesitated with her hand on the knob of the
living-room door.  If she got Delia angry the woman might leave
as abruptly as Olga Cedarstrom had left. It was a thought
suggesting tragedy.  Janice waited to calm herself while the new
girl pumped away on the piano in a perfect anvil chorus.

Janice opened the door.  By the number of rolls spread out on the
top of the piano it was plain that Delia had played more music
than she had done housework.  The Garibaldi March came to a noisy
conclusion."

"Oh, my!" sighed Delia, in her squeaky voice, "ain't that
wonderful?"

"I should say it was," Janice said quickly. "Wonderful, indeed!"

"Oh!" shrieked Delia, flopping around on the bench and glaring at
Janice, one hand clutching at her bosom. "You scare't me."

"I think you ought to be scared.  Your vegetables were boiling
over, Delia."

"Oh, you came in so sudden!" gasped the big woman.   "I--I've got
a weak heart.  You oughtn't to scare me so. I can see mebbe that
Swede girl had a hard time here. There is more than cats is the
matter.  And that woman next door has been around to find out how
her cat's leg come broke."

If a fluffy little kitten, chasing a ball of yarn, had suddenly
turned around and attacked Janice, tooth and nail, the girl would
have been no more surprised.

"Why, Delia, I am sorry if I frightened you," Janice said.  "But,
you know, this is not your part of the house; and having put on
the vegetables, even if it is too early, I should think you would
remain in the kitchen and watch the pots."

The giantess arose and wiped an eye.  She sniveled into the
corner of her apron.

"Well, I didn't expect to be bossed by a child," she squeaked,
"when I came to work here.  I don't like it."

She flounced out of the room, leaving the piano open and the
rolls strewn about.

"Oh, dear me! Now I have done it!" groaned Janice Day. "What will
Daddy say if I have got Delia mad, and she goes?  It is just
awful!"

It really did seem to be a tragic situation.  Janice shook her
head and looked around the room.  Everything was just as it had
been the night before when they went to bed, save the opened
music cabinet and littered piano.

There were daddy's cigar ashes in the tray; a cup with tea
grounds in it as he had left it by his elbow.  The smoking stand
was not tidied nor the table.  There was dust on everything, and
a litter of torn papers on the rug.

Why had Delia not cleaned up the room, if she had so much time to
play the piano?

"I suppose if I ask her why she did not sweep and dust in here
she will tell me that she forgot whether I said to use the blue
dustcloth or the pink," groaned Janice.

One girl they had had actually gave that excuse as

logical when the work was neglected.  There was nothing laughable
in this situation--nothing at all!

"Oh, if I could only do something myself," murmured the young
girl.

After what had occurred she thought it best to say nothing more
to Delia at the time.  She hated to bother daddy again; but she
wondered what he would do if he had to confront such
circumstances at the bank.

"Of course, men's work is awfully important," Janice sighed; "but
what would daddy do if confronted by these little annoying things
that seem to be connected with the housework?"

There were a dozen things Janice would have preferred to do right
now.  But she could not have daddy come home and see such a
looking living-room.  She put on apron and cap and went to work
immediately to do what Delia should have done earlier in the day.

In an hour or so the room was swept, dusted, and well aired.  She
had returned the music rolls to the cabinet and closed the piano.
She wished there was a key to it so that Delia could not get at
it again, for if the new girl was musically inclined Janice
foresaw little housework done while she was at school and daddy
was at work.

Then Janice ventured into the kitchen.  Delia was not there.  The
vegetables were already cooked and were in the warmer where they
would gradually become dried out. Janice had done the marketing
on her way to school that morning, and had sent home a steak.
The steak was already cooked and was on a platter, likewise in
the warming oven.  And it was yet an hour to dinner time.

Janice opened the door to the stairway.  There was no sound from
that part of the house.  She went to the back door then, and
there was Delia talking earnestly with Miss Peckham over the
boundary fence.

The fact smote Janice like a physical blow.  She remembered what
Arlo Junior had said about the cat. Miss Peckham had found the
poor creature and had sent for the veterinary doctor to treat
him.

What Janice had already admitted regarding the cat, and what
Delia might tell Miss Peckham, would breed trouble just as sure
as the world!  What should she do?

She might have been unwise enough to have run out and interfered
in the back-fence conference.  But just then she heard daddy's
key in the front door and she ran to meet him.

"Oh, Daddy!  Did you find out anything more about Olga and where
she went?" the young girl cried as soon as she saw Broxton Day.

"I guess I have found nothing of importance," said her father,
shaking his head gravely.

"Oh, my dear!  Nothing?"

"Nothing that explains where the treasure-box went to, Janice,"
he said.  "Nor much that explains any other part of the mystery."

"But the telephone number?  Who did she call up?"

"Yes, I found out about that," he admitted, hanging up his coat
and hat.  "She called the public booths in the railroad station.
There was somebody waiting there to answer her.  And who do you
suppose it was?"

"I couldn't guess, Daddy."

"Willie Sangreen.  He is the young man who is checker at the
pickle works, and who I told you was Olga's steady company.  He
has gone away, and nobody seems to know where."

"They have gone away together!" cried Janice, in despair.

"She knew where he was going to be at that hour, sure enough; she
would probably have called him at the telephone in the railroad
station, anyway.  And the catastrophe," he smiled a little, "and
Olga's getting so angry, may have changed their plans completely.
Maybe he did meet her somewhere."

"Oh, Daddy! what kind of a looking man is Willie Sangreen?" cried
Janice.

"I really could not tell you."

"But maybe it was he who drove the taxicab?" suggested the girl.

"That might be worth looking up," said her father. "And yet, it
does not explain," he added, as they went into the living-room,
"why Olga should have stolen the treasure-box.  That seems to be
the greatest mystery."



CHAPTER VIII. THEY COME AND GO

"Daddy, do you mind if we have dinner a little early this
evening?" Janice asked.

"I have my appetite with me, if that is what you want to know,"
said Broxton Day, smiling down upon her.

"Well, Delia has it all ready, I think.  Too early, of course."

"Bring it on!" cried her father jovially.  "I can do it justice."

Janice wondered if he could.  Already the food, she knew, was
drying up in the warming oven.  She hurried out into the kitchen.
Delia had not come in from the backyard.  Janice shrank from
interfering with that back-fence conference; but she could not
see daddy's dinner spoiled.

"Come, Delia!" she called, opening the door.  "My father has come
home."

"Oh, my!  Is your paw arrived?" asked the giantess; coming
lingeringly away from the fence.

Janice saw Miss Peckham's snappy little eyes viewing her at the
kitchen door with no pleasant expression. She felt that something
was brewing--something that would not be pleasant.  But the
spinster retired without speaking to her.

"You have dinner ready very early, Delia," Janice said, as the
big woman lumbered into the kitchen.

"Didn't you just say your paw had come?" demanded Delia in her
squeaky voice.

"Yes.  But you have everything ready at five o'clock instead of
at six."

"Oh, yes.  I don't never believe in keepin' folks waitin' for
their victuals," said Delia, tossing her head.  "You ain't got
any call to be critical--no you ain't."

It was of no use!  Janice saw that as plainly as she saw
anything.  This giantess has a dwarf's brain.  As daddy said,
when he became particularly "Yankeefied," "she didn't know
beans!"  It would be quite useless to talk to her, or to expect
her to remember what she was told to do.

"I will do all I can to hide the rough corners from Daddy,"
Janice thought.  "I'll watch Delia before I go to school, and
come home from school to straighten her out just as quickly as I
can.  I just won't run to him with every little household
trouble."

But it was a wretched dinner.  It was so badly cooked that daddy
shook his head over it mournfully.

"It is a mystery to me how they manage to boil one potato to mush
while another is so hard you can't stick your fork into it," he
said.  "And no seasoning!  This steak now--or is it steak?"

"Now, Daddy!" said Janice, half laughing, yet feeling a good deal
like crying.

"Well, I wasn't quite sure," said her father.  "I wonder if these
cooks think that meat grows, all seasoned, on 'the critter'?
They must believe that. However, does she do the other work
well?"

"I--I don't know yet," murmured Janice.  "I'll help her all I
can, Daddy, and tell her how, if she'll let me."

"Well, maybe we can make something of her," said Broxton Day,
with his hearty and cheerful laugh. "Remember, Olga wanted to
boil fresh pork chops for our breakfast when she first came."

"I do wish we knew where Olga had gone to," said Janice. "It
doesn't seem as though that girl would deliberately steal.  I
can't believe it.  And if we don't get back that treasure-box and
what it contains, Daddy, my heart will--just--be--broken."

"There, there! Don't give way about it.  There is a chance yet of
finding Olga--and the box, too," said her father, trying to
comfort his little daughter.  "I will not give up the search.
Willie Sangreen will of course come back to his job, and he must
know what has become of Olga.  Those Swedes are very clannish
indeed, over there at Pickletown; but some of them bank with us,
and I am sure they will be on the lookout for the

girl.  Only, of course, I have not told them why I am so anxious
to find her."

They finished dinner, and Delia came in to clear away, with her
plump lips pouting and a general air about her of having been
much injured.  But Mr. Day, now so used to the vagaries of hired
help, made no comment.

He and Janice went into the living-room.  This, at least, was
homelike and clean.  He settled into his chair and picked up the
paper.  Just then there was a ring at the front doorbell.

Janice would have jumped up to answer it; but she heard the
giantess going through the hall.  There was a voice.  Janice
recognized it with a start.  Then the giantess approached the
living-room door, heavy footed, with a clatter of smaller
bootheels behind her.

Delia threw open the door as Mr. Day dropped his paper to look
up.  Her fat face was wreathed in a triumphant smile, and she
said:

"It's the nice lady from nex' door.  I guess she come to see your
paw about them cats."

Mr. Day looked puzzled.

Janice could have screamed as Miss Peckham marched in. Delia
apparently intended to stand in the doorway and enjoy whatever
there was to enjoy; but as Mr. Day rose from his seat to welcome
the neighbor, he said firmly:

"Thank you, Delia.  We shall not need you in here at present.
You may go."

The giantess tossed her head and lumbered out of the room,
slamming the door behind her with unnecessary violence.

"Good-evening, Miss Peckham," said the man, offering the spinster
a chair.  "I don't know just what Delia meant about cats; but I
presume you will explain."

"Huh!" snapped Miss Peckham, "I guess that girl of yours hasn't
told you about what she done to my Sam. No, indeed! I guess not!"

She was evidently working herself up into a violent state of
mind, and Mr. Day, who knew his next door

neighbor very well, hastened to smooth the troubled waters.

"I had not heard anything about cats, Miss Peckham, save the
misfortune of a cat convention in our back kitchen yesterday
morning.  Janice told me about that, of course; but she could
scarcely be blamed for it."

"I don't know why she shouldn't be blamed!" ejaculated the angry
woman.  "And my Sam's got a broken leg."

"I am sorry if any of the cats were injured.  It was a
thoughtless joke of--" he caught Janice's eye and understood her
meaning, "of one of the neighbor's boys He meant no particular
harm, I fancy."

"You needn't try an' lay it on no boy!" exclaimed Miss Peckham.
'"Twas a girl done it.  My Sam--"

"You mean that a girl broke the cat's leg?" queried Mr. Day,
quietly.

"I mean just that.  'Twas a girl.  And that is the girl!" and she
pointed an accusing finger at the flushed Janice.

"Oh, I never!" exclaimed the latter under her breath, and shaking
her head vigorously.

Mr. Day gave her a smiling look of encouragement.

"I feel sure," he said, to Miss Peckham, "that if Janice had by
chance injured an animal--a cat, or any other--she would have
told me.  But although it may have been a girl who broke your
cat's leg, it was not Janice."

"You don't know anything about it!" cried Miss Peckham angrily.
"You don't know what goes on here all day long while you are
gone.  I pity you, Mr. Day--I pity you from the bottom of my
heart.  You ought to have a woman here to manage this girl of
yours.  That's what you need!"

"Oh!" gasped Janice, her color receding now.  She was very angry.

"Ah! don't you flout me, Janice Day!" exclaimed the spinster,
eyeing Janice malevolently.  "I know how bad you act.  I don't
live right next door for nothin'. An' 'tisn't only at home you
act badly, but on the street.  Fighting with boys like a hoodlum.
Oh, I heard about it!"

"Wait! Wait!" exclaimed Mr. Day, with sternness.  "I think you
are out of bounds, Miss Peckham.  I do not ask you to tell me how
to take care of my little daughter.  And I am sure I do not
believe that you are rightly informed about her actions, even if
you do live next door."

Miss Peckham sniffed harder and tossed her head.  "Let us get
back to the cats," he went on quietly.  "Have you found that one
of your cats has been hurt?"

"His leg's broke.  The doctor said it was a most vicious blow.
He's put it in a cast, and poor Sam is quite wild."

"But why do you blame Janice?"

"She done it!" exclaimed the spinster nodding her shawled head
vigorously.  "She ought to be looked after."

"No, Janice did not hurt the cat," said Mr. Day with assurance,
"unfortunately the cat was hurt on our premises.  But it was the
girl working for us, not my little girl, who injured your cat."

"What do you mean?" demanded Miss Peckham sharply. "Not this big
thing you've got here--the one that let me in?"

"The Swedish girl," explained Mr. Day.  "The cats were shut into
our back kitchen, and before Janice could open the door to let
them out, Olga, I believe, pelted them with coal."

"But what did she shut 'em up in the kitchen for?' demanded Miss
Peckham, still pointing and glaring at Janice.

"Oh, I didn't!" exclaimed the latter, shaking her head
vigorously.

"That was not my daughter's doings," Mr. Day repeated. "As I tell
you, your cat was undoubtedly hurt on our premises.  If I can do
anything to satisfy you--pay the doctor's bill, or the like--"

"I don't want money from you, Broxton Day," exclaimed

the woman rising.  "I didn't come here for that purpose.  I came
here to tell you that your house is goin' to rack and ruin and
that your girl needs a strong hand to manage her.  That's what
she needs.  You ain't had no proper home here since your wife
died."

"I fear that is only too true, Miss Peckham," replied Mr. Day.

"If Mrs. Day knew how things was goin' she'd turn in her grave, I
do believe," went on the neighbor, perhaps not wholly in
bitterness.

The man's face paled.  Miss Peckham did not know how much she was
adding to the burden of sorrow in the hearts of Broxton Day and
his little daughter.  Janice was sobbing now, with her face
hidden.

"What you need is an intelligent woman to take hold," went on the
neighbor, warming to her subject.  "Take this creature you got
now.  Ugh!  Big elephant, and don't scarcely know enough to come
in when it rains, I do believe."

"The class of people one finds at the agencies is admittedly not
of a high order of intelligence," said Mr. Day softly.

"I should say they weren't--if them you've had is samples,"
sniffed Miss Peckham.  "Why don't you get somebody decent?"

"I wish you would tell me how to go about getting a better
houseworker," sighed Mr. Day.

"Get a working housekeeper--one that's trained and is
respectable.  Somebody to overlook--"

"But I cannot afford two servants," the man hastened to submit.

"I ain't suggesting another servant.  Somebody that respects
herself too much to be called a servant.  Of course it's hard to
find the right party.

"However, some women can do it.  And that is the kind you need,
Broxton Day.  Somebody who will be firm with your girl, here,
too."

"I am afraid," said Janice's father quietly, "that the sort of
person you speak of is beyond my means; perhaps such a marvel is
not in the market at all," and he

smiled again.  "Thank you for your interest, Miss Peckham."

He rose again to see her to the door.  The spinster might have
considered remaining longer and offering further advice; but
daddy knew how to get rid of people quickly and cheerfully when
their business was over.

"Oh, Daddy! what a dreadful woman she is," sobbed Janice, when he
came back into the living-room.

"Not so bad as that," he said, chuckling, and patting her
shoulder comfortingly.  "It is her way to make much of a little.
You see, she did not want anything for her injured cat, she
merely wanted to come in and talk about it."

"But--but, Daddy," confessed Janice, blushing deeply, "I really
did fight Arlo Junior on the street.  I boxed his ears."

Mr. Day had great difficulty to keep from laughing, but Janice
was too absorbed in her troubles to notice it.

"Well, well!  Taking the law into your own hands, were you?"

"Yes, Daddy.  I guess it wasn't very ladylike.  But I'm not a
hoodlum!"

"Why was it that you did not want me to mention Arlo Junior?"
asked Mr. Day curiously.

"Well, you see, I sort of promised him I wouldn't tell about what
he did to the cats, if he came in here Saturday and helped me
clean that back kitchen."

"Ho, ho! I see.  Well, perhaps you are quite right to shield the
young scamp under those circumstances," said her father, with
twinkling eyes.

Mr. Day talked to his daughter for a while longer.  He asked her
about her school work and her school pleasures, about what the
girls and boys in her circle of friends were doing.  He tried to
keep in close touch with the motherless girl's interests, and
especially did he not want her to go to bed with sad and
troublous thoughts in her mind.

After a cheerful and happy half hour Janice kissed her

father good-night and went to her own room.

Janice did all she could the next morning before going to school
to start Delia right in the housework.  But the giantess was
still sullen and had much to say about "it comin' to a pretty
pass when children boss their elders."

This was an objection that Janice had contended with before.  She
only said, pleasantly:

"When you have once learned just how we do things here, I sha'n't
have to tell you again, Delia.  But wherever you go to work, you
know, you will have to learn the ways of the house."

"I was doin' housework, I was, when you was in your cradle,"
declared the woman.

"But evidently not doing it just as we like to have it done
here," insisted Janice cheerfully.  "Now, try to please daddy,
Delia.  Everything will be all right then."

Delia only sniffed.  She "sniffed" in a higher key than Janice
had ever heard anybody sniff before.  Certainly Mrs. Bridget
Burns was not turning out to be as mild creature as Janice had
first believed her to be.  She could be stubborn.

When she got to school that morning Janice found that there was
another disturbing incident in the offing. Amy Carringford
squeezed her arm as they hurried in to grammar recitation, and
smiled at her.  But it was with gravity that she whispered in
Janice's ear:

"I guess I shall have to refuse Stella's invitation."

"Oh, you must go!"

"No, I can't go."

"Don't dare say that, Amy!" responded Janice, earnestly.  "You
haven't told her you aren't coming, have you?"

"No-o."

"Don't you dare!" repeated Janice.

"But--but, I don't see how I can--"

"Wait! I'll tell you after school.  Don't say a word to Stella
about not going to the party.  I tell you, if you don't go, I
sha'n't!"

"Oh, Janice!"

There was no time for more whispering.  Amy's big luminous eyes
were fixed on her friend a good deal through the several
recitations they both attended.  It was evident she was puzzled.

At lunch hour Amy always ran home, for Mullen Lane-- at least,
the end on which she lived--was not far. And, perhaps, she did
not care to join the girls who brought nice lunches in pretty
baskets.  So Janice could not talk with her new friend until
school was out.

Janice had determined to make a friend of Amy Carringford.  Oh,
yes, when Janice Day made up her mind to a thing she usually did
it.  And she had conceived a great liking for Amy, as well as a
deep interest in the whole Carringford family.

"Now, Janice, what did you mean?" Amy asked, as they set off from
the schoolhouse with their books.  "I just can't go to that
party!"

"Daddy says that it is a mistake to say that the word can't is
not in the dictionary, for it is--in the newer ones.  But I am
sure it ought not to be found in the 'bright lexicon of
youth'--like 'fail,' you know," and Janice laughed.

"You are just talking," giggled Amy, clinging to Janice's arm.
"I don't know what you mean."

"You are going to know soon, my dear," returned Janice. "Come
home with me.  Your mother won't mind, will she?"

"No.  I'll send word by Gummy."

"My, that sounds almost like swearing--'by Gummy!' exclaimed
Janice, her hazel eyes dancing.  "And there Gummy goes.  Grab him
quick.  Tell him you'll stay to supper."

"Oh, no! I'll tell him I'll stay till supper," rejoined Amy, as
she ran after her brother.

She caught up with Janice within half a block laughing and
skipping.  Never had Janice seen Amy so light-hearted. Even the
thought that she could not go to the party at Stella Latham's
house did not serve to make Amy sorrowful for long.  And Janice
guessed why.

Amy Carringford had been hungry for a close friend. Perhaps
Janice was starved, too, for such companionship.  At any rate,
Amy responded to Janice's friendliness just as a sunflower
responds to the orb of the day and turns toward it.

The two girls went on quite merrily toward the Day cottage at
Eight Hundred and Forty-five Knight Street. There was plenty to
chatter about without even touching on the coming party.  Janice
had plans about that.

When the two came in sight of the Day house those plans --and
almost everything else--went out of Janice's head.  There was a
high, dusty, empty rubbish cart standing before the side gate of
the Day premises; and from the porch a man in the usual khaki
uniform of the Highway Department was bringing out a black
oilcloth bag which Janice very well remembered.

"Oh, dear me! what can have happened?" Janice cried starting to
run.  "That is Delia's bag--the very one she brought with her."

She arrived at the gate just as the man came through the opening.
He was a dusty-faced man, with a bristling mustache, and great,
overhanging brows.  He looked very angry, too.

"Oh, what is the matter?" asked Janice, as the man pitched the
oilcloth bag into the cart, and turned back toward the house
again.

But he was not regarding at all the girl or her chum who then ran
up.  He turned to bellow in through the open door:

"Hi! Come out o' that, Biddy Burns!  Ye poor innocent! Sure, with
your two little children home cryin' all day alone and me at
work, ye should be ashamed of yerself, me gur-rl!  If I was the
kind of a feyther ye nade, I'd be wearin' a hairbrush out on ye,
big and old as ye be. Come out o' that--or will I come in afther
ye?"

"Mercy me!" gasped Amy.

"Oh! Oh!" exclaimed Janice, tugging at the man's

sleeve, "what are you doing to Delia?"

"'Delia,' is it?  More of her foolishness.  She's Biddy Burns,
and her husband is dead--lucky man that he is. And I'm her
feyther and the grandfeyther of her two babies--Tessie and
'Melia.  And if she don't come home this minute with me, I'll put
the young ones in a home, so I will!"

Delia, in the flounced dress, and weeping, just then appeared.
She stumbled down the steps and came to the gate, blubbering like
a child.

"Sure, he says I've got to go ho-ome," sobbed the giantess.
"'Tis me father--he tells the truth.  But I wanted to earn money
myself.  He never lets me do nothing I want to do!"

"Ye big, foolish gur-rl!" ejaculated the man gruffly. "Was it
workin' for you she was, Miss?"

"Yes," said Janice breathlessly.

"And they had a pianny," sobbed Delia;.  "'Twas be-a-utiful!"

"You come home an' play on the washboard--that's the kind of a
pianny you nade to play on," grumbled her father.  "I'm sorry for
ye," he added turning to Janice, "if your folks has to depend on
the likes of her to do the work.  Sure, it's not right good sinse
she's got."

He came behind the giantess suddenly and boosted her with strong
arms up to the seat at the front of the wagon.  Then he climbed
up himself and the turnout rattled away heavily along the street.

Delia's departure was one of the most astounding things that had
happened to the Days during the months of their dependence upon
itinerant houseworkers.



CHAPTER IX . SHOCKS AND FROCKS

Janice found herself clinging tightly to Amy Carringford's hand
and Amy clinging tightly to hers, as the rubbish wagon rattled
away with Delia and her grim father perched on the high seat,
while the black oilcloth bag rattled around in the otherwise
empty body of the cart.

"Oh, Janice!" gasped Amy at last.

"Oh, Amy!" rejoined her friend.  "And no dinner for daddy when he
comes home!"

Amy could not comment on this catastrophe for the moment, for
Miss Peckham (the only neighbor who seemed to have marked the
departure of Delia) came swiftly into view.  Miss Peckham's
blinds were always bowed, and one never knew which blind she was
lurking behind.

"Well!" she exclaimed (and Janice thought she said it quite
cheerily), "so that one's gone, has she?"

"They--they just seem to come and go," Janice replied, almost in
tears.  "Oh, dear!  Delia wasn't much; but I did hope she would
stay a little longer."

"'Much'!" sniffed Miss Peckham.  "I should say she wasn't.  And
she isn't even sensible.  I should think even a girl of your age
could have seen she was more'n half crazy.  Wouldn't expect your
father to notice nothing.  He's only a man."

"Oh! Really crazy, do you mean?" Amy Carringford burst out.

"She never was more'n half bright, that Biddy Garrity. That was
her name before she married Tom Burns.  And he died.  Blowed up
in the powder mill.  That was old Garrity who came for her.  She
ain't got no right to run off and leave her two children and that
old man to get along as best they can.  But she does it--often. I
thought there would be trouble just as soon as I seen her sitting
on your steps t'other day."

"Well, I wish we'd known it," sighed Janice.  "She-- she did seem
sort of funny.  But she wasn't much worse than some of the others
we've had."

"Humph!" sniffed Miss Peckham, "just what I told your father last
night.  You need a manager here--somebody to take hold"

"I shall have to take hold now and see about getting dinner for
daddy," Janice responded, recovering a measure of her
self-confidence.  "Come on in, Amy, and watch me work."

"If I come in and help you," said her friend.  "I guess you won't
have to do it all."

A glance through the lower rooms proved that Delia had done
little more toward straightening the house this day than the day
before.

"Goodness, mercy me, Janice Day!" exclaimed Amy Carringford.
"I'm awfully glad we don't have to have servants.  It must be
awful!"

"It just is," sighed Janice.  "You never know when you come home
from school whether you will find the girl or not.  And you're
'most always sure to find that not half the work's been done.
Well, I can get daddy some sort of a dinner myself tonight."

"What are you going to cook?  Let me help," said Amy eagerly.  "I
know how to make lovely rolls--only you have to set the sponge
the night before.  And Judge Peters's pudding is just luscious!
Only you have to have currants and citron and chopped nuts to go
into it."

"We won't have either of those things for dinner, then," said
Janice, with a cheerful laugh.

"Well, we don't have them nowadays," sighed Amy.  "But we used
to."

"I suppose you have had to give up lots of nice things since your
father died," rejoined, her friend sympathetically.  "But," and
she giggled, "Gummy said yesterday he couldn't give up his name."

"The poor boy!" Amy declared, shaking her head.  "Give me an
apron, Janice.  I am going to peel those potatoes and that
turnip.  Potatoes and turnip mashed together makes a nice dish.
And Gummy can't really give up his name."

"'Gumswith'! It's awful," murmured Janice.  "How  ever--"

"Well I'll tell you.  Poor dear father had a half-brother who was
lots older than he.  Grandmother Carringford had been married
before she married our grandfather, you see.  And her first
husband's name was Mr. Gumswith.  John Gumswith.  It's not so bad
as a last name, you see."

"No," agreed Janice, her eyes twinkling.  "Not when you say it
quick."

Amy laughed again, busy peeling the vegetables.  And she peeled
them thin, Janice noticed.  Amy had evidently been taught the
fine points of frugal housekeeping.

"So poor Gummy got his name from John Gumswith, Junior. I guess
father's half-brother was a queer man.  He said he'd never marry,
because he was always wandering about the world."

"Like a peddler?" ventured Janice.

"No.  But he went to foreign countries.  He always expected to
earn a lot of money by some stroke of fortune, mother says.  But
none of us children ever saw him.  Before Gummy was born Uncle
John Gumswith started off for Australia, and mother and father
never heard of him, or from him after that."

"But they named poor Gummy after him," commented Janice, busy
with the onion she was chopping to season the hamburger roast,
and trying to keep the juice of the onion out of her eyes.

"You see," Amy confessed confidentially, "when father and mother
were married Uncle John gave them a little nest egg.  You
understand?  He had some money, and he gave some of it to them.
And then, he was father's only living relative; so they named the
first baby 'Gumswith'--so that the family name should not die out
you know."

"My goodness!" exclaimed Janice, but whether because of the
saddling of Gummy Carringford with such a name, or because of the
squirting of onion juice into her left eye, she did not explain
at the moment.

"So Gummy is Gummy," sighed his sister.  "Father didn't name him
that just for the money's sake.  Mother says a million dollars
wouldn't really pay for such a name. But father thought a lot of
Uncle John Gumswith.

"But when Gummy grows up, he will have to go through life, so he
says, signing has name 'G. Carringford,'" and Amy began to giggle
at this thought.

"It is really too bad," said Janice, but her mind was on another
subject just then.  "How quick you are, Amy! You know how to do
everything, don't you?"

"No I don't.  But what I know, I know well," said her friend in
her quiet way.  "Is your water hot?  This turnip wants to go
right on, for it take longer to cook than the potatoes."

"Here you are," said Janice, seizing the pot and carrying it to
the stove.  There she poured boiling water over the turnip and
set the pot where it would continue to simmer.  "It's too early
to put the roast in yet.  Come on upstairs, Amy.  I know that
Delia neither made up my bed nor dusted my room.  I did daddy's
before I went to school this morning."

"Such a nice house!" murmured Amy, as she followed Janice
upstairs by the way of the front hall.

"And not half kept," sighed Janice.  "When dear mother was with
us--"

She and Amy said no more until Janice's bedroom was all spick and
span again.  Janice hugged her friend heartily when at last the
pillows were plumped up at the head of the bed.

"You're a dear!" she said.  "You do like me, don't you, Amy?"

"Of course I do."

"Then you'll go to Stella's party with me, you?'

"Oh, but, Janice, I can't!"

"There's that word can't' again," said Janice lightly. "I don't
believe in it--no ma'am!  You can go if you want to."

"I--I haven't a thing nice enough to wear!" confessed Amy
desperately, her face flaming and water standing in her eyes.
"As though that was a good reason!  Let me show you what I am
going to wear."

But the pretty black and white dress that Janice brought forth
from her closet only made Amy shake her head.

"Yes.  I know.  But it is new--and very nice."

"I've never worn it yet," confessed Janice.

"And everything I've got is as old as the hills," groaned Amy
Carringford.

"Well, look here--and here--and here!" Janice tossed as many
frocks upon the bed.  "What do you suppose is going to become of
those?"

"Oh, Janice! how pretty they are.  This pink and white one--"

"M-mm! my mother made them for me," said Janice, trying to speak
bravely.  "And now they are too small, anyway. I've grown a lot
since a year ago."

"Oh, Janice!"

"So you are going to wear one of them to Stella's party,"
declared Janice confidently.  "The pink and white one if you
like."

"Oh, Janice, I can't.  My mother wouldn't let me."

"I'm going to make her let you.  I'm going to beg her on my
knees!" declared Janice, laughing.  "Do get into it, Amy, and see
if it fits you.

"Wel-l-l!"

It did.  There was no doubt but that Amy was just a wee bit
smaller than Janice and that the frocks were an almost perfect
fit.

"But--but to take a whole new dress from you--a gift!  Oh,
Janice!  I know it isn't right.  Mother will not hear of it"

"Mother's going to hear of it--and from me," declared Janice.
"To-morrow's Saturday.  After I get all the work done, and Arlo
Junior helps me clean that back kitchen, I am going to bring this
dress down to your house.  I know when she once sees it on you,
she won't have the heart to say 'No.'"

So, perhaps Janice Day was sly, after all.



CHAPTER X. OTHER PEOPLE'S TROUBLE

Daddy, of course, laughed.  If it had not been for his sanguine
temperament, and his ability to see the funny side of life,
Janice often wondered what they should do.

"They say," she thought, "that every cloud has a silver lining.
But to dear daddy there is something better than silver linings
to our clouds.  Something to laugh at!  I wonder if, after all,
being able to see the fun in things isn't the biggest blessing in
the world.  I am sure Miss Peckham isn't happy, and she never
sees anything funny at all!  But daddy--"

When she told him at dinner time how Delia had departed on the
rubbish wagon with her angry father, Broxton Day laughed so that
he could scarcely eat.

"But what are we going to do?" cried Janice.

"Don't be a little Martha, honey, troubled with many things.  I
would have given a good deal to have seen that departure.  'Good
riddance to bad rubbish,' is an old saying back in Vermont where
I was brought up, Janice.  And Delia going in the rubbish wagon
seems fitting, doesn't it?"

"It was funny," admitted his little daughter.  "But what shall we
do?"

"Why, try the next applicant," said Broxton Day easily. "I will
look in at the agencies again."

"I'm afraid that won't do any good, Daddy," sighed Janice.
"Delia came from the agency, and you see what she was like.  And
Olga--"

"No," interrupted Mr. Day, "Olga came direct from Pickletown."

"Well, it doesn't matter.  There were plenty of others from the
agencies, all as bad or worse than Olga and Delia," and Janice
looked much downcast.

"Oh, little daughter, little daughter!" admonished Mr. Day,
"don't give way like that.  Some time, out of the lot, we'll find
the right person."

"Well, maybe," agreed Janice, cheerful once more.  "I guess we've
already had all the bad ones.  Those that are left to come to us
must be just ordinary human beings with some good and some sense
mixed in with the bad."

It proved to be a very busy day, indeed, for Janice-- that
Saturday.  But she did not overlook her promise to Amy
Carringford.  Yet it was mid-afternoon when she started for
Mullen Lane with the pink and white party dress in a neat package
over her arm.

Janice could not overlook the poverty-stricken appearance of the
Carringford cottage.  It could not, indeed, be ignored by even
the casual glance.  But its cleanliness, and everybody's neatness
about the little dwelling, portrayed the fact that here was a
family putting its best foot forward.  Mrs. Carringford was
proud.  Janice Day knew that she must be very cautious indeed if
she would see Amy adorned with her own finery.

"Dear Mrs. Carringford," she whispered to her friend's mother,
"I've got a surprise for you.  I want Amy to come upstairs with
me, and by and by, when we call you up, please come and look into
her room."

Amy, according to agreement, had said nothing about the dress to
her mother.  She was eager, but doubtful just the same.

"I don't think it is right, Janice," she declared, over and over.
"I don't see how I can accept the dress from you, when I have
nothing to give in return."

"Oh, that is a very niggardly way to receive," cried Janice,
shaking her head.  "If we can't accept a present save when we can
return it--why, daddy says that is the most selfish thought in
the world."

"Selfish!"

"For sure!  We are too selfish to allow other people to enjoy
giving.  Don't you see?  It's fun to give."

"But it is not fun to be the object charity," complained Amy,
with some sullenness.

"Why, my dear," exclaimed Janice Day, "you are not always going
to be poor.  Of course not.  Some day you will be lots better
off.  Gummy will grow up and go to work, and then you will all be
well off.  And, besides, this sort of giving, between friends,
isn't charity."

"Gummy wishes to go to work now," sighed Amy.  "But mother wants
to keep him at school."

"He might work after school and on Saturdays."

"Oh, that would be fine!  But who would give him such a job?  You
see, we do not trade much with the storekeepers, and mother isn't
very well known--"

"You wait!" exclaimed Janice.  "I believe I know somebody who
needs a boy."

"Oh, I hope you do, Janice."

Meanwhile Amy was getting into that lovely, dainty dress again.

"You do look too sweet for anything in it," Janice declared.  The
latter ran out to the stairs and called to Mrs. Carringford.
"Oh, do come up and look!  Do, Mrs. Carringford!"

She kept Amy's bedroom door shut, and held Mrs. Carringford for a
moment at the top of the stairs.

"Oh, Mrs. Carringford," she murmured, "don't you want to make two
girls just awfully happy?"

"Why, my dear child--"

"You know, I have been growing just like a weed this past year.
Daddy says so.  I have outgrown all the pretty clothes my--my
mother made me for last summer, and which of course I could not
wear.  Amy is just a wee bit smaller than I "

"My dear!"

"Wait!" gasped Janice, almost in tears she was so much in
earnest.  "Just wait and see her!  And I want her to go to the
party.  And there are stockings, and pumps, and a hat, and
everything!  Look at her!"

She flung open the bedroom door.  Amy stood across the room from
them, flushing and paling by turns, and looking really
frightened, but, oh! so pretty.

"Why, Amy!" murmured Mrs. Carringford, her own cheeks flushing.

What mother can look at her little daughter when she is
charmingly dressed without being proud of her?  She turned
questioningly to Janice.

"Does your father know about this?"

"Daddy quite approves," said Janice demurely.  "I never could get
any wear out of them.  You can see that, Mrs. Carringford.

"And if you let Amy wear them, we'll both be so happy!"

Mrs. Carringford kissed her.  "You are a sweet, good child," she
said rather brokenly.  "I don't blame Amy for loving you."

So it was agreed that Amy should wear the party dress. Janice had
errands to do at the store, and she begged for the company of
Gummy Carringford to help her carry the things she bought.

"You know, I can't carry them all, and sometimes Harriman's
delivery doesn't get around until midnight and we have to get up
and take the things in."

"Come on," said Gummy, who knew about the dress for his sister,
"I'll carry anything you want."

But Janice really had another reason for getting Gummy
Carringford to Harriman's store.  She maneuvered to get Mr.
Harriman himself to wait on her, and when Gummy was out of
ear-shot she began to confide in the proprietor.

"Do you see that boy who is with me, Mr. Harriman?" she asked.

"Oh, yes.  I've seen him before I guess.  One of your neighbors?"

"He goes to our school.  And he is a very nice boy."

"What's his name?"

"His name is 'G. Carringford'," Janice told demurely.

"Oh! 'G?'" queried Mr. Harriman.  "Is that all?"

"Well, you know, it isn't his fault if he has dreadful name," she
said.  "And it doesn't really hurt him.  He can work just as
hard--and he wants work."

"I thought you said he went to school?"

"After school and on Saturdays," she explained.  "He doesn't know
you, Mr. Harriman, so I suppose he is bashful about speaking to
you.  But you know him now, because I introduced G. Carringford.
Won't you try him?"

The outcome of this attempt to help the Carringfords was one of
the many things Janice had to confide to daddy that evening.  As
she told him, she had put little dependence upon the hope of
finding another houseworker easily.  And that was well, for Mr.
Day had found nobody at the agencies.  He would not trust
engaging a girl again, unseen.

"Perhaps next week will bring us good fortune, my dear," he said.
"How did you get on to-day, all alone? I see the silver has been
polished."

"Only some of it, Daddy.  And I have been a busy bee, now I tell
you."

"Bravo, my dear!  The busy bee makes the honey."

"And has a stinger, too," she replied roguishly.  "I guess Arlo
Junior thinks so."

"So Junior came over according to promise?" said her father,
interested.

"Yes, indeed.  And he did work, Daddy!  You should have seen
him."

"The vision of Arlo Weeks, Junior, working really would be worth
the price of admission," chuckled Broxton Day.

"That isn't the worst of it--for Arlo," said Janice gaily.  "You
see, his helping me clean up that back kitchen got him a bad
reputation."

"Why, Janice!  How was that?"

"Oh, he did the cleaning very well.  As well as it could be done.
That soft coal made marks on the walls that never will come off
until they are painted again. It's awful smutchy--that coal."

"I know," agreed Broxton Day.  "But about Arlo?"

"I'm coming to that," she said smiling.  "You see, Arlo Junior
was just about through when his mother come over looking for him.
She wanted him to go on an errand. She saw what he had been doing
for me, for he had an apron on and the broom in his hand."

"Caught with the goods, in other words?" chuckled Mr. Day.

"Yes.  And we couldn't tell her why he was helping me. So she
said right out:

"'Why, Arlo Junior!  If you can help Janice like this-- and you
and she were fighting the other day--you can come right home and
clean out the woodshed.  It needs it.'

"And--and," laughed Janice, "he had to do it.  He worked pretty
near all day to-day.  And he scowled at me dreadfully this
afternoon."

"He will be playing other tricks on you," warned her father.

"Well, there will be no Olga to make them worse," she sighed.
"That is one sure thing.  Oh, dear, Daddy, I wonder where she
is--and the treasure-box!  It is too, too hateful for anything!"

"I called up the pickle factory where Willie Sangreen works.
They had heard nothing from him.  It looks as though Olga and he
must have gone away together.  Stole a march on all their friends
and got married, maybe."

"But why should she take my treasure-box?" cried Janice.  "Oh,
Daddy!  I can never forgive myself for my carelessness."

"Don't worry, child.  You could not really be blamed," he
rejoined sadly.

"But that doesn't bring back mother's picture and the other
things," murmured the anxious Janice, watching his clouding face.

As always when they were alone, daddy washed the supper dishes
and Janice dried them.  Daddy with an apron on and his sleeves
rolled up, and a paper cap on his head (she made him wear that
like a regular "chef"), made a picture that always pleased his
daughter.

"I think you would make a very nice cook, Daddy dear? she often
told him.  "In fact, you seem to fit in almost anywhere.  I guess
it's because you are always ready to do something."

"Flattery!  Flattery!" he returned, pinching her cheek.

"But it is so, you know, Daddy.  You always know what to do--and
you do it."

"That is what they tell me at the bank," said Mr. Day, with
rather a rueful smile.  "This Mexican mine business is developing
some troubles, and they want me to go down there and straighten
them out."

"Oh, Daddy!" she cried breathlessly.

"No," he said, shaking his head.  "That is what I tell them.  I
cannot leave you alone."

"But take me!" she cried, almost dancing up and down.

"Can't be thought of, Janice.  That is a rough country
--and you've got to stick to school, besides.  You know, my dear,
we had already decided on that."

"Yes, I know," she sighed.  "But of course you won't go away and
leave me?  We--we've never been separated since--since dear mamma
died."

"True, my dear.  And we will not contemplate such separation.  I
have told them at the bank it would be impossible."  It was not
of their own troubles that they talked mostly on this evening,
however, but of some other people's troubles.  After they were
out of the kitchen and settled in the living-room, Janice began
to tell him about the Carringfords.  "They are just the nicest
people you ever saw Daddy. Amy and Gummy are coming over here
tomorrow after Sunday School so that you can meet them."

"'Gummy'!" ejaculated Mr. Day.

Janice told him all about that boy's unfortunate name.

"You see," she explained, "Mrs. Carringford told me herself this
afternoon that his Uncle John Gumswith was a very nice man."

"Seems to me," said daddy, quite amused, "that doesn't make the
boy's name any less unfortunate.  And have they never even heard
of the uncle since he went to Australia?"

"No, sir."

"Well," chuckled Mr. Day, "Gummy had better go to the Legislature
and get his name changed.  That's a handicap that no boy should
have to shoulder."

"It is awful.  And it makes Gummy shy, I think.  He wanted to
work after school hours and on Saturday.  But he didn't seem to
know how to get a job.  So I," Janice proceeded quite in a
matter-of-fact way, "got him one."

"You did!"

"Yes, Daddy.  I went to Mr. Harriman, the grocer.  You know we
trade there.  And I know that he can use a boy just as well as
not.  So I told him about Gummy--"

"Did you tell Harriman his name?" chuckled her father.

"I said he was 'G. Carringford,'" Janice replied, her eyes
twinkling.  "But you needn't laugh.  Mr. Harriman did."

"Did what?"

"Laugh; I really wanted Gummy to take a nom de plume, or whatever
it is they call 'em."

"An alias, I guess it would be, in Gummy's case," said her
father.  "And wouldn't he?"

"No," said Janice, shaking her head.  "Gummy seems to think that
he's in honor bound to stick up for his name.  That is what he
says."

"Amen!  Some boy, that!"

"He's a nice boy," declared Janice.  "You'll see.  And he got the
job."

"Oh, he did!  So I see that my Janice is a real 'do something'
girl."

"Why, yes, I hadn't thought of that," she agreed, all smiles at
his praise.  "I did do something, didn't I? Gummy is going to
work for Mr. Harriman, and that'll help them.  But it was about
Amy and Stella Latham's party I wanted to tell you"

"Oh, was it, indeed?" her father murmured.

She related the circumstances attached to the coming party and
Amy Carringford's reason for not being able to go.

"And you ought to see Amy in that pink and white dress. She's
just too sweet for anything!"

"All right, daughter.  I agree to give your little friend the
frock if her mother is willing."

"I just made Mrs. Carringford agree," said Janice, bobbing her
head earnestly.  "They are awfully proud folks."

"With a proper pride, perhaps."

"I guess so.  They are real nice anyway--even if Gummy does wear
patched pants."

"And does he?" asked daddy, seriously.  "Perhaps we had better
look through my Wardrobe in his behest."

"But, Daddy!  he can't wear your clothes.  He'd be lost in them,"
Janice giggled.

"True.  But his mother may know how to cut the garments down and
make them over for the boy?  You ask her, Janice.  I will lay out
a couple of suits that I will never be able to wear again."

And so they forgot their own troubles, for the time being, in
seeking to relieve those of some other people.



CHAPTER XI. MRS. WATKINS

Although it was probable that most of the Day's neighbors felt
more or less curiosity, if not interest, in their domestic
misfortunes, it was only Miss Peckham who seemed to keep really
close observation, in season and out, of all that went on in and
about the Day house.

Janice could have wished that the spinster would give more of her
attention to her cats and Ambrose, the parrot, and less to
neighborhood affairs.  For the child knew that not even a peddler
came to the door that the sharp-visaged woman behind her bowed
blinds did watch to see what Janice did.

"She watches every move I make, Daddy," complained the girl one
day.  "I don't see why she cares who comes to see me.  She's the
meanest thing--"

"Now, Janice, dear!"

"I don't care, Daddy, just this once!  Why, this afternoon three
of the girls were here, and after they left Miss Peckham called
me over to the fence and asked me when the Beemans were going to
Canada.

"The Beemans talk of going there before long, but are not certain
about it; and Annette told the rest of us girls all about it as a
great secret.  Miss Peckham

deliberately listened at her window, and then, because she
couldn't hear all we said, she tried to make me tell her the
whole story.  Now, isn't that mean?"

"Oh, well, Janice--"

"You wouldn't listen like that, Daddy Day, and you wouldn't let
me, so there!"

"Maybe not, Janice.  But then, you know, we do many things that
Miss Peckham does not approve of--many things that she would not
think of doing."

"Now, Daddy, you are joking!  You know you are!"

"Maybe so--half way.  But then we are responsible for ourselves,
and not for Miss Peckham.  But I am sorry, daughter, that she
troubles you.  Perhaps," he added more lightly, "we shall get
things on a more satisfactory basis here before long, and then
Miss Peckham will not think it necessary to look after us so
much."

"You know better than that, Daddy Day.  Miss Peckham will look
after us till we are hundreds of years old," answered Janice.
But now she spoke with a smile on her lips.

The disappointment of the coming and going of Bridget Burns made
both father and daughter shrink from trying another houseworker
unless she appeared more than ordinarily promising.  So for a day
or two daddy went personally to the agencies and looked the
prospective workers over.  His reports to Janice were not
hopeful.

"Oh, dear me, Daddy!" Janice sighed, "I do wish I could do it
all.  Maybe I ought only to go to school part time--"

"No, my dear.  We will scrabble along as best we can. You must
not neglect the studies."

"At any rate," she exclaimed, "it will soon be vacation time.  I
can do ever so much more in the house then."

"Nor do I believe that is a good plan," her father said, shaking
his head.  "The best thing that could happen to you would be for
you to go away for a change. I have a good mind to send you back
East.  Your Aunt Almira--"

"Oh, Daddy!  Never!  You don't mean it?" cried the girl.

"Why, you'll like your Aunt Almira.  Of course, Jase Day is not
such an up-and-coming chap as one might wish; but he is a good
sort, at that.  And there is your cousin, Marty."

"But I don't know any of them," sighed Janice.  "And I don't want
to leave you."

"But if we cannot get any help--"

"I'll get along.  What would you do in this house alone if I went
away?" she demanded.

"I'd shut it up and go down to the Laurel House to board."

"Oh, that's awful!"

"No.  I get my lunch there now.  It's not very bad," said Broxton
Day, smiling.

"I mean it's awful to think of shutting up our home for the
summer.  You haven't got to go away to Mexico, have you, Daddy?"
she queried with sudden suspicion.

"Well, my dear, it may be necessary," he confessed.

"And you'd send me away to Vermont while you were gone?"

"I don't know what else to do--if the necessity arises.  Jase Day
is my half-brother--the only living relative I have.  Your
mother's people are all scattered.  I wouldn't know what else to
do with you, my dear."

"Mercy!" she sighed, winking back the tears, "it sounds as though
I--I were what you call a 'liability' in your bank business.
Isn't that it?  Why, Daddy! I want to be an 'asset,' not a
'liability.'"

"Bless you, my dear, you are!  A great, big asset!" he laughed.
"But you must not neglect the necessary preparation for life
which your studies give you.  Nor must I let you overwork.  Have
patience--and hope. Perhaps we shall be able to find a really
good housekeeper, after all."

When, on Wednesday afternoons Janice came home from school, she
saw Miss Peckham beckoning to her from her front porch, the girl
had no suspicion that the maiden lady was about to interfere in
her and daddy's affairs. No, indeed!

"Now I wonder what she wants!" murmured Janice, going reluctantly
toward the Peckham house.  "And she's got company, too."

The spinster was sitting on her porch behind the honeysuckle
vines, with her sewing table and the big parrot, Ambrose, chained
to his perch beside her. There was, too, a second woman on the
porch.

"Good afternoon, Miss Peckham," Janice said, swinging her books
as she came up the walk from Miss Peckham's gate.  "Hello,
Polly!"

"Polly wants cracker!" declared the bird, flapping his wings and
doing a funny little dance on his perch.

"Be still!" commanded Miss Peckham.  With her sharp little black
eyes she glanced from Janice to the other woman.  "This is the
girl," she said.

Janice, feeling as though she was under some important scrutiny
looked at the second woman in curiosity.  She found her a not
unpleasant looking person.  She was much wrinkled, yet her cheeks
were rather pink and her lips very vivid.  Janice wondered if it
was possible that this color was put on by hand.

The woman sat in a rocking chair with her long hands folded idly
in her lap.  On the hands were white "half mits"--something
Janice knew were long out of fashion but which were once
considered very stylish indeed.

The woman's eyes were a shallow brown color--perhaps "faded"
would be a better expression.  It seemed as though she were too
languid even to look with attention at any one or anything.

"This is the girl, Sophrony," Miss Peckham repeated more sharply.

"Oh, yes," murmured the strange woman, as though awakened from a
brown study.  "Yes.  Quite a pretty little girl."

"Pretty is as pretty does," scoffed Miss Peckham.  "At any rate,
she's healthy.  Ain't you, Janice Day?"

"Ah--oh--yes, ma'am!" stammered Janice, "I guess I am."

"Well, I don't see the doctor going to your house none," said
Miss Peckham, in her snappy way.  "I guess I would ha' seen him
if he'd called."

"Oh, yes," agreed Janice, "you would have seen him."

"Heh?" Miss Peckham stared at the little girl sharply. But she
saw that Janice was quite innocent in making her comment.
"Well," said the maiden lady, "this is Mrs. Watkins."

Considering this an introduction, Janice came forward and offered
the faded looking woman her hand.  Mrs. Watkins' own hand
reminded Janice of a dead fish, and she was quite as glad to drop
it as Mrs. Watkins seemed to be to have it dropped.

"Oh, yes," said the latter woman, "she is a pretty girl."

"Mrs. Watkins has come to see me," explained Miss Peckham.  "She
an' I have been friends for years and years.  We used to go to
school together when we were girls."

"Oh!" said Janice.  But she could think of nothing else to say.
She did not understand why she was being taken into Miss
Peckham's confidence.

"Yes, Sophrony Watkins and I--Sophrony Shepley was her maiden
name.  She married Tom Watkins--and Tom was a shiftless critter,
if there ever was one."

Janice was startled.  Miss Peckham seemed to be unnecessarily
plain spoken.  But the languid Mrs. Watkins made no comment.

"And now Sophrony has come down to doin' for herself," went on
the neighborhood censor.  "I sent for her to come over here.
She's been livin' in Marietteville. You tell your pa that we'll
come into see him to-night after supper."

"Oh!" murmured Janice.  Then she "remembered her manners," and
said, smiling: "Please do, Miss Peckham. I will tell daddy you
are coming."

Miss Peckham waved her hand to dismiss her young neighbor.  "And
if 'twas me," she said complacently to her companion, "first
thing I'd do would be to cure that young one of calling her
father 'daddy.' That's silly."

Even this remark did not forewarn Janice of what was coming.  "I
just believe," she thought, going on her way, "that that
faded-out little woman is a book agent and will want to sell
daddy a set of books he'll never in this world read."

But in getting dinner and tidying up the dining room and living
room, Janice forgot all about Mrs. Sophronia Watkins.  Janice was
working very hard these days-- much harder than any girl of her
age should work.  The evening before she had fallen asleep over
her studies, and to-day her recitations had not been quite up to
the mark.

The lack of system in the housekeeping made everything harder for
her, too.  It was all right for daddy to help wash the dinner
dishes, and even to blacken the range and the gas stove as he did
on this evening, but there were dozens of things going wrong
every day in the house which neither Janice nor her father could
help.

There were the provision bills.  Janice knew very well that the
butcher took advantage of her ignorance.  She was always in a
hurry in the morning, running to school; and she could not stop
to see meat weighed, or vegetables properly picked out and
measured.

At Mr. Harriman's, the grocer's, it was not so bad. There were
certain articles of established standard that she knew her mother
had always ordered; but in the matter of butter and cheese and
eggs, she realized that she often ordered the best, and got
second or third quality and first-quality prices.

Had she been able to spend the time marketing she would have
conserved some of daddy's money and things would have been much
better on the table.  Yet, with the kind of houseworkers they had
had, much of the good food that was bought was spoiled in the
cooking.

Daddy sometimes said: "The Lord sends the food, but the cooks
don't all come from heaven, that is sure, Janice."

He was vigorously polishing the cookstove on this Wednesday
evening and they were cheerfully talking and joking, when the
sound of bootheels on the side porch announced the coming of
visitors.

"Oh, dear me! who can that be?" whispered Janice.

"Save me, My Lady--save me!" cried daddy, appearing to be very
much frightened, and dodging behind the stove.  "Don't let the
neighbors in until I have got rid of this blacking brush and got
on my vest and  coat--"

But the caller who now hammered on the door with quick knuckles
was no bashful person.  Mr. Day had no chance to escape from the
kitchen Miss Peckham turned the knob and walked right in.

"Come in, Sophrony," she said, over her shoulder, to the person
who came behind her.  "You can see well enough that this man and
his gal need somebody to take hold for 'em.  Come right in."



CHAPTER XII. THE FADED-OUT LADY

Janice was not as much surprised--at first as her father was by
the appearance of the spinster and Mrs. Watkins. She remembered
that Miss Peckham had said she would call this evening, although
the girl had not expected her at the back door.

Their neighbor had managed to time her appearance at a rather
inopportune moment, and when daddy rose up from behind the stove
to confront the two women, in a voluminous apron and with a
smutch across his cheek, Janice could not entirely smother her
amusement.

"Oh!  Oh!"  she giggled.  "Good evening, Miss Peckham! This--this
is Mrs. Watkins, Daddy," and she directed her father's attention
to the faded-out lady.  "Ahem! I am glad to see you, Miss
Peckham--and Mrs. Watkins," Mr. Day said, bowing in that nice way
of his that Janice so much admired.  Even with a blacking brush
in one hand and a can of stove polish in the other, Mr. Broxton
Day was very much the gentleman.

"You find us considerably engaged in domestic work," continued
Mr. Day, a smile wreathing his lips and his eyes twinkling.  "And
if you don't mind, I'll finish my job before giving you my full
attention.  Janice, take

Miss Peckham and her friend into the living room."

"Oh, no.  You needn't bother," said Miss Peckham shortly.
"Here's chairs, and we can sit down.  It's interesting to watch a
man try to do housework, I've no doubt."

"You said something then, Miss Peckham," said Mr. Day,
cheerfully, and began industriously daubing the stove covers.

"I brought Mrs. Watkins in here to see you, Mr. Day, 'cause I got
your welfare and hers at heart," pursued the spinster.

That sounded rather ominous, and Mr. Day poised the dauber and
stared doubtfully from his neighbor to the washed-out looking
woman.

"Mrs. Watkins is a widow," went on Miss Peckham.

Mr. Day made a sympathetic sound with his lips, but fell to
polishing now, making the stove covers rattle. Miss Peckham
raised her voice a notch.  "She's a widow, and she's seen
trouble."

"We're born to it--as the sparks fly upward," observed
Mr. Day, under his breath.

"Mrs. Watkins has come to an age when nobody can say she's
flighty, I sh'd hope," continued Miss Peckham. "She's settled.
And she's got to earn her livin'."

"Now, Marthy!" objected Mrs. Watkins.

"Well, 'tis so, Sophrony, ain't it?" demanded her friend.

"Oh, of course, expenses are heavy, and it's desirable that I
should--should--well, add to my income.  But I've come to no
great age, Marthy Peckham, I'd have you know!"

"Oh, bosh, Sophrony!" ejaculated Miss Peckham.  "Well, as I say,
Mr. Day, Mrs. Watkins is a widow, and she needs a settled place."

"Just what are you trying to get at, Miss Peckham?  I don't
understand you," asked Mr. Day, his face actually getting rather
pale.

Neither did Janice understand; but her father looked so funny
that the girl giggled again.  Miss Peckham gave her a reproving
glance.

"I sh'd think you'd understand your need well enough, Broxton
Day," she said sternly. "First of all that gal ought to be
learned manners.  But that's incidental, as you might say.  What
I am tellin' you is, that here's your chance to get a housekeeper
that'll amount to something."

"Oh!  Ah!  I see!" exclaimed Mr. Day in staccato fashion, and
evidently very much relieved.  "Mrs. Watkins is looking for a
position?"

"Well, she ought to be.  But it does take a stick of dynamite to
get her goin', seems to me.  Speak up, Sophrony!"

"Why, I'm pleased to meet you, Mr. Day," said the faded-out lady,
simpering.  "I've been considerin' acceptin' a position such as
you have.  Of course, I ain't used to working out--"

"Oh, fiddlesticks? put in Miss Peckham, "He don't care nothin'
about that, Sophrony.  He can see you ain't no common servant."

"Assuredly I can see that, Mrs. Watkins," said Mr. Day, suavely.
"But do you think you would care to accept such a position as I
can offer you?"

"I should be pleased to try it," said Mrs. Watkins, with a sigh.
"Of course, it would be a comedown for me--"

"Land's sake, Sophrony!" ejaculated her friend, "with me to
sponsor you, I don't guess anybody in this neighborhood will
undertake to criticize."

"Wait a moment," said Mr. Day, and Janice was delighted to see
that he was not entirely carried off his feet. "Let us understand
each other.  I pay so much a month," naming a fair sum, "and I
expect the cooking and all the housework except the heavy washing
done by whoever takes the place."

"Well, now, Mr. Day," began Mrs. Watkins, "you see, I shouldn't
expect to be treated just like an ordinary servant.  Oh, no."

"That's what I tell her," snorted Miss Peckham.

"Folks that have had the off-scourings of the earth, like you
have had, Broxton Day, in your kitchen, ain't used to having
lady-help about the house."

"I hope Janice and I will appreciate Mrs. Watkins' efforts, if
she wishes to try the place," Mr. Day said, in rather a
bewildered tone.

"That gal herself can do a good deal I sh'd think, morning and
night.  She ain't helpless," said Miss Peckham, staring at
Janice.

"Janice has her school work to do," said Mr. Day firmly.  "She
takes care of her own room and does other little things.  But
unless Mrs. Watkins wishes to undertake the full responsibility
of the housework it would be useless for her to come."

He was firm on that point.  The faded-out lady smiled feebly.  "I
am always willing to do as far as I can," she sighed.  "The work
for three people can't be so much.  I am perfectly willing to
try, Mr. Day.  I'm sure nothin' could be fairer than that."

Daddy and Janice looked at each other for an instant. It flashed
through both their minds that the faded-out lady did not sound
very encouraging.  Later when the two had gone, daddy put away
the blacklug tools, saying:

"Well, it will be a new experience, Janice.  She is different
from anybody we have ever had before."

"Oh, Daddy! I think she's funny," gasped the girl.

He smiled at her broadly, shaking his head.  "I presume she does
seem funny to you.  But at least she is a ladylike person.  We
must treat her nicely."

"Why, as though we wouldn't!" gasped Janice.

"But don't offend her by showing her you are amused," warned her
father.  "That may be hard, for it does strike me that Mrs.
Sophronia Watkins is a character, and no mistake."

"I wouldn't hurt her feelings for the world," declared Janice.
"But, Daddy, do you suppose it is rouge she has on her face?  And
does she use a lipstick?"

"For goodness' sake!  Where did you hear about such things?" he
laughed.

"Why, of course I know something about most everything," declared
Janice, quite confidently.  "And her face doesn't look just
natural."

"Don't get too curious, Janice," he said laughing.  "If she can
cook and keep the house clean, as far as I am concerned she can
paint herself like a Piute chief."

One shock, however, Mr. Broxton Day was not exactly prepared for.
Mrs. Watkins came to the house the next day for a late
breakfast--which she got herself, Janice and her father having
already cooked their own and eaten it.

"I haven't been used to getting up very early," confessed the
woman, preening a bit.  "But, of course, I shall change my
breakfast hour to conform with yours."

"I hope so," said Broxton Day, hurrying away to business.

He got the shock mentioned at night when he came to the dinner
table.  The table was very neatly set; but there were three
places.  The meal was not elaborate but the food seemed to be
cooked all right.  Mrs. Watkins brought in the dishes and then
sat down with Mr. Day and Janice to eat.

Janice did not look at daddy, but her own face was rather red and
she was uncomfortable.

"Your daughter," said Mrs. Watkins severely, informs me that you
have not been in the habit of having anybody at your table at
meal time but your two selves.  Of course, I could only engage to
assist you here with the understanding that I am to be considered
one of the family."

"Why--er--yes; that will be all right," Janice's father said,
though a bit doubtfully.  "It would scarcely do to consider you,
Mrs. Watkins, in the same category as the ordinary help Janice
and I have had."

"I am glad you see it that way," said the faded-out lady.  And
she was quite colorless at the moment.  It was evident that the
rouge and lip-stick were used only on important occasions.

"I am glad you see it that way," she repeated.  "I could consider
no let-down as a lady, in accepting any position.  Manual labor
is no shame; but one must be true to one's upbringing."

"Quite so, Mrs. Watkins--quite so," agreed Mr. Day.

"Janice, child," said the woman quickly, "run out to the kitchen
and get the rest of the potatoes.  And see if the coffee is
ready."

Her tone rather startled Janice; but she did as she was bade and
that without even a glance at daddy.

"I never consider I have had a real dinner," Mrs. Watkins
continued, "unless I have a bit of good cheese with it.  I find
none in the house, Mr. Day.  Indeed," she added, "your pantry
sadly needs stocking up."

"Why--er--that may be so.  We have been living a good deal
'catch-as-catch-can,'" and he smiled upon her.  "Give Janice a
list of the things you need, and she will go to Harriman's for
you in the morning."

"No.  I prefer to do my own marketing, always.  A child like
Janice--thank you Janice, for the potatoes-- can scarcely be
expected to use judgment in the selection of provisions.  You
might telephone to the stores where you are in the habit of
trading and inform them that I have charge of your household now.
They will then expect me."

"Oh, well!  All right," he said, but doubtfully.

"I have not yet brought my bag from Marthy's, next door.  I will
go after it when dinner is over, while Janice clears the table.
I will send for my trunk, which is at Marietteville, later."

"Suit yourself, Mrs. Watkins," said Mr. Day.

"Have you any choice as to which of the two empty bedrooms I
consider mine?" the woman asked, heaping her plate a second time
with food.

"What's that?" asked Mr. Day, rather non-plussed.

"Which chamber shall I sleep in?" she repeated, quite calmly.

"Why--I--  Really, Mrs. Watkins, isn't the small room beyond
Janice's quite sufficient for you?" he asked, a little color
coming into his face now.

"Oh, my dear Mr. Day!  I could not consider that for a moment.
Why, that is the girl's room--merely a bedroom for the hired
help.  I could not possibly consider myself in the same class--"

"Except on pay-day, Mrs. Watkins?" asked the man bluntly.  "We
are glad to have you with us, of course; and we will consider
your quite different status in the family, as you demand.  But--"

"No, Mr. Day," Mrs. Watkins said with decision, interrupting him.
"I could not contemplate for a moment occupying the girl's room.
Why you might want it again any time."

"Not while you are with us," said Mr. Day wonderingly. "I do not
think I could afford to have two helpers."

"It does not matter," said the faded-out lady stubbornly.
"Janice, get the coffee now.  It does not matter.  I refuse
positively to sleep in that little, poked-up room.  I prefer my
windows opening to the east."

"But the east room is the one Mrs. Day always used," said the
man, with sudden hoarseness.  "I cannot allow you to use that
one.  The spare chamber on the other side of the hall, if you
insist."

"Very well," said the woman with a small toss of her head.  "Will
you have a cup of coffee, Mr. Day?"

"No, Mrs. Watkins.  I prefer a cup of tea at dinner time.  A New
England habit that has clung to me."

"Indeed? Janice, go and make your father a cup of tea, that's a
good child."

"Never mind, Janice," said daddy quickly.  "I do not wish it now.
And, Mrs. Watkins."

"Yes, Mr. Day?" simpered the faded-out lady.

"I wish it distinctly understood that Janice is to give her
complete attention to her school work between dinner and bedtime,
unless she should chance to have more freedom during those hours
than is usual.  She will assist you as you may have need after
school, and even in the morning before she goes to school.  But
the hours after dinner are for her school work.  Do you quite
understand me, Mrs. Watkins?"

Mrs. Watkins' pale, wrinkled face did not color in the least, nor
did the washed-out brown eyes change their expression.  But there
was an added sharpness to the woman's voice:

"You object to Janice's giving me a hand with the lighter tasks,
Mr. Day?" she queried.

"Not at all.  But her education must not be neglected."

"Ah!  I quite understand," sniffed Mrs. Watkins.  "You object to
my going out this evening then?  But I really must have my bag
with my toilet requisites."

"I have no wish to restrict your use of the evening, as long as
your work is done," said Mr. Day, rising from the table.  "Come,
Janice, it is time you were at your books."

He led the way into the living room.  Mrs. Watkins gave a violent
sniff at their departure.  Then she finished her coffee.



CHAPTER XIII. STELLA'S PARTY

It was not going to be altogether pleasant sailing with Mrs
Watkins in the house.  Broxton Day saw that to be the fact,
plainly and almost immediately.  Janice had realized it even
before her father had occasion to mark Mrs. Watkins' most
prominent characteristic.

She was a person who was determined to take advantage if she
could.  In the parlance of the section of the country from which
Broxton Day hailed, she was one of those persons who "if you give
'em an inch they take an ell."

From the first she made a strong attempt to carry things with a
high hand.  Mr. Day was almost sorry he had allowed her to come
into the house.  Mrs. Watkins did most of the housekeeping from
her station in a rocking chair on the porch where she sat,
wearing the mitts aforementioned.

Her idea of keeping the house in order was to clean all the rooms
that were not absolutely needed, and then close them up tight,
draw the shades down and close the blinds, making of each an
airless tomb into which Janice was made to feel she must not
enter for fear of admitting a speck of dirt.

Most of the work was done on Saturday, when Janice was at home.
There was no playtime now for the girl-- none at all.

But Janice would not complain.  Mrs. Watkins could be very mean
and petty, indeed; but to daddy she showed her best side.  And as
far as he saw, the house was run much better than had been the
case of late.

Mrs. Watkins was ladylike in her demeanor.  They became used to
her sitting at the table with them and quite governing the trend
of conversation at meals, as she did.  Neither Janice nor her
father liked to have the woman bring her tatting, which was her
usual evening employment, into the living-room after dinner, for
that was the only time when daughter and father could be
confidential.  But they did not see how they could overcome this
annoyance without offending the woman.

At the end of the month Mr. Day was startled by the increase in
the household bills.  Mrs. Watkins had served them rather better
food, it was true, than they had been getting of late; but a good
many cutlets, sweetbreads, chops and steaks, seemed never to have
appeared on the dinner table.

"I always feel the need of a hearty lunch Mr. Day," sniffed Mrs.
Watkins.  "I really need it after doing the morning's work.  To
keep one's self in condition is a duty we owe ourselves don't you
think?"

"You seem to have stocked up pretty well with canned goods, Mrs.
Watkins," was Broxton Day's rejoinder, now scanning the long
memorandum from Harriman's.  "Dear, dear!  French peas?  And
imported marmalade?  And canned mushrooms? Do you use all these
things, Mrs. Watkins?"

"Oh, they are most useful, Mr. Day.  One never knows when one may
have company or wish to make a special dish.  I have been used to
the best, Mr. Day.  Of course, if you wish to limit my
purchases--" and she sniffed.

"Humph!  I am not a rich man.  We are not in the habit of using
imported provisions of this quality.  I expect you to buy good
food and all that is sufficient.  But such luxuries as these we
cannot afford."

Mrs. Watkins merely sniffed again.  Broxton Day, when he paid the
bills at the stores, pointed out to Mr. Harriman and to the
butcher that the goods bought seemed to cost considerably more
than they previously had.

"Why, Mr. Day, you are buying a different quality of goods from
what you have been used to," said Harriman. "Here's butter, for
instance.  That is our best-- print butter, seven cents a pound
higher than the tub butter you used to buy.  Those eggs are
selected white Leghorns, come to us sealed in boxes, and are
fifteen cents more a dozen than ordinary fresh eggs."

The butcher told him something else.  "Yes, you are getting the
best grade of everything we carry, Mr. Day. That lady at your
house evidently knows what she wants."

"Look here!" exclaimed Broxton Day, with some heat.  "I haven't
suddenly become a millionaire.  I can't stand these prices.  When
she comes in here to buy, give her the grade of meat we have
always had.  And remember that I can't, and won't, pay for
sweetbreads at a dollar and a half a pair."

"Why, bless you!" said the butcher, grinning, "I've never seen
the lady.  She always telephones.  She's some relative of yours,
isn't she, Mr. Day?  She certainly does order high-handed."

"And she wanted to do the marketing herself," groaned Broxton
Day, as he went away after paying the bill.  "I wonder what I am
up against?  Things do go better at the house; but I wonder if I
can stand the pressure."

He did not know how much Janice had to do with making things at
the house go so much more smoothly.  The little girl was
determined that daddy should not be troubled by household matters
if she could help it.

With Olga Cedarstrom or the half-foolish Delia in the house, it
was impossible to keep from daddy's eyes the things that went
wrong.  Now it was different.  Mrs. Watkins was very sly in
making everything appear all right before Broxton Day.  On the
other hand Janice showed an equal amount of slyness (of which she
had been previously accused!) in helping hide the numerous things
that would have troubled daddy.

There was waste in the kitchen.  Mrs. Watkins was a big eater,
but a delicate eater.  She never wished to see the same thing on
the table twice.  A poor family could have been fed fairly well
from what the woman flung into the garbage.

Janice had never been used to seeing such recklessness, even when
only an ignorant servant was doing the work. At those times food
was bought with a less lavish hand. Now there was seldom anything
left, so Mrs. Watkins said, from one meal to warm up for another.

"I don't know what to do--I really don't," Janice confessed to
Any Carringford who, by this time, had become her very closest
friend and confidante.  "Daddy has many business troubles, I
know.  It bothers him greatly to be annoyed by household matters.
And he ought not to be so annoyed.  But that woman!"

"It is too bad, honey," Amy said.  "I wish my mother could help
you.  She knows everything about housekeeping."

"I know that is so," agreed Janice.  "I wish Mrs. Watkins was a
lady like your mother, Amy.  Then the house would go all right
and daddy needn't be bothered at all.  I feel I ought to do
something; but I don't know what."

Aside from cooking the meals, which she did very nicely, it must
be confessed, Mrs. Watkins gradually allowed most of the
responsibility for the housework to slide on to Janice's young
shoulders.

The young girl got up an hour earlier than usual, and she busied
herself sweeping and dusting and making beds right up to the
minute she had to seize her books and lunch and run to school.
She was quite sure that Mrs. Watkins went back to bed after
breakfast, and really did little towards keeping the house in
order until afternoon.

And if there was any scrubbing, or hard work to do, that was left
until Saturday.  Nobody ever saw Mrs. Watkins on her knees,
unless it was at her devotions!

However, Janice Day was too sanguine to be made melancholy by
these affairs.  She was of a naturally cheerful nature--an
attribute she inherited from her father.  It took more than the
faded-out lady to cause the girl overwhelming anxiety.

The stroke that had been the hardest for her to bear since her
mother's death was the loss of the treasure-box and the heirlooms
in it.  Whether or not the Swedish girl, Olga Cedarstrom, had
carried the valuables away with her, Janice felt all the time
that she had only herself to blame because of the loss.  And she
realized that the loss of the packet of letters had saddened
daddy dreadfully.

"If I had not been careless!  If I had put the box back into the
wall-safe before I went to bed!  If I had remembered when I saw
Arlo Junior and the cats!  Dear me," murmured Janice more than
once, "'If,' 'if,' 'if!' If the rabbit hadn't stopped for a nap
beside the track, the tortoise would not have won the race."

"But, what under the sun," Gummy Carringford asked, "could have
become of Olga and her fella?  That is certainly a mystery."

With Amy and her brother, the boy with the odd name, Janice often
discussed the lost treasure-box.  She and daddy did not speak so
much together about it as at first.  It seemed to be hopelessly
lost.

With the Carringfords Janice had become very friendly, as has
been said.  In the first place, Mrs. Carringford very much liked
Janice Day.  And how could she and her children help but be
grateful to the little girl who lived at Eight-forty-five Knight
Street?

The birthday party at Stella Lathams' house was now at hand.
Mrs. Carringford had not yet been able to make over Mr. Day's
clothes to fit Gummy; and he was not invited to the party,
anyway.  He was one grade in advance of the three girls in
school, and Stella considered this excuse enough for not inviting
him to her birthday fete.  But Amy was radiant in the pink and
white frock Janice had donated.

"Never mind," said Gummy, who was of a cheerful spirit, too.
"I'm glad the party will be on Friday instead of Saturday night.
I'll be out of the store early enough Friday night to come to the
Latham place to beau you girls home."

"Maybe we'll have beaux of our own and won't want you," said Amy
roguishly.

"Don't mind what she says, Gummy," cried Janice.  "I won't have
any beau but you.  I shall expect you.  So don't fail me."

Stella Latham's expectations had been high, indeed, regarding her
party; nor was she disappointed.  Her father and mother had done
everything they thought would please their only daughter; and
surely the cost had not been considered.

The house, and the grounds around it, were charmingly
lighted--the outside lamps being those gaudy and curious forms
containing lighted candles, and called Japanese lanterns.

The Latham place on the Dover pike, was one of the show places of
the countryside.  Mr. Latham was wealthy and could well afford to
give his daughter's friends an entertainment that might better,
perhaps, have been offered older guests.

Stella was growing up too fast.  Because she was aping older and
foolishly fashionable folk, she was becoming an exacting,
precocious girl--not at all the innocent and joyous child she
should have been at fourteen years of age.

Her mother feared that all was not right with Stella; yet she was
too weak and easy-going a woman to correct her daughter with a
strong hand.  She had observed Janice Day on two occasions when
the latter had come with other young friends of Stella's to the
house, and had commented favorably upon Janice's character.

"There is a girl you might pattern after, Stella, and it would do
you good," said the somewhat unwise Mrs. Latham.

"Humph! I don't see why you say that, Ma," said Stella. "Janice
Day isn't half as pretty as Mary Pierce.  And she dresses in half
mourning because of her mother's death.  She hasn't got any style
about her."

"She is a very shrewd and sensible young person," declared Mrs.
Latham.  "I wish you were more like her."

It was from this remark that Stella had derived the statement
that Janice was "sly."  That term, quite justly, might have been
applied to Stella.  For Stella would have cared very little if
neither Janice nor Amy Carringford had come to the birthday
party.

Only Mr. Latham had insisted that his daughter should invite
every girl in her grade at school.  He was wiser than his wife.

"You don't want any ill-feelings among your mates," he told
Stella.

Janice Day, therefore, whether "shrewd" or "sly," had helped
Stella in the matter of fulfilling Mr. Latham's command.  Amy, as
sweet as a rose, appeared in the pretty pink and white dress that
had been made by the dear fingers of Janice's mother.

At first Janice could scarcely look at her friend in the frock
without feeling the tears start to her eyes. But, then,she knew
that mother would have approved fully of this gift she had made.
And Amy Carringford was good and attractive.

There was such a large number of young folks at the Latham place
that evening that when it came time for the refreshments, every
one of the farmer's hired help was called in, either as waiters
or in the kitchen.

It took a good many waiters, too, for there were many steps to be
taken back and forth to the kitchen.  Mr. Latham had had a large
canvas canopy stretched out in one corner of the yard, and under
this were set the tables.  And pretty, indeed, did they look
under the soft lights of the numerous candles in their shiny
whiteness of heavy napery, polished silver, dainty porcelain, and
brilliant cutglass.

What appealed more, however, to the hearty appetites of the young
people were the quantifies of sandwiches, the olives and pickles
and the bowls of salad, the rich cakes, the heaps of ice-cream,
the hot chocolate.  The Lathams were lavish at all times, and
when they gave a formal party the table was heaped with the
richest and most delicious food they could provide.  No wonder it
took many hands to make things run smoothly.

"Goodness!" said Stella, within hearing of Janice and Amy,
"there's such a crowd in that kitchen you've no idea!  And some
of the help are perfectly useless!  You know, mother had the
folks come up from both tenant houses to help, and one of the
women--the Swedish one --has just broken one of mother's biggest
cutglass dishes."

"I thought I heard a crash out there," said Janice.

"It is too bad," Amy added.  "Of course the woman did not mean
to."

"Well!" sniffed Stella, "that won't make the dish whole.  It's
worth money, too."

"Dear me," said Amy reflectively.  "I guess Swedish girls must be
bad luck.  You know, it was a Swedish girl that stole that box
from Janice."

"What box?" asked Stella, quickly.  "A jewel box?"

"All the jewelry I owned," said Janice, with rather a rueful
smile.  "But more than that.  Mother's miniature --and other
things.  At least, we suppose that Olga took the box when she
left us so hurriedly."

"Olga!" exclaimed Stella.  "Fancy!  You don't mean that was her
name?"

"Yes, 'Olga' she was called," Janice said wonderingly.

"That's the name Of this girl that broke the dish."

"Why, how funny!" exclaimed Amy
.
"That's not funny," rejoined Janice seriously.  "Is she named
Olga Cedarstrom?"

"Goodness!  I don't know her last name.  She comes from one of
our tenant houses.  It's far away.  Mother sent her home with a
flea in her ear, now I tell you, after she had broken that dish."

Janice was disturbed.  "I wish you knew her last name. What sort
of looking girl is she?  Are you sure she has already left the
house?"

"Come on!"  cried Amy, jumping up.  "Let's run around there and
see.  Take us to the kitchen door, Stella."

"Well, yes.  We can look.  But I guess she has gone," said the
farmer's daughter.

They had been sitting on the front porch.  Stella led them
quickly around to the rear of the big house.



CHAPTER XIV. COULD IT BE OLGA?

It was a beautiful evening, this of Stella Latham's birthday
party.  It was not often that the climate gave the people of
Greensboro, this early in the season, such a soft and temperate
night.

There was no moon, but the stars plentifully besprinkled the
heavens, and their light bathed the area surrounding the Latham
house, beyond the radiance of the Japanese lanterns, sufficiently
for the three girls to see objects at some distance.

Before they reached the back door of the farmhouse, Amy cried
aloud:

"Oh, girls!  What's that?  A ghost?"

"Ghost your granny!" exclaimed Stella.  "That is somebody running
along the hedge in a white skirt."

"It is a woman or a girl," Janice agreed, staring at the rapidly
moving figure.  "Is there a path there?"

"That is the path to one tenant house.  Wait till I ask Anna, the
cook."

She hurried to the back door, and her two friends, waiting at the
pasture-lane bars, heard her ask if the woman who had broken the
dish had gone.

"The awkward thing!" exclaimed Anna, the cook.  "She's just this
minute left."

"What is her name, Anna?" asked Stella, knowing that Janice was
deeply interested.

"I don't know, Miss.  Some outlandish Swedish name."

"Olga?"

"Humph! Maybe!"

"Olga Cedarstrom?"

"Goodness me!  Don't ask me what else besides 'Olga' she is
named," said the irritable cook, "for I couldn't tell you.  I
couldn't tell you my own name, scarcely, to-night.  I'm that
flurried."

Hearing all this plainly, Janice murmured to Amy: "I wish I dared
follow her.  Suppose it should be Olga?"

"Well, she is going right to that small house that belongs to Mr.
Latham.  Stella says she lives there, whoever she is."

Just then a figure popped up beside them.  Gummy's cheerful voice
demanded:

"What's the trouble, girls?"

"Oh!" cried Janice.

"Goodness!" said the boy's sister.  "How you scare one, Gummy!
Why, it isn't near time to go home."

"I got off earlier than I expected.  So I came out and have been
hanging around at the back here for half an hour."

"Oh.  Gummy!  did you see that woman?"  Janice asked, seizing his
jacket sleeve.

"What woman?"

"See there?' cried his sister, pointing.  "That white thing going
over the hill."

"Yes, I saw her.  She came out of the kitchen, and she was
crying.  They had a row in there."

"Oh, Gummy!  What did she look like?" murmured Janice.

"Yes, Gummy, tell us quick!" urged his sister.

"I tell you she was crying, and she had her handkerchief up to
her face.  So I did not see much of it.  But her hair was 'lasses
color, and she had it bobbed back so tight that I guess she
couldn't shut her eyes until she undid it," chuckled Gummy.

"Oh, Amy!" ejaculated Janice, with clasped hands, "that is the
way Olga used to do her hair."

"Not Olga, the Swede, who robbed you?" demanded the boy,
interested at once.

"Yes.  It might be Olga.  If you had only seen her  face--"

"I'll see her face all right," declared Gummy, starting off.
"I'll tell you just where she goes and what she looks like.
Don't you girls go home without me."

He was gone on the track of the flying woman like a dart.  He was
out of sight, being in dark garments, before Stella came back
from the kitchen door.

"Don't tell her about Gummy," whispered Amy quickly. "She'll
think, maybe, that he's been hanging around like those strange
boys over the fence in front."

"Not a word," agreed Janice, smiling.  "I wouldn't give Gummy
away."

"There isn't anybody in the kitchen who knows that girl very
well," said Stella, who was really showing herself interested in
Janice Day's trouble.  "I asked them all. This girl, Olga, is
staying with Mrs. Johnson.  Mrs. Johnson has a little baby to
care for and couldn't come to-night.  So this friend of hers came
up to help.  And she helped all right!" concluded Stella, with
emphasis. "That dish is in a thousand pieces."

"Isn't it too bad?" said Amy, sympathetically.

"It's a mean shame," Stella declared.  "I bet she'd steal.  You'd
better come over here tomorrow and find her.  I'll bring you back
in the auto with me after I go shopping, and we'll ride around by
Mr. Johnson's house.  He's one of father's farmers, you know."

"I'll tell daddy," Janice said, but in some doubt. "I'm awfully
much obliged to you, Stella.  You are real kind."

This pleased Stella Latham.  She liked being praised, and as long
as kindness did not cost her much of anything, she was glad to be
kind.

The entertainment of her boy and girl friends continued gaily,
despite the breaking of the big cutglass dish. It was almost
eleven o'clock when the party broke up and the guests began to
leave, shouting their congratulations to Stella as they went.

Janice and Amy Carringford found Gummy waiting for them at the
front gate.

"Oh, Gummy!" whispered Janice, "did you see her?"

"Sure," declared the boy.  "That's what I went after, wasn't it?
A sight of the Swedish girl's  phisamahogany?"

"Gummy!" remonstrated his sister.

"But was it Olga?" demanded Janice, too deeply interested in the
subject of Olga to be patient with sisterly reproof.

"Oh, say!  How can I be sure of that?  I never saw her before."

"Tell us all about it, Gummy," urged Janice.

"Why, you see," said the excited boy.  "I ran's hard as I could
and I overbrook that girl at the took"

"What? What?" gasped Janice.  "Say that again, Gummy."

"Oh--I--"

His sister went off into a gale of laughter.  "Oh, Gummy!" she
cried, "you 'overbrook' her at the 'took,' did you?  Your
tongue's twisted again."

"Oh, pshaw!" exclaimed Gummy.  "Of course, I mean I overtook her
at the brook."

"That's better," giggled Amy.  "But you did get awfully 'gummed
up,' Gummy, didn't you?"

"Huh!" he snorted.

"He's the most awful boy you ever saw, Janice.  He is always
getting twisted in his talk."

"Like the young man in church who asked the girl if he could
'occupew a seat in this pie?'"

"Even worse than that," cried Amy, much to her brother's disgust.
"Why, years ago when we lived in Napsburg, where the twins were
born, he made an awful mistake--and to our minister, too."

"Aw," objected Gummy, "can't you keep anything to yourself?"

"Go on," urged Janice.

"Now, I say!" again protested the boy.

"Listen, Janice!" giggled Amy.  "It's awfully funny. The minister
met Gummy on the street and asked him what we had decided to call
the twins.

"'You know, I expect to christen them, Gumswith,' he said to
Gummy, 'and I want to be sure to get the names right.  What are
they?'

"And what do you suppose Gummy said?"

"I am sure I couldn't guess," Janice declared.  "Let's see: the
twins are Sydney and Kate, aren't they?

"That is right," giggled Amy.  "But Gummy told the minister we
had decided to call them 'Kidney and Steak'!"

Janice herself was convulsed with laughter at this. Gummy was
annoyed about it.

"Why don't you keep something to yourself once in a while, Amy?"
he growled to his sister.  "Janice will think I'm a perfect
chump."

"Come on now, Gummy," Janice interrupted cheerily. "You are
keeping something to yourself that I very much want to know."

"Oh!  About that Swede!  Amy knocked it clear out of my head,"
declared the boy.

"Well, let us hear about it," urged Janice.

"Why, I overtook the girl at the brook," said Gummy, getting the
statement right this time.  "She might be just the girl you are
looking for, from what you told me about her looks.  I saw her
face plainly when I passed her."

"Where did she go?"

"To that little house at the end of the farm road, just where it
opens into the turnpike.  Oh, I've seen the place before.  I
drove out past there the other day for Mr. Harriman."

"That must be the Johnson's house," Janice said.  "That is what
Stella said the tenant's name was."

"Well, she went in there," said Gummy.  "She seemed in a dreadful
hurry.  She pounded on the door, and she called to them in
Swedish.  I waited behind the hedge until she got in and the
family was quieted down again."

"That's good!  It's 'most sure to be Olga, Janice, and you can
see her to-morrow and get your box back--at least, find out where
it is," said Amy encouragingly.

"Well, I'll tell daddy," sighed Janice.  "It may be the same
Olga.  I hope so.  And if she has got my box of treasures--well!
I'll forgive her anything if I only get back mother's picture and
daddy's letters."



CHAPTER XV. THE LOST TRAIL

Mr. Day had not yet gone to bed when the young folks reached the
house; but Mrs. Watkins had long since retired.  The light in the
living room assured Janice that her father awaited her return,
and bidding Amy and Gummy good-night at the gate, she ran into
the house in great excitement.

"Oh, Daddy! Daddy! Guess!" she cried to him.  "Just think!  She
broke a big cutglass dish, and I'm 'most sure it's Olga--"

"Wait!"  exclaimed Mr. Day, putting up both hands. "Mercy, I
pray, my dear.  I don't know what you are talking about."

"But you know Olga, Daddy."

"To my sorrow," he groaned, "It can't be that you have found out
anything about that Swedish girl?  I have been searching
Pickletown again this evening."

"Oh, Daddy!" she cried, "maybe Olga is just where you can find
her to-morrow.  And she did break one of Mrs. Latham's very best
dishes, and--"

"Let us hear all about this in due order," laughed Broxton Day.
"I can see that you are far too much excited to go promptly to
bed.  Explain yourself, my dear."

When he had heard it all, he did not appear to be as much
impressed as Janice expected him to be.  It was a small chance,
in his opinion, that the girl who had broken Mrs. Latham's dish
was the same Olga who had for two months held sway in the Day
kitchen.

"But we will make a pilgrimage to the cottage on the back of the
Latham farm," Daddy promised.  "If I can get away from the bank
early to-morrow afternoon, we will go.  I know the place, and
there is a family of Swedish people living there.  Of course, by
chance, it might be Olga your friend Gummy followed home."

"Oh, no!  It would be providential, Daddy," Janice declared,
smiling.  "You say yourself that Providence is not chance."

"True," he agreed, with gravity.  "If we get back the
treasure-box, with all in it, I shall be very, very thankful
indeed, and shall consider it a Providential happening."

"Daddy, dear!" whispered Janice.

It was at these times, when they spoke of the lost treasures,
that Janice was so heart-stricken because of daddy's expression
of countenance.  Those letters from her dear, dead mother, which
her father prized so highly, were continually in Broxton Day's
mind.  She realized it was a loss that time would hardly mend.

"And all my fault!  All my fault!"  she sobbed when she was alone
in her bedroom.  "Had I not been so dreadfully careless Olga
would never have got hold of that box when she was mad and run
off with it.  And suppose she doesn't think the things in it are
worth much?  She might throw them away!"

So, despite the good time they had had at Stella Latham's party,
Janice went to bed in no happy frame of mind.

Saturday was bound to be a very busy day; and Janice did not wake
up early.  Daddy left a note for her on the table saying he would
be at home with some kind of a conveyance not long after the bank
closed at one o'clock.

She knew what that meant.  They were to ride out to the Johnson
house and make inquiries for the girl, Olga. Janice was sorry she
had slept so late, for Mrs. Watkins expected her to do what she
termed "her share" of the work.

"If your pa lets you sit up till all hours, so that you're not
fit for anything in the morning, should I be blamed?" complained
the faded-out lady.  "I'm sure I have enough to do every day, and
all day.  I have got to have some help on Saturdays and that is
all there is to it."

Janice knew well enough that the reason the work piled up so upon
the last day of the week was because it was allowed to accumulate
through the other days.  But the kitchen floor did have to be
scrubbed.  It was a sight!

If the woman would only mop it every other day it would not be so
bad; but it seemed to Janice that Mrs. Watkins would just wade
through dirt to her knees in the kitchen before she would use
either mop or scrubbing brush.

It was true that daddy did not often look into the kitchen, now
that there was somebody supposedly capable of keeping the room,
as well as the rest of the house, in order.  And Janice was glad
he did not look around the house much.

Such training as she had enjoyed under her mother's eye had made
Janice thorough.  Mrs. Day had been a thoroughly good
housekeeper.

And she had always kept so well up with her housework that there
were never any difficult jobs left to haunt one, and her house
looked always neat.  Nor was she obliged to keep half her
prettily furnished rooms shut up to keep them clean!

Janice did all she could on this short Saturday morning.  She had
first of all to he sure that daddy's room was dusted--every bit.
Then there were the halls and stairs to do.  After those, the
porches must be swept.

"For you know," sighed Mrs. Watkins, "it looks so much better for
a child like you to be out sweeping the porch and paths than what
it would me."

Janice could not quite understand this reasoning.  But she knew
it must be a deal easier for Mrs. Watkins to rock in a chair in
the house than to wield the broom. That went without saying.

She did not think of lunch, although the faded-out lady did not
neglect her own.  Janice was down on her hands and knees, with
scrubbing brush and pail, when the housekeeper carried some
savory dish or other into the dining room.

"I presume since you had your breakfast so late you will not care
to eat now," said the woman.  To tell the truth, a tear or two
dropped into the strong soda water in the pail.

"Though I don't believe salt will help start the grease-spots on
this floor," Janice thought, rubbing her eyes with the wrist of
one hand.  "There! I am a regular cry-baby.  I said I would do
something to relieve daddy of bothering about the housework.  And
if scrubbing a floor is the best I can do--"

Suddenly a shadow appeared at the door.  Janice looked up and
squealed.  There was daddy himself--at least an hour and a half
too early.

"Well, well!"  exclaimed Broxton Day, rather sternly, "what is
the meaning of this?"

"Dirt on the floor boards--scrubbing brush--elbow grease,"
retorted his daughter, making vigorous explanatory motions.
"Didn't you ever see a 'scrub lady' before, Daddy?"

"Humph! so there is a Cinderella in the house is there?" he said.

Mrs. Watkins opened the dining-room door.  She was swallowing a
mouthful which seemed to go down hard. Mr. Day's unexpected
appearance disturbed her.

"Oh, Mr. Day," she cried, feebly, "have--have you had your
lunch?"

"I have, Mrs. Watkins," he replied.  Then to Janice: "No matter
how much you may like to scrub floors, my dear, you will have to
leave this one for Mrs. Watkins to finish.  There is a car at the
door.  I have borrowed it for a couple of hours, and you must
make haste and put on something different and come with me to
look for Olga."

"Well," Janice got up from her knees slowly.

"Hurry," said daddy sternly.  And he stood and waited until
Janice went out of the room.

"So you will not have lunch, Mr. Day?" asked Mrs. Watkins coolly.

"No.  But there is one thing I will have, Mrs. Watkins," he said
sternly.  "I will have you attend to your work, and not put it on
Janice, while you remain here!"

"I do not understand you, sir," said the woman, her nose in the
air.

"Let me make myself plain then," said Broxton Day.  "I will not
pay you wages to shift such work as this," pointing to the
scrub-pail, "upon my daughter.  I want that understood here and
now.  I can no longer give you carte blanche at the grocery and
provision store.  I will do the marketing myself hereafter.  You
will furnish the lists."

"Sir?" ejaculated Mrs. Watkins haughtily.

"I have kept tabs on the accounts this last week.  In no seven
days since I was married have the expenses for the table been
half what they have been this week."

"I am not used to a poverty-stricken household, Mr. Day!" sneered
Mrs. Watkins.

"But you soon will be," Broxton Day told her grimly, "if I let
you have a free hand in this way.  I am not a rich man, and I
soon will be a poor one at this rate."

"I want you to understand, Mr. Day, that no lady can demean
herself."

"Wait a moment," said the man, still grimly.  "I did not hire you
to be a lady.  I hired you to do the housework.  I can't have you
here unless you keep your share of the contract.  Please remember
that, Mrs.
Watkins."

He left her abruptly and walked through to the front of the
house.  He saw that at her place on the dining table was the
remains of a broiled squab-chicken--a very tasty bit for a hard
working woman like Mrs. Watkins.

"Are you ready, daughter?" he called up the stairway.

"Just a minute or two, Daddy," replied Janice.

She felt that they were in trouble again.  All she had tried to
do to keep him from knowing just how badly things about the house
were going had been for naught.

But she winked back the tears and "practised a smile" in her
looking glass before she ran down to join daddy on the porch.
There was a big touring car out in front.  Janice knew it
belonged to the vice-president of the Farmers ad Merchants Bank.

"Oh, what a fine car, Daddy!"  she whispered, clinging to his
hand.  "Let's play it is ours--while we are in it, of course."

"Would you like to have a car my dear?"  he asked her, as they
settled themselves in the tonneau, and the driver started the
machine.

"Oh!" she cried.  "I could just jump out of my skin when I think
of it!  Every time I ride with Stella

Latham I'm just as covetous as I can be.  I guess I am real
wicked, Daddy."

"I shouldn't be surprised," he returned, smiling.  "It would be
nice to have all the comforts and the luxuries of the
rich--without their troubles."

"M-mm!" said Janice.  "But even their troubles can't be so bad.
Not as bad as poor people's troubles."

"Like ours?" he returned, smiling down at her.

"It is a fact that we cannot keep a hired girl.  We're not as
lucky as the man I heard of who was boasting of having kept a
cook a whole month.  But it seemed that this month his house was
quarantined for scarlet fever."

"Oh, Daddy!" giggled Janice.  "Let's get a yellow, or a red, card
from the Board of Health, and tack it up outside the door."

"And so keep Mrs. Watkins, whether or no?  I am not sure that we
can stand her, my dear."

"We-ell, there are worse," Janice confessed.  "And we have had
them," commented her father rather grimly. "Ah, that's the little
house where the Johnsons live!"

"Oh, dear me!  If it should be our Olga!"

"We'll know about that pretty soon," said Mr. Day comfortingly.
"Stop here, Harry."

The car was halted, and Mr. Day jumped out and went up to the
house.  When he knocked a tall, pale woman, with a little baby in
her arms, opened the narrow door.  It took but a glance to reveal
her nationality.

"You bane want my hoosban'?" asked the Swedish woman.

"No, Mrs. Johnson," replied Mr. Day.  "I came to inquire about a
young woman that I believe is staying here."

"No vooman here but me," declared the other, shaking her head
vigorously.

"What?  Haven't you a friend here named Olga?"

"Olga bane gone," declared the woman sullenly.

"Gone away? exclaimed Mr. Day.  "Since last evening?"

"She bane gone."

"Are you Mrs. Johnson?" asked the man, earnestly.

"My name bane Yonson--yes," she agreed.  "I don't know nottin'
'bout Olga.  She bane gone.  She did not mane to break dish,
anyway."

"Oh!" exclaimed Mr. Day, remembering what Janice had told him
about the accident at the Latham's the evening before.  "We have
not come about the dish.  It is for another matter entirely that
we wish to find Olga."

"I not know where Olga bane go," pursued Mrs. Johnson, shaking
her head vigorously.

"She went away this morning, then?"

"Yah.  She bane go dis mornin'."

"Is her name Olga Cedarstrom?".

"No! No!" exclaimed Mrs. Johnson, shaking her head vigorously.
"You not b'know dis Olga.  She 'nudder girl."

"Where is your husband?" asked Mr. Day hopelessly. "Perhaps he
can tell me more about her."

"Yon Yonson gone to Dover," declared his wife, suddenly shutting
the door and leaving Mr. Broxton Day outside on the step.



CHAPTER XVI. A LETTER FROM POKETOWN

"It looks as though we had come upon a fool's errand," said Mr.
Day, coming back to the car and his daughter. "Mrs. Johnson says
that girl was not named Cedarstrom, and that she has already gone
away."

"Do you suppose it is the truth, Daddy?" asked the anxious
Janice.

"Well, it is probably the truth.  All Olgas are not named
'Cedarstrom,' of course.  And I fancy the girl was frightened
because of the broken cutglass dish and escaped early this
morning."

"Why?  Would Mrs. Latham try to make her pay for it?"

"Perhaps.  At least, this mysterious Olga thought she would be
made to pay for the dish.  Or perhaps she feared arrest.
Sometimes these foreigners are very ignorant regarding our laws.
She might easily have been frightened away."

"But if she is our Olga--"

"This woman here is stubborn.  She will probably tell us nothing
more about her friend.  And she said flatly that the name was not
Cedarstrom."

"Oh, dear!" sighed Janice, "it is too, too bad."

"It is too bad that the trail seems lost.  I will try to see Mr.
Johnson himself.  We will make sure that the girl was not the one
we are after.  But, you see, we are inquiring for Olga for a
reason that is likely to frighten her and her friends.  I think
some of those people over in Pickletown might tell me more than
they do about Olga and that Willie Sangreen."

"It is just too bad!" half sobbed Janice.  "I hoped we should
find the treasure-box this time."

"Have patience.  Rome was not built in a day," said her father.

"We're not building Rome," the girl retorted, but trying to smile
again.  "I guess even that was an easier job than finding a lost
Swedish girl."   "Don't
 worry, honey."

"But I can't help worrying," said Janice, sobbing again.

"You are overwrought, my dear.  Don't let your mind run upon
unpleasant things.  That treasure-box.
"
"Will never be found, Daddy!" cried his little daughter.  "I am
sure!  And if it isn't found I don't --don't--know--what
I--shall--do."

He put his arm about her and hugged Janice tight against his
side.  "Don't lose hope so easily.  And see here!  Here is
something new I forgot to tell you."

"What is it, Daddy?" she asked, as he began to search an inner
pocket of his coat.

"A letter.  From your Aunt Almira.  Just listen to it."

"Oh, Daddy! From Aunt Almira in--in Poketown?"

"Yes.  My half-brother's wife--and a good soul she
 is."

He drew the letter from its envelope and unfolded it. He began to
read the epistle with a smile wreathing his lips, for Aunt
Almira's communication was unintentionally funny:

"'Dear Brocky:

"'Jase won't never get around to writing you, far as I see, so I
had better do so before you get the suspicion that we are all
dead.  We might as well be and buried, too, here in Poketown--for
it is right next door to a cemetery for deadness, I do believe.
You know what it was when you was lucky enough to get out of it
twenty years ago.  Well, it is worse now.  There has been nothing
new in Poketown since you went away, excepting the town pump's
been painted once.

"That time you came to see us with Laura, when Janice was a
little girl--"

"Why, Daddy!" interrupted Janice, her eyes round with wonder, "I
don't remember Poketown at all."

"You were too little to recall that visit.  I have only been back
there once since you and your dear mother and I visited Jase and
Almira."  Then he went on, reading aloud:

"'You remember the house needed painting and the front gate hung
by one hinge.  Well, it still needs painting and that one hinge
has give up the ghost now.  So you see, there hasn't been many
changes.  You're the only Day, I guess, that ever had any "get up
and get" to them.

"'But my heart has been full of thoughts of you since we heard of
poor Laura's death.  We often speak of you and wonder how you and
that little girl get on all stark alone.  I know how I should
feel if Jase and Marty was left as you and Janice be.'"

"Oh," gasped Janice, "she'd be dead!"

"Well," mused her father, "Almira, living in such a dead place as
Poketown, evidently considers that she knows about how she would
feel in her grave."

"Is it such an awful place, Daddy?" Janice asked seriously.

"What do you mean?" he inquired, in surprise.  "Oh, Poketown, I
mean, of course.
"It is a lovely place.  But it must be confessed that it is a
good deal behind the times.  It is not as bad as Aunt 'Mira makes
it out to be, I guess.  Only, the old Day house has pretty well
gone to rack and ruin."

"Well.  Let's hear the rest," urged Janice.

"'Jase says to be mighty careful if you should have to go down to
that Mexico place.  He reads in his Ledger that sometimes there
is shooting down there and that the Mexicaners don't care who
they shoot.'"

"Oh, Daddy!" cried Janice, "you don't mean you are going to
Mexico?"

"I wrote them when I thought it might be necessary," he
confessed.

"And you would send me East if you went?  Oh, Daddy, please!"

"Well, my dear, that seemed the wisest thing to do."

"Oh, Daddy!"

"Don't worry now.  We have engaged a new superintendent at the
mines, and I guess things will go on all right. Listen to what
your Aunt 'Mira says:

"'Of course, if you have to go down there on business, you send
Janice right to us.  I'm speaking for Jase as well as myself.  We
ain't rich, of course; but there's enough to fill another mouth
yet awhile, so don't be bashful.

"'Hoping this finds you and Janice in health, it leaving us all
the same, I will close,

"'Your, sister-in-law and Janice's aunt,  "'ALMIRA DAY.'"

"I hope you won't have to go, and that I won't have to go,
Daddy!" exclaimed the girl anxiously.

"She's a good soul--Almira.  She'd do her best by you."

"I don't want anybody to do their best by me--only you, Daddy."

"But you see, my dear, I couldn't leave you alone at home here.
Certainly not with a woman like Mrs. Watkins."

"We-ell!"

"Why, she would be imposing upon you all the time.  No, indeed.
I feel that she is not the woman for our house, after all."

"Oh, dear, Daddy! isn't it funny how many people there are in the
world who don't just f

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/2483