Janice Day, the Young Homemaker
Author: Helen Beecher Long
Первая публикация: 1914 г.
Автор: Хелен Бичер Лонг
******
Дженис могла бы очень чётко вспомнить, когда коттедж был - настоящий дом - вместо «просто место для проживания»; для её матери - был мёртв всего 1 год. Опыт этого года был, стараясь, как бы для скорбящего вдовца, так и для девушки, которая была близкий компаньон и доверенное лицо своей матери.
Дженис была достаточно взрослая и достаточно хорошо обучена домашним делам
чтобы держать дом очень хорошо для своего отца. Но ей пришлось идти
в школу, конечно; образование было самым важным
в мире для неё. И вид помощи, которая пришла в
Дневная кухня часто сводилась к тому, что ее "боссит проскок
гур-р-рл, "как сказал один недавно занимавший эту должность.
Ольга Седарстрем была глупа и часто пересекалась по утрам; и
она была беспечна и беспечна в своих отношениях. Но она этого не сделала
возражать, когда Дженис пришла пораньше, чтобы получить завтрак своего отца,
и служи ей аккуратно, как учила ее мать.
Только, Ольгу нельзя было научить делать эти вещи. Она не сделала
хочу учиться. Она сказала, что у нее есть «парень» и она будет замужем
вскоре; и в этих обстоятельствах она не считала, что
нужно было больше узнать о домашней работе!
Дженис не хотела так рано спускаться на кухню, ибо это пробудит Ольгу, которая придет из ее комнаты, с блеском со сном и с ее вспыльчивостью у края пилы, спросить, "Она сковалась посреди ночи почему?
***
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A NEW-FASHIONED GIRL 1
II. POKETOWN 10
III. "IT JEST RATTLES" 22
IV. FIRST IMPRESSIONS 32
V. 'RILL SCATTERGOOD AND HER SCHOOL 43
VI. AN AFTERNOON OF ADVENTURE 56
VII. THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LOST THE ECHO 64
VIII. A BIT OF ROMANCE 73
IX. TEA, AND A TALK WITH DADDY 84
X. BEGINNING WITH A BEDSTEAD 96
XI. A RAINY DAY 109
XII. ON THE ROAD WITH WALKY DEXTER 122
XIII. NELSON HALEY 131
XIV. A TIME OF TRIAL 139
XV. NEW BEGINNINGS 149
XVI. "SHOWING" THE ELDER 159
XVII. CHRISTMAS NEWS 173
XVIII. "THE FLY-BY-NIGHT" 184
XIX. CHRISTMAS, AFTER ALL! 197
XX. THE TROUBLE WITH NELSON HALEY 210
XXI. A STIR OF NEW LIFE IN POKETOWN 217
XXII. AT THE SUGAR CAMP 226
XXIII. "DO YOU MEAN THAT?" 235
XXIV. THE SCHOOL DEDICATION 241
XXV. THROUGH THE SECOND WINTER 253
XXVI. JUST HOW IT ALL BEGAN 262
XXVII. POKETOWN IN A NEW DRESS 271
XXVIII. NO ODOR OF GASOLINE! 280
XXIX. JANICE DAY'S FIRST LOVE LETTER 290
XXX. WHAT THE ECHO MIGHT HAVE HEARD 302
ILLUSTRATIONS
The quick eye of Janice Day caught sight
of this row of nondescripts. (See page 15.) _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
The old violin wailed out the tune haltingly 72
God's world _did_ look bigger and greater from
The Overlook. (See page 155.) 154
She just _had_ to raise her eyes and look into his
earnest ones. (See page 307.) 306
JANICE DAY
CHAPTER I
A NEW-FASHIONED GIRL
"Well! this is certainly a relief from the stuffy old cars," said Janice
Day, as she reached the upper deck of the lake steamer, dropped her
suitcase, and drew in her first full breath of the pure air.
"What a beautiful lake!" she went on. "And how big! Why--I had no idea!
I wonder how far Poketown is from here?"
The ancient sidewheel steamer was small and there were few passengers on
the upper deck, forward. Janice secured a campstool and sat down near
the rail to look off over the water.
The officious man in the blue cap on the dock had shouted "All aboard!"
the moment the passengers left the cars of the little narrow-gauge
railroad, on which the girl had been riding for more than two hours; but
it was some minutes before the wheezy old steamer got under way.
Janice was interested in everything she saw--even in the clumsy warping
off of the _Constance Colfax_, when her hawsers were finally released.
"Goodness me!" thought the girl, chuckling, "what a ridiculous old tub
it is! How different everything East here is from Greensboro. There!
we're really off!"
The water hissed and splashed, as the wheels of the steamer began to
turn rheumatically. The walking-beam heaved up and down with many a
painful creak.
"Why! _that_ place is real pretty--when you look at it from the lake,"
murmured Janice, looking back at the little landing. "I wonder if
Poketown will be like it?"
She looked about her, half tempted to ask a question of somebody. There
was but a single passenger near her--a little, old lady in an
old-fashioned black mantilla with jet trimming, and wearing black lace
half-mitts and a little bonnet that had been so long out of date that it
was almost in the mode again.
She was seated with her back against the cabin house, and when the
steamer rolled a little the ball of knitting-cotton, which she had taken
out of her deep, bead-bespangled bag, bounced out of her lap and rolled
across the deck almost to the feet of Janice.
Up the girl jumped and secured the runaway ball, winding the cotton as
she approached the old lady, who peered up at her, her head on one side
and her eyes sparkling, like an inquisitive bird.
"Thank ye, child," she said, briskly. "I ain't as spry as I use ter be,
an' ye done me a favor. I guess I don't know ye, do I?"
"I don't believe you do, Ma'am," agreed Janice, smiling, and although
she could not be called "pretty" in the sense in which the term is
usually written, when Janice smiled her determined, and rather
intellectual face became very attractive.
"You don't belong in these parts?" pursued the old lady.
"Oh, no, Ma'am. I come from Greensboro," and the girl named the middle
western state in which her home was situated.
"Do tell! You come a long distance, don't ye?" exclaimed her
fellow-passenger. "You're one of these new-fashioned gals that travel
alone, an' all that sort o' thing, ain't ye? I reckon your folks has got
plenty of confidence in ye."
Janice laughed again, and drew her campstool to the old lady's side.
"I was never fifty miles away from home before," she confessed, "and I
never was away from my father over night until I started East two days
ago."
"Then ye ain't got no mother, child?"
"Mother died when I was a very little girl. Father has been everything
to me--just everything!" and for a moment the bright, young face
clouded and the hazel eyes swam in unshed tears. But she turned quickly
so that her new acquaintance might not see them.
"Where are you goin', my dear?" asked the old lady, more softly.
"To Poketown. And oh! I _do_ hope it will be a nice, lively place, for
maybe I'll have to remain there a long time--months and months!"
"For the land's sake!" exclaimed the old lady, nodding her head briskly
over the knitting needles. "So be I goin' to Poketown."
"Are you, really?" ejaculated Janice Day, clasping her hands eagerly,
and turning to her new acquaintance. "Isn't that nice! Then you can tell
me just what Poketown is like. I've got to stay there with my uncle
while father is in Mexico----"
"Who's your uncle, child?" demanded the old lady, quickly. "And who's
your father?"
Janice naturally answered the last question first, for her heart was
full of her father and her separation from him. "Mr. Broxton Day is my
father, and he used to live in Poketown. But he came away from there a
long, long time ago."
"Yes? I knowed there was Days in Poketown; but I ain't been there myself
for goin' on twelve year. I lived there a year, or so, arter my man
died, with my darter. She's teached the Poketown school for twenty
year."
"Oh!" cried Janice. "Then you can't really tell me what Poketown is
like--now?"
"Why, it's quite a town, I b'lieve," said the old lady. "'Rill writes me
thet the _ho_-tel's jest been painted, and there's a new blacksmith shop
built. You goin' to school there--What did you say your name was?"
"Janice Day. I don't know whether I shall go to school while I am in
Poketown, or not. If there are a whole lot of nice girls--and a few nice
boys--who go to your daughter's school, I shall certainly want to go,
too," continued Janice, smiling again at the little old lady.
"Wal, 'Rill Scattergood's teached long enough, _I_ tell her," declared
the other. "I'm goin' to Poketown now more'n half to git her to give up
at the end o' this term. With what she's laid by, and what I've got
left, we could live mighty comfertable together. Who's your uncle,
child?" pursued Mrs. Scattergood, who had not lost sight of her main
inquiry.
"Mr. Jason Day. He's my father's half brother."
"Ya-as. I didn't know them Days very well when I lived there. How long
did you say you was goin' to stay in Poketown?"
"I don't know, Ma'am," said Janice, sadly. "Father didn't know how long
he'd be in Mexico----"
"Good Land o' Goshen!" ejaculated Mrs. Scattergood, suddenly, "ain't
that where there's fightin' goin' on right now?"
"Yes'm. That's why he couldn't take me with him," confessed Janice,
eager to talk with a sympathetic listener. "You see, I guess 'most all
the money we've got is invested in some mine down there. The fighting
came near the mine, and the superintendent ran away and left
everything."
"Goodness! why wouldn't he?" exclaimed the old lady, knitting faster
than ever in her excitement.
"But then that made it so my father had to go down there and 'tend to
things," explained Janice.
"What! right in the middle of the war? Good Land o' Goshen!"
"There wasn't anybody else _to_ go," said Janice, sadly. "The
stockholders might lose all they put into it. And our money, too. Why!
we had to rent our house furnished. That's why I am coming East to Uncle
Jason's while father is away."
"Too bad! too bad!" returned the old lady, shaking her head.
"But you see," Janice hastened to say, with pride, "my father is that
kind of a man. The other folks expected him to take hold of the business
and straighten it out. He--he's always doing such things, you know."
"I see," agreed Mrs. Scattergood. "He's one o' these 'up an' comin' sort
o' men. And you're his darter!" and she cackled a little, shrill laugh.
"I kin see _that_. You're one o' these new-fashioned gals, all right."
"I hope I'm like Daddy," said Janice, quietly. "Everybody loves
Daddy--everybody depends on him to go ahead and _do_ things. I hope
Uncle Jason will be like him."
With the light breeze fluttering the little crinkles of hair between her
hat and her brow, and an expression of bright expectancy upon her face,
Janice was worth looking at a second time. So Mrs. Scattergood thought,
as she glanced up now and again from her knitting.
"Poketown--Poketown," the girl murmured to herself, trying to spy out
the land ahead as the _Constance Colfax_ floundered on. "Oh! I hope
Daddy's remembrance of it is all wrong now. I hope it will belie its
name."
"What's that, child?" put in the sharp voice of her neighbor.
"Why--why--if it _is_ poky I know I shall just die of homesickness for
Greensboro," confessed Janice. "How could the early settlers of these
'New Hampshire Grants' ever _dare_ give such a homely name to a
village?"
"Pshaw!" ejaculated Mrs. Scattergood. "What's a name? Prob'bly some man
named Poke settled there fust. Or pokeberries grew mighty common there.
People weren't so fanciful about names in them days. Why! my son-in-law
lives right now in a place in York State called 'Skunk's Hollow' and
the city folks that's movin' in there is tryin' to git the post office
to change the name to 'Posy Bloom.' No 'countin' for tastes in names. My
poor mother called _me_ Mahala Ann--an' me too leetle to fight back. But
I made up my mind when I was a mighty leetle gal that if ever I had a
baby I'd call it sumthin' pretty. An' I done the right thing by all my
children.
"Now here's 'Rill," pursued Mrs. Scattergood, waxing communicative. "Her
full name's Amarilla--Amarilla Scattergood. Don't you think that's purty
yourself, now?"
Janice politely agreed. But she quickly swung the conversation back to
Poketown.
"I suppose, if mills had been built there, or the summer boarders had
discovered Poketown, its name would have been changed, too. And you
haven't been up there for twelve years?"
"No, child. But that ain't long. Ain't much happens in twelve years back
East here."
Janice sighed again; but suddenly she jumped from her stool excitedly,
crying: "Oh! what place is _that_?"
She pointed far ahead. Around a rocky headland the view of a pleasant
cove had just opened. The green and blue-ribbed hills rose behind the
cove; the water lay sparkling in it. There was a vividly white church
with a heaven-pointing spire right among the big green trees.
A brown ribbon of main thoroughfare wound up from the wharf, but was
soon lost under the shade of the great trees that interlaced their
branches above it--branches which were now lush with the late spring
growth of leaves. Here and there a cottage, or larger dwelling,
appeared, most of them originally white like the church, but many shabby
from the action of wind and weather.
Over all, the warm sun spread a mantle. In the distance this bright
mantle softened the rigid lines of the old-fashioned houses, and of the
ledges and buttresses of the hills themselves.
Old Mrs. Scattergood stood up, too, looking through her steel-bowed
glasses.
"I declare for't!" she said, "that's Poketown itself! That's the spire
of the Union Church you see. We'll git there in an hour."
Janice did not sit down again just then, nor did she reply. She rested
both trimly-gloved hands on the rail and gazed upon the scene.
"Why, it's beautiful!" she breathed at last "And _that_ is Poketown!"
CHAPTER II
POKETOWN
Some ancient dwellings have the dignity of "homestead" resting upon them
like a benediction; others are aureoled by the name of "manor." The
original Day in Poketown had built a shingled, gable-ended cottage upon
the side-hill which had now, for numberless years, been called "the old
Day house"--nothing more.
"Jason! You Jase! I'd give a cent if you'd mend this pump," complained
Mrs. Almira Day. "Go git me a pail of water from Mis' Dickerson's and
ask how's her rhoumatism this mawnin'. Come on, now! I can't wash the
breakfas' dishes till I hev some water."
The grizzled, lanky man who had been sitting comfortably on a bench in
the sun, sucking on a corncob pipe and gazing off across the lake, never
even turned his head as he asked:
"Where's Marty?"
"The goodness only knows! Ye know he ain't never here when ye want him."
"Why didn't ye tell him about the water at breakfas' time?"
"Would _that_ have done any good?" demanded Mrs. Day, with some scorn.
"Ye know Marty's got too big to take orders from his marm. He don't do
nothin' but hang about Josiah Pringle's harness shop all day."
"I told him to hoe them 'taters," said Mr. Day, thoughtfully.
"Well, he don't seem ter take orders from his dad, neither. Don't know
what that boy's comin' to," and a whine crept into Mrs. Day's voice. "He
can't git along with 'Rill Scattergood, so he won't go to school. His
fingers is gettin' all stained yaller from suthin'--d'you 'xpect it's
them cigarettes, Jase?"
Her husband was rising slowly to his feet. "Gimme the pail," he grunted,
without replying to her last question. "I'll git the water for ye this
onc't. But that's Marty's job an' he's got to l'arn it, too!"
"Here, Jase! take two pails," urged Mrs. Day. "An' I wish you _would_
git Pringle to cut ye a new pump-leather."
But Mr. Day ignored the second pail. "I don't feel right peart to-day,"
he said, shambling off down the path. "And there's a deal of heft to a
pail of water--uphill, too. An' by-me-by I got ter go down to the dock,
I s'pose, when the boat comes in, to meet Broxton's gal. I 'xpect
_she'll_ be a great nuisance, 'Mira."
"I'll stand her bein' some nuisance if you give me the twenty dollars a
month your brother wrote that he'd send for her board and keep," snapped
Mrs. Day. "You understand, Jase. That money's comin' to _me_, or I don't
scrub and slave for no relation of yourn. Remember that!"
Jason shuffled on as though he had not heard her. That was the most
exasperating trait of this lazy man--so his wife thought; he was too
lazy to quarrel.
He went out at the gate, which hung by one hinge to the gatepost, into
the untidy back lane upon which one end of his rocky little farm
abutted. Had he glanced back at the premises he would have seen a
weed-grown, untidy yard surrounding the old house, with decrepit stables
and other outbuildings in the rear, a garden which was almost a jungle
now, although in the earlier spring it had given much promise of a
summer harvest of vegetables. Poorly tilled fields behind the front
premises terraced up the timber-capped hill.
Jason Day always "calkerlated ter farm it" each year, and he started in
good season, too. The soil was rich and most of his small fields were
warm and early; but somehow his plans always fell through before the
season was far advanced. So neither the farm nor the immediate premises
of the old Day house were attractive.
The house itself looked like a withered and gnarly apple left hanging
upon the tree from the year before. In its forlorn nakedness it actually
cried out for a coat of paint. Each individual shingle was curled and
cracked. Only the superior workmanship of a former time kept the Day
roof tight and defended the family from storms.
Some hours later the _Constance Colfax_ came into view around a distant
point in the lake shore. Mr. Day had camped upon the identical bench
again and was still sucking at the stem of his corncob pipe.
"Wal," he groaned, "I 'xpect I've got to go down to meet that gal of
Broxton's. And the sun's mighty hot this mawnin'."
"You wouldn't feel it so, if ye hadn't been too 'tarnal lazy to change
yer seat," sniffed his wife. "Now, you mind, Jase! That board money
comes to me, or you can take Broxton's gal to the _ho_-tel."
Mr. Day shambled out of the front gate without making reply.
"Drat the man!" muttered his wife. "If I could jes' git a rise out o'
him onc't----"
It was not far to the dock. Indeed, Poketown was so compactly built on
the steep hillside that there was scarcely a house within its borders
from which a boy could not have tossed a pebble into the waters of the
cove. Jason strolled along in the shade, passing the time of day with
such neighbors as were equally disengaged, and spreading the news of his
niece's expected arrival.
As he passed along the lane which later debouched upon the main
thoroughfare of Poketown, it was evident to the most casual glance that
the old Day house was not the only dwelling far along in a state of
decay. Poketown was full of such.
On the street leading directly to the dock there were several
well-cared-for estates--some of them wedged in between blocks of
two-story frame buildings, the first floors of which were occupied by
stores of various kinds. The post office had a building to itself. The
Lake View Inn was not unattractive, its side piazza overlooking the cove
and the lake spread beyond.
But the rutty, dusty road showed that it had been rutty and muddy in the
earlier spring. The flagstones of the sidewalks were broken, and the
walks themselves ill kept. The gutters were overgrown with grass and
weeds. Before the shops the undefended tree trunks were gnawed into
grotesque patterns by the farmers' hungry beasts. Hardware was at a
premium in Poketown, for a dozen gates along the line were hung with
leather hinges, and bits of rope had taken the places of the original
latches.
From the water, however, even on closer view, the hillside village made
a pretty picture. Near the wharf it was not so romantic, as Janice Day
realized, when the coughing, wheezy steamboat came close in.
There were decrepit boats drawn up on the narrow beach; there were
several decaying shacks bordering on the dock itself; and along the
stringpiece of the wharf roosted a row of "humans" that were the
opposite of ornamental. The quick eye of Janice Day caught sight of this
row of nondescripts.
"Goodness me, Mrs. Scattergood!" she exclaimed, turning to the old lady
who had been in receipt of her confidences. "Is the almshouse near
Poketown?"
"There's a poorfarm, child; but there ain't nobody on it but a few old
folks an' some orphans. We ain't poor here--not pauper poor. But,
goodness me! you mean them men a-settin' there? Why, they ain't
poor--no, no, child. I don't suppose there's a man there that don't own
his own house. There's Mel Parraday, who owns the _ho_-tel; and Lem
Pinney that owns stock in this very steamboat comp'ny; and Walkworthy
Dexter--Walky's done expressin' and stage-drivin' since before my 'Rill
come here to Poketown to teach."
"But--but they look so ragged and unshaven," gasped Janice.
"Pshaw! they ain't proud, I reckon," cackled the old lady, gathering up
her knitting and dropping it into the beaded bag, which she shut with a
snap.
"But isn't there anybody proud _of_ them?" queried Janice. "Haven't they
mothers--or wives--or sisters?"
The old lady stared at her. Then she made a sudden clicking in her
throat that might have been a chuckle. "I declare for't, child!" she
ejaculated. "I dunno as many of us in these parts _air_ proud of our men
folks."
Just then the steamboat's bow bumped the wharf. The jar scarcely seemed
to awaken the languid line of Poketownites ranged along the other side.
The only busy person in sight was the employee of the steamboat company
who caught the loop of the hawser thrown him, and dropped it over a
pile. The rest of the men just raised their heads and stared, chewing
reflectively on either tobacco or straws, until the plank was dropped
and the deckhands began trundling the freight and baggage ashore.
There were two or three commercial drummers beside Mrs. Scattergood and
Janice, who disembarked on this dock. Mrs. Scattergood bade the girl
from the West a brisk good-bye and went directly up the dock, evidently
expecting nobody to meet her at this time of day. A lanky man, with
grizzled brows and untrimmed beard, got up slowly from the stringpiece
of the wharf and slouched forward to meet Janice Day.
"I reckon you be Broxton's gal, eh?" he queried, his eyes twinkling not
unkindly. "Ye sort er favor him--an' he favored his mother in more ways
than one. You're Janice Day?"
"Oh, yes indeed! And you're my Uncle Jason?" cried the girl, impulsively
seizing Mr. Day's hand. There was nothing about this man that at all
reminded Janice of her father; yet the thought of their really being so
closely related to each other was comforting. "I'm so glad to see you,"
she continued. "I hope you'll like me, Uncle Jason--and I hope Aunt
Almira will like me. And there is a cousin, too, isn't there--a boy?
Dear me! I've been looking forward to meeting you all ever since I left
Greensboro, and been wondering what sort of people you would be."
"Wal," drawled Uncle Jason, rather staggered by the way Janice "ran on,"
"we reckon on makin' ye comferble. Looks like we'd have ye with us some
spell, too. Broxton writ me that he didn't know how long he'd be
gone--down there in Mexico."
"No. Poor Daddy couldn't tell. The business must be 'tended to, I
s'pose----"
"Right crazy of him to go there," grunted Uncle Jason. "May git shot any
minute. Ain't _no_ money wuth that, I don't believe."
This rather tactless speech made the girl suddenly look grave; but it
did not quench her vivacity. She was staring about the dock, interested
in everything she saw, when Uncle Jason drawled:
"I s'pose ye got a trunk, Janice?"
"Oh, yes. Here is the check," and she began to skirmish in her purse.
"Wal! there ain't no hurry. Marty'll come down by-me-by with the
wheelbarrer and git it for ye."
"But my goodness!" exclaimed the girl from Greensboro. "I haven't
anything fit to put on in this bag; everything got rumpled so aboard the
train. I'll want to change just as soon as I get to the house, Uncle."
"Wal!" Uncle Jason was staggered. He had given up thinking quickly years
before. This was an emergency that floored him.
"Why! isn't that the expressman there? And can't he take my trunk right
up to the house?" continued the girl.
"Ya-as; that's Walky Dexter," admitted Mr. Day.
A stout, red-faced man was backing a raw-boned nag in front of a farm
wagon, down upon the wharf and toward a little heap of baggage that had
been run ashore from the lower deck of the _Constance Colfax_. Janice,
still lugging her suitcase, shot up the dock toward the expressman,
leaving Jason, slack-jawed and well-nigh breathless.
"Jefers-pelters! What a flyaway critter she is!" the man muttered. "I
don't see whatever we're a-goin' to do with _her_."
Meanwhile Janice got Mr. Dexter's attention immediately. "There's my
trunk right there, Mr. Dexter," she cried. "And here's the check. You
see it--the brown trunk with the brass corners?"
"I see it, Miss. All right. I'll git it up to Jason's some time this
arternoon."
"Oh, Mr. Dexter!" she cried, shaking her head at him, but smiling, too.
"That will not do at all! I want to unpack it at once. I need some of
the things in it, for I've been traveling two days. Can't you take it on
your first load?"
"Wa-al--I might," confessed Dexter, looking her over with a quizzical
smile. "But us'ally the Days ain't in no hurry."
"Then this is one Day who _is_ in a hurry," she said, briefly. "What is
your charge for delivering the trunk, sir?"
"Oh--'bout a quarter, Miss. And gimme that suitcase, too. 'Twon't cost
ye no more, and I'll git 'em there before Jason and you reach the house.
Poketown is a purty slow old place, Miss," the man added, with a wink
and a chuckle, "but I kin see the _days_ are going to move faster, now
you have arove in town. Don't you fear; your trunk'll be there--'nless
Josephus, here, busts a leg!"
Quite stunned, Uncle Jason had not moved from his tracks. "Now we're all
right, sir," said the girl, cheerily, taking his arm and by her very
touch seeming to galvanize a little life into his scarecrow figure.
"Shall we go home?"
"Eh? Wal! Ef ye say so, Janice," replied Mr. Day, weakly.
They started up the main street of Poketown, Janice accommodating her
step to that of her uncle. Mr. Day was not one given to idle chatter;
but the girl did not notice his silence in her interest in all she saw.
It was a beautiful, shady way, with the hill not too steep for comfort.
And some of the dwellings set in the midst of their terraced old lawns,
were so beautiful! It was the beauty of age, however; there did not seem
to be a single _new_ thing in Poketown.
Even the scant display of goods in the shop windows had lain there until
they were dust-covered, sun-burned, and flyspecked. The signs over the
store doors were tarnished.
They came to the lane that led up the hill away from High Street, and on
which Uncle Jason said he lived. An almost illegible sign at the corner
announced it to be "Hillside Avenue." There were not two fences abutting
upon the lane that were set in line, while the sidewalks were narrow or
broad, according to the taste of the several owners of property along
the way.
The beautiful old trees were everywhere, however; only some of them
needed trimming badly, and many overhung the roofs, their dripping
branches having rotted the shingles and given life to great patches of
green moss. There was a sogginess to the grass-grown yards that seemed
unhealthful. There were several, picturesque, old wells, with massive
sweeps and oaken buckets--quaint breeders of typhoid germs--which showed
that the physicians of Poketown had not properly educated their patients
to modern sanitary ideas.
Altogether the village in which her father had been born and bred was a
dead-and-alive, do-nothing place, and its beauty, for Janice Day, faded
before she was halfway up the hill to her uncle's house.
CHAPTER III
"IT JEST RATTLES"
Almira Day was a good-hearted woman. It was not in her to treat her
husband's niece otherwise than kindly, despite her threat to the
contrary when Jason left the old Day house to meet Janice at the
steamboat dock.
She stood smiling in the doorway--a large, pink, lymphatic woman, as
shapeless as a half-filled meal-sack with a string tied around its
middle, quite as untidy as her husband in dress, but with clean skin and
a wholesome look.
Her calico dress was faded and, in places, strained to the
bursting-point, showing that it was "store-bought" and had never been
fitted to Mrs. Day's bulbous figure. She wore a pair of men's slippers
very much down at the heel, and pink stockings with a gaping hole in the
seam at the back of one, which Janice very plainly saw as her aunt
preceded her upstairs to the room the visitor was to occupy.
"I hope ye won't mind how things look," drawled Aunt 'Mira. "We ain't
as up-an'-comin' as some, I do suppose. But nothin' ain't gone well with
Jason late years, an' he's got some mis'ry that he can't git rid of,
so's he can't work stiddy. Look out for this nex' ter the top step. The
tread's broke an' I been expectin' ter be throwed from top to bottom of
these stairs for weeks."
"Can't Uncle Jason fix it?" asked Janice, stepping over the broken
tread.
"Wal, he ain't exactly got 'round to it yet," confessed her aunt.
"There! I do hope you like your room, Niece Janice. There's a pretty
outlook from the winder."
True enough, the window overlooked the hillside and the lake. Only, had
the panes been washed one could have viewed the landscape and the water
so much better!
The room itself was the shabbiest bedchamber Janice Day had ever seen.
The carpet on the floor had, generations before, been one of those
flowery axminsters that country people used to buy for their "poller."
Then they would pull all the shades down and shut the room tightly, for
otherwise the pink roses faded completely out of the design.
This old carpet had long since been through _that_ stage of existence,
however, and was now worn to the warp in spots, its design being visible
only because of the ingrained grime which years of trampling had brought
to it.
The paper on the walls was faded and stained. Empty places where
pictures had hung for years, showed in contrast to the more faded barren
districts. A framed copy of the Declaration of Independence ornamented
the space above the mantel. Hanging above the bed's head were those two
famous chromos of "Good-Morning" and "Good-Night." A moth-eaten worsted
motto and cross, "The Rock of Ages," hung above the little bureau glass.
There was, too, a torn and faded slipper for matches, and a tall glass
lamp that, for some reason, reminded Janice of a skeleton. She could
never look at that lamp thereafter without expecting the oil tank to
become a grinning skull with a tall fool's cap (the chimney) on it, and
its thin body to sprout bony arms and legs.
The furniture was decrepit and ill matched. Janice could have overlooked
the shaky chair, the toppling bureau, and the scratched washstand; but
the bed with only three legs, and a soap-box under the fourth corner,
_did_ bring a question to the guest's lips:
"Where is the other leg, Aunty?"
"Now, I declare for't!" exclaimed Mrs. Day. "That _is_ too bad! The
leg's up on the closet shelf here. Jase was calkerlatin' to put it on
again, but he ain't never got 'round to it. But the box'll hold yer. It
only rattles," she added, as Janice tried the security of the bedstead.
That expression, "it only rattles," the girl from Greensboro was
destined to hear unnumbered times in her uncle's home. It was typical of
the old Day house and its inmates. Unless a repair absolutely _must_ be
made, Uncle Jason would not take a tool in his hand.
As for her Cousin Martin ("Marty" everybody called the gangling,
grinning, idle ne'er-do-well of fourteen), Janice was inclined to be
utterly hopeless about him from the start. If he was a specimen of the
Poketown boys, she told herself, she had no desire to meet any of them.
"What do you do with yourself all day long, Marty, if you don't go to
school?" she asked her cousin, at the dinner table.
"Oh, I hang around--like everybody else. Ain't nothin' doin' in
Poketown."
"I should think it would be more fun to go to school."
"Not ter 'Rill Scattergood," rejoined the boy, in haste. "That old maid
dunno enough to teach a cow."
Janice might have thought a cow much more difficult to teach than a boy;
only she looked again into Marty's face, which plainly advertised the
vacancy of his mind, and thought better of the speech that had risen to
her lips.
"Marty won't go to school no more," her aunt complained, whiningly.
"'Rill Scattergood ain't got no way with him. Th' committee's been
talkin' about gittin' another teacher for years; but 'Rill's sorter
_sot_ there, she's had the place so long."
"There's more than a month of school yet--before the summer
vacation--isn't there?" queried Janice.
"Oh, yes," sighed Mrs. Day.
"I'd love to go and get acquainted with the girls," the guest said,
brightly. "Wouldn't you go with me some afternoon and introduce me to
the teacher, Marty?"
"_Me?_ Ter 'Rill Scattergood? Naw!" declared the amazed Marty. "I sh'd
say not!"
"Why, Marty!" exclaimed his mother. "That ain't perlite."
"Who said 'twas?" returned her hopeful son, shortly. "I ain't tryin' ter
be perlite ter no _girl_. And I ain't goin' ter 'Rill Scattergood's
school--never, no more!"
"Young man," commanded his father, angrily, "you hold that tongue o'
yourn. And you be perlite to your cousin, or I'll dance the dust out o'
your jacket with a hick'ry sprout, big as ye be."
Janice hastened to change the subject and tune the conversation to a
more pleasant key.
"It is so pretty all over this hillside," she said. "Around Greensboro
the country is flat. I think the hills are much more beautiful. And the
lake is just _dear_."
"Ya-as," sighed her aunt. "Artis' folks come here an' paint this lake. I
reckon it's purty; but ye sort er git used ter it after a while."
It was evidently hard for Aunt 'Mira to enthuse over anything. Marty
volunteered:
"We got a waterfall on our place. Folks call it the Shower Bath. Guess a
girl would think 'twas pretty."
"Oh! I'd love to see that," declared Janice, quickly.
"I'll show it to you after dinner," said Marty, of a sudden surprisingly
friendly.
"You'll hoe them 'taters after dinner," cried his father, sharply.
"That's what _you'll_ do."
"Huh!" growled the sullen youth. "Yer said I was to be perlite, an' when
I start in ter be, you spring them old pertaters on a feller. Huh!"
"Aw, now, Jason," interposed his mother. "Can't Marty show his cousin
over the farm and hoe the 'taters afterward?"
"No, he can't!" denied Master Marty, quickly. "I ain't goin' ter work
double for nobody. Now, that's flat!"
"Oh, we can go to the Shower Bath some other time," suggested Janice,
apprehensive of starting another family squabble. "I don't know as I'd
be able to hoe potatoes; but maybe there are other things I can do in
the garden. I always had a big flower garden at home."
"Huh!" grunted Marty. "Flowers are only a nuisance."
"I s'pose you could weed some," sighed Aunt 'Mira. "It hurts me so to
stoop."
"She'd better pick 'tater bugs," said Marty, grinning. "They've begun to
come, I reckon. Hard-shells, anyway."
Janice could not resist shivering at this suggestion. She did not love
insects any better than do most girls. But she took Marty's suggestion
in good part.
"You wait," she said. "Maybe I can do that, too. I'll weed a little,
anyway. Have you a large farm, Uncle Jason?"
"It's big enough, Janice," grumbled Jason. "Does seem as though--most
years--it's too big for us to manage. If Marty, here, warn't so
triflin'----"
"I don't see no medals on _you_ for workin' hard," whispered the boy,
loud enough for Janice to hear.
"This was a right good farm, onc't," said Aunt 'Mira. "B'fore Jason got
his mis'ry we use ter have good crops. That's when we was fust married."
"But that's what broke my health all down," interposed Uncle Jason.
"Don't pay a man to work so hard when he's young. He has ter suffer for
it in the end."
"Huh!" grunted Marty. "If it wasn't good for _you_ to work so hard when
you was young, what about _me_?"
"You git along out o' here an' start on them 'taters!" commanded Mr.
Day, angrily.
Marty slid out, muttering under his breath. Janice jumped up from the
table, saying cheerfully: "I'll help you with the dishes, Aunty. Let's
clear off."
Her uncle had risen and was feeling for his corncob pipe on the ledge
above the door. Mrs. Day looked a bit startled when she saw Janice begin
briskly to collect the soiled dishes.
"I dunno, Janice," she hesitated. "I gin'rally feel right po'ly after
dinner, and I'm use ter takin' forty winks."
Janice did not wonder that her aunt felt "right po'ly." She had eaten
more pork, potatoes, spring cabbage and fresh bread than would have
served a hearty man.
"Let's get rid of the dishes first, Aunty," said Janice, cheerfully "You
can get your nap afterward."
"Wa-al," agreed Mrs. Day, slowly rising. "I dunno's there's water enough
to more'n give 'em a lick and a promise. Marty! Oh, you Marty! Come, go
for a pail of water, will ye? That's a good boy."
"Now, ye know well enough," snarled Jason's voice just outside the
door, "that that boy ain't in earshot now."
"Oh, _I_ can get a pail of water from the pump, Aunty," said Janice,
briskly starting for the porch.
"But that pump ain't goin'," declared Mrs. Day. "An' no knowin' when
'twill be goin'. We have ter lug all our water from Dickerson's."
"Oh, gimme the bucket!" snapped Uncle Jason, putting his great, hairy
hand inside the door and snatching the water-pail from the shelf.
"Wimmen-folks is allus a-clatterin' about suthin'!"
Janice had never imagined people just like these relatives of hers. She
was both ashamed and amused,--ashamed of their ill-breeding and amused
by their useless bickering.
"Wa-al," said her aunt, yawning and lowering herself upon the kitchen
couch, the springs of which squeaked complainingly under her weight,
"Wa-al, 'tain't scurcely wuth doin' the dishes _now_. Jason'll stop and
gab 'ith some one. It takes him ferever an' a day ter git a pail o'
water. You go on about your play, Niece Janice. I'll git 'em done erlone
somehow, by-me-by."
Mrs. Day closed her eyes while she was still speaking. She was evidently
glad to relax into her old custom again.
Janice took down her aunt's sunbonnet from the nail by the side door and
went out. Amusement had given place in the girl's mind to something
like actual shrinking from these relatives and their ways. The porch
boards gave under even her weight. Some of them were broken. The steps
were decrepit, too. The pump handle was tied down, she found, when she
put a tentative hand upon it.
"'It jest rattles,'" quoted Janice; but no laugh followed the sigh which
was likewise her involuntary comment upon the situation.
CHAPTER IV
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
There was a long, well-shaded yard behind the house, bordered on the
upper hand by the palings of the garden fence. Had this fence not been
so overgrown by vines, wandering hens could have gone in and out of the
garden at pleasure.
Robins were whisking in and out of the tops of the trees, quarreling
over the first of the cherry crop. Janice heard Marty's hoe and she
opened the garden gate. About half of this good-sized patch was given
over to the "'tater" crop; the remainder of the garden seemed--to the
casual glance--merely a wilderness of weeds. There may have been rows of
vegetable seeds planted there in the beginning; but now it was a perfect
mat of green things that have no commercial value--to say the least.
Marty was about halfway down the first row of potatoes. He was cleaning
the row pretty well, and the weeds were wilting in the sun; but the rows
were as crooked as a snake's path.
"Hullo!" said the boy, willing to stop and lean on the hoe handle.
"Don't you want to help?"
"I don't believe I could hoe, Marty," said Janice, doubtfully.
"If you'd been a boy cousin, I wouldn't have minded," grunted Marty. "He
and me could have had some fun."
"Don't you think _I_ can be any fun?" demanded Janice, rather amused by
the frankness of the youth.
"Never saw a gal that was," responded Marty. "Always in the way. Marm
says I got to be perlite to 'em----"
"And is that such a cross?"
"Don't know anything about no cross," growled Marty; "but a boy cousin
that I could lick would ha' been a whole lot more to my mind."
"Oh, Marty! we're not going to quarrel."
"I dunno whether we are or not," returned the pessimistic youth. "Wait
till there's only one piece o' pie left at dinner some day. You'll have
ter have it. Marm'll say so. But if you was a boy--an' I could lick
ye--ye wouldn't dare take it. D'ye see?"
"I'm not so awfully fond of pie," admitted Janice. "And I wouldn't let a
piece stand in the way of our being good friends."
"Oh, well; we'll see," said Marty, grudgingly. "But ye can't hoe, ye
say?"
"I don't believe so. I'd cut off more potato plants than weeds, maybe.
Can't you cultivate your potatoes with a horse cultivator? I see the
farmers doing that around Greensboro. It's lots quicker."
"Oh, we got a horse-hoe," said Marty, without interest. "But it got
broke an' Dad ain't fixed it yet. B'sides, ye couldn't use it 'twixt
these rows. They're too crooked. But then--as the feller said--there's
more plants in a crooked row."
"What's all that?" demanded Janice, waving a hand toward the other half
of the garden.
"Weeds--mostly. Right there's carrots. Marm always _will_ plant carrots
ev'ry spring; but they git lost so easy in the weeds."
"_I_ know carrots," cried Janice, brightly. "Let me weed 'em," and she
dropped on her knees at the beginning of the rows.
"Help yourself!" returned Marty, plying the hoe. "But it looks to me as
though them carrots had just about fainted."
It looked so to Janice, too, when she managed to find the tender little
plants which, coming up thickly enough in the row, now looked as livid
as though grown in a cellar. The rank weeds were keeping all the sun and
air from them.
"I can find them, just the same," she confided to Marty, when he came
back up the next row. "And I'd better thin them, too, as I go along,
hadn't I?"
"Help yourself," repeated the boy. "But pickin' 'tater bugs wouldn't be
as bad as _that_, to my mind."
"'Every one to his fancy,
And me to my Nancy.'
as the old woman said when she kissed her cow," quoted Janice, laughing.
"You can have the bugs, Marty."
"Somebody'll have to git 'em pretty soon, or the bugs'll have the
'taters," declared her cousin. "Say! you'd ought to have somethin'
besides your fingers ter scratch around them plants."
"Yes, and a pair of old gloves, Marty," agreed Janice, ruefully.
"Huh! Ain't that a girl all over? Allus have ter be waited on. I wisht
you'd been a boy cousin--I jest _do_! Then we'd git these 'taters done
'fore night."
"And how about getting the carrots weeded, Marty?" she returned,
laughing at him.
Marty grunted. But when he finished the second row he threw down his hoe
and disappeared through the garden gate. Janice wondered if he had
deserted her--and the potatoes--for the afternoon; but by and by he
returned, bringing a little three-fingered hand-weeder, and tossed on
the ground beside her a pair of old kid gloves--evidently his mother's.
"Oh, thank you, Marty!" cried Janice. "I don't mind working, but I hated
to tear my fingers all to pieces."
"Huh!" grunted Marty. "Ain't that jest like a girl?"
Grudgingly, however, as his interest in Janice was shown, the girl
appreciated the fact that Marty was warming toward her. Intermittently,
as he plodded up and down the potato rows, they conversed and became
better acquainted.
"Daddy has a friend who owns a farm outside of Greensboro, and I loved
to go out there," Janice ventured. "I always said I'd love to live on a
farm."
"Huh!" came Marty's usual explosive grunt. "You'll git mighty tired of
livin' on _this_ one--I bet you!"
"Why should I? You've got horses, and cows, and chickens, and--and all
that--haven't you?"
"Well, we've got a pair of nags that you can plow with. But they ain't
fit for driving. Jim Courteval, who lives up the road a piece, now
_he's_ got some hossflesh wuth owning. But our old crowbaits ain't
nothing."
"Don't you love to take care of them--and brush them--and all that?"
cried the girl, eagerly.
"Not much I don't! I reckon if old Sam and Lightfoot felt a currycomb
once more they'd have a fit. And you ought to see our cow! Gee! Dad
tried to trade her the other day for a stack of fodder, and the man
wouldn't have her. He'll have ter trade her off 'sight unseen' if he
ever gits rid of her. Ye see, we never _do_ raise feed enough, an' she
certainly come through the winter in bad shape; an' our paster fence is
down in places so we can't let her get the grass."
"Why, the poor creature!" murmured Janice. "Why don't you mend the
fence, Marty, so the cow can feed in the pasture?"
"Me? Huh! I guess not," snarled Marty, starting down the potato row
again. "Let the old man do it."
It was not long after this that Marty got tired of hoeing and threw down
the implement altogether, to seek the shadow of the cherry tree in the
fence corner.
"Why don't ye quit?" he asked Janice. "You're getting all hot and mucky.
And for what? Them things will only have ter be weeded again."
Janice laughed. "I'll keep them clean as far as I can go. I won't let a
lot of old weeds beat _me_."
"Huh! what's the odds?"
"Why, Marty!" she cried. "Don't you like to see 'a good task well
done?'"
"Ya-as,--by somebody else," grinned that young hopeful. "Come on an' sit
down, Janice."
"Haven't got time," laughed his cousin.
"Pshaw! 'Time was made for slaves'--that's what Walky Dexter says. Say!
let's go up to see the Shower Bath."
"How about the potatoes?"
"Shucks! I've done a good stint, ain't I? Dad can't expect me to work
all the time. An' I bet he ain't doin' a livin' thing himself but
settin' down talkin' somewhere."
Janice, though shaking her head silently, thought this was more than
likely to be true. And Marty would not leave her in peace; so she was
willing to desert the carrot patch. But she had cleaned up quite a piece
of the bed and was proud of it.
Marty sauntered along by her side as they passed through the barnyard
and paddock. It was plain that what Marty had said about currying the
horses was quite true. The beasts' winter coats still clung to them in
rags. And the poor cow!
A couple of lean shoats squealed in a pen.
"What makes them so noisy, Marty?" asked his cousin.
"I guess they're thirsty. Always squealin' about sumthin'--hogs is. More
nuisance than they're worth."
"But--I s'pose if _you_ wanted water, you'd squeal?" suggested Janice.
"Huh! smart, ain't ye?" growled Marty. "I'd go down ter Dickerson's an'
git a drink. So'll them shoats if Dad don't mend that pen pretty soon."
It was no use to suggest that Marty might make the needed repairs; so
Janice made no further comment. The trail of shiftlessness was over
everything. Fences were down, doors flapped on single hinges, roofs were
caved in, heaps of rubbish lay in corners, here and there broken and
rusted farm implements stood where they had last been used. Neglect and
Decay had marked the Day farm for their own.
The fields were plowed for corn and partly worked up with the harrow.
But nothing further had been done for several days past, and already the
weeds were sprouting.
Most of the fences were of stone; but the pasture fence was of three
strands of wire, and with a hammer and staples a good deal might have
been done for it in a few brisk hours.
"Aw, what's the use?" demanded Marty. "It'd only be down again in a
little while."
"But the poor cow----"
"Shucks! She's gone dry long ago. An' I'm glad of it, for Dad made me
milk her."
The climb through the pasture and the woodlot above it, however, was
pleasant, and when Janice heard the falling water she was delighted.
This was so different from the prairie country to which she was used
that she must needs express her appreciation of its loveliness again and
again.
"Oh, yes," grunted Marty. "But these rocky old farms are mighty hard to
work. I bet I picked up a million dornicks out o' that upper cornfield
las' month. An' ye plow jest as many out o' the ground ev'ry year. Mebbe
the scenery's pretty upon these here hills; but ye can't _eat_ scenery,
and the crops are mighty poor."
Over the lip of a smoothly-worn ledge the water sprayed into a granite
basin. The dimpling pool might have been knee-deep, and was as cold as
ice.
"It's like that the hottest day in August," said Marty. "But it's lots
more fun to go swimmin' in the lake."
It was late afternoon when they came down the hillside to the old Day
house once more. Mr. Day was puttering around the stables.
"Ye didn't finish them 'taters, Marty," he complained.
"Oh, I'll do 'em to-morrer," said the boy. "It most broke my back
a'ready. And did ye see all the carrots we got weeded?"
"Uh-huh," observed his father. "Lots _you_ had to do with weedin' the
carrots, Marty," he added, sarcastically.
When Janice went into the house the dinner dishes were still piled in
the sink; yet Aunt 'Mira was already getting supper. She was still
shuffling around the kitchen in her list slippers and the old calico
dress.
"I declare for't!" she complained. "Seems ter me I never find time to
clean myself up for an afternoon like other women folks does. There's
allus so much ter do in this house. Does seem the beatenes'! An' there
ain't nobody nowheres likes nice clo'es better than I do, Niece Janice.
I use ter dress pretty nifty, if I do say it. But that was a long time
ago, a long time ago.
"No. Never mind 'em now. I'll wash the hull kit an' bilin' of 'em up
after supper. No use in takin' two bites to a cherry," she added,
referring to the dishes in the sink.
Janice climbed the stairs to her room, carefully stepping over the
broken tread. There was water in her pitcher, and she made her simple
toilet, putting on a fresh frock. Then she sat down in the rocker by the
window. Every time she swung to and fro the loose rocker clicked and
rattled.
The red light that heralded the departure of the sun behind the wooded
hills across the lake seemed to make the room and its mismated
furnishings uglier than before. The girl turned her back upon it with
almost a sob, and gazed out upon the terraced hillside and the lake, the
latter already darkening. The shadows on the farther shore were heavy,
but here and there a point of sudden light showed a farmhouse.
A belated bird, winging its way homeward, called shrilly. The breeze
sobbed in the nearby treetops, and then died suddenly.
Such a lonely, homesick feeling possessed Janice Day as she had never
imagined before! She was away off here in the East, while Daddy's train
was still flying westward with him, down towards that war-ruffled
Mexico. And she was obliged to stay here--in this ugly old house--with
these shiftless people----
"Oh, dear Daddy! I wish you could be here right now," the girl half
sobbed. "I wish you could see this place--and the folks here! I know
what _you'd_ say, Daddy; I know just what you'd say about it all!"
CHAPTER V.
'RILL SCATTERGOOD AND HER SCHOOL.
With the elasticity of Youth, however, Janice opened her eyes the
following morning on a new world. Certainly the outlook from her window
was glorious; therefore her faith in life itself--and in Poketown and
her relatives--was renewed as she gazed out upon the beautiful picture
fresh-painted by the fingers of Dawn.
All out-of-doors beckoned Janice. She hurriedly made her toilet, crept
down the squeaking stairs, and softly let herself out, for nobody else
was astir about the old Day house.
The promise of the morning from the window was kept in full. Janice
could not walk sedately--she fairly skipped. Out of the sagging gate and
up the winding lane she went, her feet twinkling over the dew-wet sod, a
song on her lips, her eyes as bright as the stars which Dawn had
smothered when she tiptoed over the eastern hills.
And then at a corner of a cross-lane above her uncle's house, Janice
came upon the only other person in Poketown astir as early as
herself--Walkworthy Dexter, who led Josephus, the heavy harness clanking
about the horse's ribs.
"Ah-ha! I see there's a new _day_," chuckled Mr. Dexter, his pale blue
eyes twinkling. "And how do you find your Uncle Jase? Not what you'd
call a fidgety man, eh? He ain't never stirred up about nothing, Jase
Day ain't. What d'ye think?"
Janice didn't know just what _to_ think--or, to say, either.
"Find Jase jest a mite leisurely, don't ye?" pursued the gossipy Dexter.
"I bet a cooky he ain't much like the folks where you come from?"
"I couldn't give an opinion so soon," said Janice, shyly, not sure that
she liked this fat man any more for the scorn in which he held his
neighbors.
"There speaks the true Day--slow but sure," laughed Dexter, and went his
way without further comment, leading the bony Josephus.
But the morning was quite spoiled for Janice. She wondered if her
uncle's townsfolks all held Walkworthy Dexter's opinion of the Day
family? It hurt her pride to be classed with people who were so
shiftless that they were a byword in the community.
She went back to the house when she saw the smoke curling out of the
chimney below her. Aunt 'Mira was shuffling around the kitchen in slow
preparation for the morning meal. Mr. Day was pounding on the stairs
with a stick of stove-wood, in an endeavor to awaken Marty.
"That boy sleeps like the dead," he complained. "Marty! Marty!" he
shouted up the stairs, "your marm is waitin' for you to git her a pail
of water."
Then he started for the stable to feed the stock, without waiting to see
if his young hopeful was coming down, or not.
"I declare for't!" Aunt 'Mira sighed; "I'm allus bein' put back for
water. I _do_ wish Jason would mend that pump."
Janice took the empty pail quietly and departed for the neighbor's
premises. It was an old-fashioned sweep-and-bucket well at the
Dickerson's, but Janice managed it. The pail of water was heavy,
however, and she had to change hands several times on her way up the
hill. Marty came yawning to the door just as his cousin appeared.
He grinned. "You kin git up an' do that ev'ry morning, if ye want to,
Janice," he said. "I won't be jealous if ye do."
"Ye'd oughter be ashamed, Marty," whined his mother, from the kitchen,
"seein' a gal do yer work for ye."
"Who made it my work any more'n it's Dad's work?" growled Marty. "And
she didn't have ter do it if she didn't want to."
Janice did her best to keep to a cheerful tone. "I didn't mind going,
Aunty," she said. "And we'll get breakfast so much quicker. I'm hungry."
She endeavored to be cheerful and chatty at the breakfast table. But the
very air her relatives breathed seemed to feed their spleen. Mr. Day
insisted upon Marty's finishing the hoeing of the potatoes, and it took
almost a pitched battle to get the boy started.
Mrs. Day was inclined, after all, to "take sides" with her son against
his father, so the smoke of battle was not entirely dissipated when
Marty had flung himself out of the house to attack the weeds.
"Ef you'd do a few things yourself when they'd oughter be done, p'r'aps
the boy'd take example of ye," said Mrs. Day, bitterly.
Her husband reached for his pipe--that never-failing comforter--and made
no reply.
"Ev'rythin' about the house is goin' to rack an' ruin," pursued the
lady, slopping a little water into the dishpan. "No woman never had to
put up with all _I_ hafter put up with--not even Job's wife! There! all
the water's gone ag'in. I do wish you'd mend that pump, Jason."
But Jason had departed, and only a faint smell of tobacco smoke trailed
him across the yard.
Janice tried to help her aunt--and that was not difficult. Almira Day
was no rigid disciplinarian when it came to housekeeping. By her own
confession she frequently satisfied her housewifely conscience by giving
things "a lick and a promise." And anybody who would help her could make
beds and "rid up" as best pleased themselves. Aunt 'Mira was no
housekeeping tyrant--by no means! Consequently she did not interfere
with anything her niece did about the house.
The upstairs work was done and the sitting room brushed and set to
rights much earlier than was the Day custom. When Janice had done this
she came back to the kitchen, to find her aunt sitting in a creaky
rocker in the middle of the unswept floor and with the dishes only half
washed, deep in a cheap weekly story paper.
"Why! how smart you be, child! All done? Wa-al, ye see, I gotter wait
for Jason, or Marty, to git me a pail o' water. They ain't neither of
'em been down to the house yit--an' I might's well rest now as any
time."
It was this way all day long. Aunt Almira was never properly through her
work. Things were always "in a clutter." She did not find time from
morning till night (to hear her tell it) to "clean herself up like other
wimmen."
Janice helped in the garden again; but Marty was grumpy, and as soon as
the last row of potatoes was hoed he disappeared until supper time.
Uncle Jason was marking a field for corn planting. A harness strap broke
and he was an hour fixing it, while old Lightfoot dragged the rickety
marker into the fence corner and patiently cropped the weeds. Later a
neighbor leaned on the fence, and Uncle Jason gossiped for another hour.
The girl saw that none of the neighboring housewives came to call on
Aunt 'Mira. In the afternoon she saw several of them exchanging calls up
and down the lane; but they were in fresh print dresses and carried
their needlework, or the like, in their hands, while Aunt 'Mira was
still "down at the heel" and in her faded calico.
Janice was getting very lonely and homesick. Every hour made the
separation from her father seem harder to bear. And she had scarcely
spoken to a soul save the Days and Walky Dexter since her arrival in
Poketown. Friday noon came, and at dinner Janice desperately broached
the subject of 'Rill Scattergood's school again.
"I'd love to visit it," she said. "Maybe I'd get acquainted with some of
the girls. I might even attend for the remainder of the term."
"Huh!" scoffed Marty. "That old maid can't teach ye nothin'."
"But it would be something to _do_," exclaimed Janice, with vigor.
"My goodness me, child!" drawled Aunt Almira. "Can't you be content to
jest let things go along easy?"
"Yer must want sumthin' ter do mighty bad, ter want ter go ter 'Rill
Scattergood's school," was again Marty's scornful comment.
"Just the same I'm going," declared Janice. "It's not far, is it?"
"Right up at the edge of town," said her uncle. "They built it there
ter git the young'uns out o' the way. Hard on some of 'em in bad
weather, it's sech a long walk. Some o' these here flighty folks has
been talkin' up a new buildin' an' a new teacher; but taxes is high
enough as they be, _I_ tell 'em!"
"'Rill Scattergood ain't no sort er teacher," said Mrs. Day. "She didn't
have no sort er control over Marty."
"Huh!" grunted that young man, "she couldn't teach nothin' ter
nobody--that ol' maid."
"But 'most of the girls and boys of Poketown go to school to her, don't
they?" asked Janice.
"Them whose folks can't send 'em to the Middleboro Academy," admitted
her aunt.
"Then I'm going up to get acquainted after dinner," announced Janice.
"I--I had so many friends in Greensboro--so many, many girls at
school--and some of the boys were real nice--and the teachers--and other
folks. Oh, dear! I expect it's Daddy I miss most of all, and if I don't
pretty soon find something to _do_--something to take a real interest
in--I'll never be able to stand having him 'way down there in Mexico and
me up here, not knowing what's happening to him!"
The girl's voice broke and the tears stood in her eyes. Her earnestness
made even Marty silent for the moment. Aunt Almira leaned over and
patted her hand.
"You go on to the school, if ye think ye got to. I'd go with ye an'
introduce ye ter 'Rill Scattergood if I didn't have so much to do. It
does seem as though I allus was behindhand with my work."
A little later, when Janice, in her neat summer frock and beribboned
shade-hat, passed down Hillside Avenue, she was conscious of a good many
people staring at her--more now than when she had come up the hill with
her uncle several days before.
Here and there some attempts had been made to grow flowers in the yards,
or to keep neat borders and rake the walks. But for the most part
Hillside Avenue displayed a forlorn nakedness to the eye that made
Janice more than ever homesick for Greensboro.
The schoolbell had ceased ringing before she turned into High Street and
began to ascend the hill again, so there were no young folks in sight.
Higher up the main street of Poketown there were few stores, but the
dwellings were no more attractive. Nobody seemed to take any pride in
this naturally beautiful old town.
Janice realized that she was a mark for all idle eyes. Strangers were
not plentiful in Poketown.
She came at length in sight of the school. It was set in the middle of a
square, ugly, unfenced yard, without a tree before it or a blooming bush
or vine against its dull red walls. The sun beat upon it hotly, and it
did seem as though the builders must have intended to make school as
hateful as possible to the girls and boys who attended.
The windows and doors were open, and a hum came from within like that of
a swarming hive of bees. Janice went quietly to the nearest door,
mounted the steps, and looked in.
She had by chance come to the girls' entrance. The scholars' backs were
toward her and Janice could look her fill without being observed.
There was a small class reciting before the teacher's desk--droning away
in a sleepy fashion. The older scholars, sitting in the rear of the
room, were mainly busy about their own private affairs; few seemed to be
conning their lessons.
Several girls were busily braiding the plaits of the girls in front of
them. Two, with very red faces and sparkling eyes, were undeniably
quarreling, and whispering bitter denunciations of each other, to the
amusement of their immediate neighbors. One girl had a bag of candy
which she was circulating among her particular friends. Another had
raised the covers of her geography like a screen, and was busily engaged
in writing a letter behind it, on robin's-egg-blue paper.
At the far end of the room the teacher, Miss Scattergood, sat at her
flat-topped desk. "That old maid," as Marty had called her, was not at
all the sort of a person--in appearance, at least--that Janice expected
her to be. Somehow, a spinster lady who had taught school--and such a
school as Poketown's--for twenty years, should have fitted the
well-known specifications of the old-time "New England schoolmarm." But
Amarilla Scattergood did not.
She was a little, light-haired, pink-cheeked lady, with more than a few
claims to personal attractiveness yet left. She had her mother's
birdlike tilt to her head when she spoke, her eyes were still bright,
and her complexion good.
These facts were visible to Janice even from the doorway.
When she knocked lightly upon the door-frame, Miss Scattergood looked up
and saw her. A little hush fell upon the school, too, and Janice was
aware that both girls and boys were turning about in their seats to look
at her.
"Come in," said Miss Scattergood. "Scholars, attention! Eyes forward!"
She might as well have spoken to the wind that breathed at the open
window and fluttered the papers upon her desk. The older scholars paid
the little school-mistress no attention whatsoever.
Janice felt some little confusion in passing down the aisle, knowing
herself to be the center of all eyes. Miss Scattergood dismissed the
class before her briefly, and offered Janice a chair on the platform.
"I guess you're Jason Day's niece," said the teacher, pleasantly,
taking her visitor's hand. "Mother was telling me about you."
"Yes, Miss Scattergood," Janice replied. "I am Janice Day, and when you
have time I'd love to have you examine me and see where I belong in your
school."
"You--you are too far advanced for our school," said the little teacher,
with some hesitation and a flush that was almost painful. "Especially if
you came from a place where the schools are graded as in the city."
"Greensboro has good schools," Janice said. "I was in my junior year at
high."
"Oh, dear me!" Miss Scattergood cried, hastily. "We don't have any such
system here, of course. The committee doesn't demand it of me. I have to
teach the little folks as well as the big. We go as far as our books
go--that is all."
She placed several text-books before Janice. It was plain that she was
not a little afraid of her visitor, for Janice was much different from
the staring, "pig-tailed" misses occupying the back seats of the
Poketown school.
Janice was hungry for young companionship, and she liked little Miss
Scattergood, despite the uncontradicted fact that "she didn't have no
way with her."
While she conned the text-books the school-mistress had placed before
her, Janice watched proceedings with interest. She had never even heard
of an ungraded country school before, much less seen one. The older
pupils, both girls and boys, seemed to be a law unto themselves; Miss
Scattergood had little control over them.
The teacher called another class of younger scholars. This class
practically took all of her attention and she did not observe the four
boys who carried on a warfare with "snappers" and "spitballs" in the
back seats; of the predatory campaign of the lanky, white-haired youth
who slid from seat to seat of the smaller boys, capturing tops, marbles,
and other small possessions dear to childish hearts, threatening by
gesture and writhing lips a "slaughter of the innocents" if one of them
dared "tell teacher."
Few of the older boys were studying, and none of the bigger girls. The
latter were too much interested in Janice. Looking them over, there was
not one of these Poketown girls to whom Janice felt herself attracted.
Some of them giggled as they caught her eye; others whispered together
with the visitor as the evident subject of their secret observations;
and one girl, seeing that Janice was looking at her, actually stuck out
her tongue--a pink flag of scorn and defiance!
Janice believed that in English, history and mathematics she might
improve by reciting with Miss Scattergood's classes, and she told the
little teacher so.
"You'll be welcome, I'm sure," said the school-mistress, nervously. "Are
you coming Monday? That's nice," and she shook hands with her as the
visitor arose.
Janice passed down the girls' aisle again, trying to pick out at least
one of the occupants of the old-fashioned benches who would look as
though she might be chummy and nice; but there was not one.
"Dear me--dear me!" murmured Janice, when she was outside and stood a
moment to look back at the ugly, red schoolhouse. "It--'it jest
rattles'--_that's_ what it does; like everything about Uncle Jason's,
and like everything about the whole town. That school swings on one
hinge like the gates on Hillside Avenue.
"Oh, dear me! Poketown is just dreadful--it's dreadful!"
CHAPTER VI
AN AFTERNOON OF ADVENTURE
The late spring air, however, was delicious. The trees rustled
pleasantly. The bees hummed and the birds twittered, and altogether
there were a hundred things to charm Janice into extending her walk.
Down at the foot of a side street a bit of water gleamed like a huge
turquoise. There seemed to be no dwellings at the foot of this street,
and Janice, with the whole afternoon before her, felt the tingle of
exploration in her blood.
Just off High Street was another store. It was in a low-roofed building
shouldering upon the highway, with a two-story cottage attachment at the
back. Two huge trees overshadowed the place and lent a deep, cool shade
to the shaky porch; but the trees made the store appear very gloomy
within.
Of all the shops Janice had observed in Poketown it seemed that this
little store was the most neglected and woeful looking. Its two show
windows were a lacework of dust and flyspecks. In the upper corners were
ragged spider webs; and in one web lay a gorged spider, too well fed to
pounce on the blue-bottle fly buzzing in the toils within easy pouncing
distance! Only glimpses of a higgledy-piggledy of assorted wares were to
be caught behind the panes. Across the front of the building was a faded
sign reading:
HOPEWELL DRUGG
GROCERIES AND DRY GOODS
Nothing about the shop itself would have held Janice Day's attention
even for a moment; but from within (the front door stood ajar) came the
wailing notes of a violin, the uncertain bow of the performer seeking
out the notes of "Silver Threads Among the Gold."
Yet, with all its uncertainty, the fiddler's touch groped for the beauty
and pathos of the chords:
"Darling, I am growing old,
Silver threads among the gold."
Janice heard the haunting sweetness of the tune all the way down the
shaded lane and she wondered who the player might be.
There was a deep, grass-grown ditch on one side--evidently an open drain
to carry the overflow of water from High Street. As the drain deepened
toward the bottom of the hill, posts had been set and rails laid on top
of them to defend vehicles from pitching into the ditch in the dark. But
many of the rails had now rotted and fallen to the sod, or the nails had
rusted and drawn out, leaving the barrier "jest rattling."
From a side road there suddenly trotted a piebald pony, drawing a low,
basket phaeton, in which sat two prim, little, old ladies, a fat one and
a lean one. Despite the difference in their avoirdupois the two old
ladies showed themselves to be what they were--sisters.
The thin one was driving the piebald pony. "Gidap, Ginger!" she
announced, flapping the reins.
She had better have refrained from waking up Ginger just at that moment.
A fickle breath of wind pounced upon an outspread newspaper lying on the
grass, fluttered it for a moment, and then, getting fairly under the
printed sheet, heaved it into the air.
Ginger caught a glimpse of the fluttering paper. He halted suddenly,
with all four feet braced and ears forward, fairly snorting his
surprise. As the paper began flopping across the road, he began to back.
The whites of his eyes showed plainly and he snorted again. The
wind-shaken paper utterly dissipated the pony's corn-fed complacency.
"Oh! Oh! Gidap!" shrieked the thin old lady.
"He--he's backin' us into the ditch, Pussy," cried her sister.
"I--I can't help it, Blossom," gasped the driver of the frightened pony.
The phaeton really was getting perilously near the edge of the
undefended ditch, when Janice ran out beside the pony's head, clutched
at his bridle, and halted him in his mad career. The paper dropped into
the ditch and lay still, and the pony began to nuzzle Janice's hand.
"Isn't he just cunning!" gasped the girl, turning to look at the two
little old ladies.
From a nearby house appeared a lath-like man, who strode out to the
road, grinning broadly.
"Hi tunket! Ye did come purty nigh backin' into the ditch _that_ time,
gals," he cackled. "All right now, ain't ye? That there leetle gal is
some spry. Ginger ain't shown so much sperit since b'fore Adam!"
"Now, I tell ye, Mr. Cross Moore," declared the driver of the pony,
sharply, "we came very near having a serious accident. And all because
these rails aren't repaired. You're one of the _se_-lect-men and you'd
oughter have sense enough to repair that railin'. Wait till somebody
drives plump into the ditch and the town has a big damage bill to pay."
"Aw, now, there ain't many folks drives this way," defended Mr. Cross
Moore.
"There's enough. And think o' Hopewell Drugg's Lottie. She's always
running up and down this lane. Somebody's goin' to pitch head-fust inter
that ditch yet, Cross Moore, an' then you'll be sorry."
She was a very vigorous-speaking old lady, that was sure. The sister by
her side was of much milder temperament, and she was thanking Janice
very sweetly while the other scolded Selectman Moore.
"We thank you very much, my dear. You are much braver than _I_ am, for
I'm free to confess I'm afraid of all cattle," said the plump old lady,
in a somewhat shaken voice. "Who are you, my dear? I don't remember
seeing you before."
"I am Janice Day, Ma'am."
"Day? You belong here in Poketown? There's Days live on Hillside
Avenue."
"Yes, Ma'am," confessed Janice. "Mr. Jason Day is my uncle. But I am
Broxton Day's daughter."
"Why, do tell!" cried the plump little old lady, who had pink cheeks and
the very warmest of warm smiles, as she looked into the girl's hazel
eyes. "See here, Pussy," she cried to her sister. "Do you know who this
little girl turns out to be? She's Brocky Day's girl. Surely you
remember Brocky Day?"
But "Pussy" was still haranguing the town selectman upon his crimes of
omission and could not give her attention to Janice.
"Anyhow, dear, won't you come and see us? Pussy's disturbed a mite now;
but she'll love to have you come, too. We live just a little way out o'
town--anybody can tell you where the Hammett Twins live," said this
full-blown "Blossom." "Yes. My sister an' I are twins. And we're fond of
young folks and like to have 'em 'round us. There! Ginger's all right,
Pussy. We can drive on."
"You'd oughter fix them rails, Cross Moore," repeated the lean sister,
as the old pony started placidly up the hill again.
Mr. Moore languidly squinted along the staggering barrier. "Wa-al--I
reckon I will--one o' these days," he said.
He grinned in a friendly way at Janice as she started on. "Them Hammett
gals is reg'lar fuss-bugets," he observed. "But they're nice folks. So
you're Broxton Day's gal? I heard you'd arove. How do you like
Poketown?"
"I don't know it well enough to say yet, Mr. Moore," returned Janice,
bashfully, as she went down the hill.
There were no more houses, but great, sweeping-limbed willow trees
shaded the lower range of the hill. She came out, quite suddenly, upon a
little open lawn which edged the lake itself. Here an old dock stuck
its ugly length out into the water--a dock the timbers of which were
blackened as though by a fire, and the floor-boards of which had mostly
been removed. There was but a narrow path out to the end of the wharf.
Between the wharf and the opposite side of this little bay was a piece
of perfectly smooth water; the softly breathing wind did not ruffle the
bay at all. The long arm of the shore that was thrust out into the lake
was heavily wooded. Rows of dark, almost black, northern spruce stood
shouldering each other on that farther shore, making a perfect wall of
verdure. Their deep shadow was already beginning to creep across the
water toward the old wharf.
"What a quiet spot!" exclaimed Janice, aloud.
"'Iet spot!'" breathed the echo from the opposite shore.
"Why! it's an echo!" cried the startled Janice.
"'An echo!'" repeated the sprite, in instant imitation of her tone.
It was then that Janice saw the little girl upon the old wharf. At first
she seemed just a blotch of color upon the old burned timbers. Then the
startled visitor realized that the gaily-hued frock, and sash, and
bonnet, garbed a little girl of perhaps eight or nine years.
Janice could not see her face. When she rose up from where she had been
sitting and went along the shaking stringpiece of the dock, her back
was still toward the shore.
Yet her gait--the groping of one hand before her--all the uncertainty
and questioning of her attitude--shot the spectator through with alarm.
The child was blind! More than this, her unguided feet were leading her
directly to the abrupt end of the half ruined wharf!
CHAPTER VII
THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LOST THE ECHO
Shocked by the discovery of the child's misfortune, Janice scarcely
appreciated at first the peril that menaced the blind girl. It was a
mystery how her unguided feet had brought her so far along the
wharf-beam without catastrophe. But there--just ahead--was the end of
the half-ruined framework. A few more steps and the groping feet would
be over the water.
With a sudden, stifled cry, Janice darted forward. At that moment the
child halted; but she gave no sign that she was aware of Janice Day's
presence. The child faced the not far-distant line of thickly-ranked
spruce upon the opposite shore of the little inlet, and from her parted
lips there issued a strange, wailing cry:
"He-a! he-a! he-a!" she repeated, three times; and back into her face
was flung the mocking laughter of the echo.
Janice had stopped again--held spellbound by wonder and curiosity. The
little girl stood in a listening attitude.
"He-a! he-a! he-a!" she cried again.
The obedient echo repeated the cry; but did the blind girl hear it? She
seemed still to be listening. Janice crept on along the broken wharf,
her hand outstretched, her heart beating in her throat.
The child ventured another step, and, indeed, she stamped upon the beam.
"He-a! he-a! he-a!" she wailed again--a thin, shrill, unchildlike sound
that made Janice shudder.
The cry was almost one of anger, surely that stamping of her foot
denoted vexation. Janice could see the profile of the child's face, a
sweet, wistful countenance. Her lips moved once more and, in a thin,
flat voice, she murmured over and over again: "I have lost it! I have
lost it!"
Janice spoke, her own voice shaking: "My dear! do you know it is
dangerous here?"
Her hand reached to clutch the child's arm if she was startled. A little
misstep would send the blind girl over the edge of the wharf. But it was
Janice who was startled!
The child gave her not the least attention--she did not hear. Blind and
deaf, and alone upon the shaking, broken timbers of this old wharf!
She raised her wailing cry again, and then listened for the echo that
she could no longer hear. The older girl's hand was stayed. She dared
not seize the child, for they were both in a precarious place and if the
little one was frightened and tried to wrench away from her, Janice
feared that they might both fall into the lake.
But the girl from Greensboro thought quickly; and this was an emergency
when quick thought was needed. She remembered having read that blind
people are very susceptible to any vibration or jar. She herself stamped
upon the old wharf-beam, and instantly the child turned toward her.
"Who is it?" asked the little girl, in a flat, keyless tone.
"You don't know me, my dear," Janice said, instinctively; then,
remembering the blind eyes as well as the deaf ears, she drew quite
close to the child and gently took her hand.
The child responded and touched Janice lightly, gropingly. The latter
could see her eyes now--deep, violet eyes, the appearance of which
belied the fact that the light had gone from them. They were neither
dull-looking nor with a film drawn over them. It was very hard indeed to
believe that the little girl was sightless.
She was flaxen-haired, pink-cheeked, and not too slender. Yet Janice
could not say that she was pretty. Indeed the impression the afflicted
child made upon one was quite the reverse.
The little hand crept up Janice's arm to her shoulder, touched her hair
and neck lightly, and then the slender fingers passed over the older
girl's face. She did this swiftly, while Janice took her other hand and
with a soft, urgent pressure tried to draw her along.
But although she seemed so sweet and amenable, Janice did not breathe
freely until they were both off the old wharf. Then she demanded,
quickly:
"Do they let you come here alone? Where do you live?"
The little girl did not answer; of course she did not hear. She was
still looking back toward the tall wall of spruce across the inlet, from
which the sharp echo was flung.
"He-a! he-a! he-a!" she wailed again, and the echo sent back the cry;
but the little girl shook her head.
"I have lost it! And I don't hear what _you_ say--do I? You can speak,
can't you?"
Janice squeezed her hand quickly, and the child seemed to accept it as
an affirmative reply.
"But, you see, I don't hear you," she continued, in that strange, flat
voice. Janice suddenly realized that hearing had much to do with the use
of the vocal cords. It is because we can hear ourselves speak that we
attune our voices to pleasant sounds. This unfortunate child had no
appreciation of the tones that issued from her lips.
"I used to hear," said the afflicted one. "And I could see, too. Oh,
yes! I haven't forgotten how things look. You know, I'm Lottie Drugg. I
can find my way about. But--but I've lost the echo. I used to hear
_that_ always. I'd run down there to the wharf and shout to the echo,
and it would answer me. But now I've lost it."
Janice squeezed the little hand again. She found herself weeping, and
yet the child did not complain. But it was plainly an effort for her to
speak. Like most victims of complete deafness, it would not be long
before she would be speechless, too. She "mouthed" her words in a
pitiful way.
Blind--deaf--approaching dumbness! The thought made Janice suddenly
seize the child in her arms and hug her, tight.
"Do you love me?" questioned Lottie Drugg, returning the embrace. "I
wish I could hear you. But I can't hear father any more--nor his fiddle;
only when he makes it quiver. Then I know it's crying. Did you know a
fiddle could cry? You come home with me. Father will play the fiddle for
you, and _you_ can hear it."
Janice did not know how to reply. There was so much she wished to say to
this poor little thing! But her quick mind jumped to the conclusion that
the child belonged to the person whom she had heard playing the violin
as she came down from High Street--the unknown musician in the store
above the door of which was the faded sign of "Hopewell Drugg."
She squeezed the little girl's hand again and it seemed to suffice.
"I know the way. My feet are in the path now," said little Lottie,
scuffling her slipper-shod feet about on the narrow footpath. "Yes! I
know the way now. The sun is behind us. Come," and she put forth her
hand, caught Janice's again, and urged her along the bank of the lake to
the foot of the lane down which the girl from Greensboro had wandered.
Up the hill they went, Janice marveling that Lottie could be so
confident of the way. She seldom hesitated, and Janice allowed herself
to be led. Mr. Cross Moore was still smoking his pipe out in front of
his house.
"I calkerlate that child's goin' to be drowned-ed some day," he said
calmly, to Janice. "Jest a marcy that she ain't done it afore now. An'
Hopewell--Huh! him sittin' up there fiddlin'----"
It seemed to Janice as though a spirit of criticism had entered into all
the Poketownites. There was Walky Dexter scoffing at her Uncle Jason;
and here was Selectman Moore criticising the father of little Lottie.
Yet neither critic, as far as Janice could see, set much of an example
for his townsmen to follow!
Lottie, with her hand in the bigger girl's, tripped along the walk as
confidently as though she had her eyesight. She was an affectionate
little thing, and she "snuggled" closely to Janice, occasionally
touching her new friend's face and lips with her free hand.
"I guess I love you," she said, in her strange, little, flat voice. "You
come in and see father. We are most there. Here is Mis' Robbins' gate. I
used to see her flowers. Her yard's full of them, isn't it?"
"Oh, yes!" replied Janice, fighting her inclination to burst into tears.
"Oh, yes, dear! beautiful flowers." She pressed the hand tightly.
"I can smell 'em," said the child, snuffing with her nose like a dog.
"And now here is the shade of our big trees. It's darker and cooler
under these trees than anywhere else on the street. Isn't it?"
Janice agreed by pressing her hand again, and little Lottie
laughed--such a shrill, eyrie little laugh! They were before the
gloomy-looking store of Hopewell Drugg. The wailing of the fiddle
floated out upon the warm afternoon air.
The blind girl tripped up the steps of the porch and in at the open
door. "Silver Threads Among the Gold" came to a sharp conclusion.
"Merciful goodness!" croaked a frightened voice. "I thought you was
asleep in your bed, Lottie."
Janice had followed the little girl to the doorway. She saw but dimly
the store itself and the shelves of dusty merchandise. From the back
room where he had been sitting with his violin, a gray, thin,
dusty-looking man came quickly and seized Lottie in his arms.
"Child! child! how you frighten me!" he murmured. Then he looked over
the little girl's head and blinked through his spectacles at Janice in
the doorway.
"I'm certainly obliged to ye," he said. "She--she gets away from the
house and I don't know it. I--I can't watch her all the time and she
ain't got no mother, Miss. I certainly am obliged to ye for bringing her
home."
"She was down on the old wharf at the foot of the street, trying to wake
the echo from the woods across the inlet," said Janice, gravely.
The gray man hugged his daughter tightly, and his eyes blinked like an
owl's in strong daylight, as he peered through his spectacles at Janice.
"She--she loved to go there--always," he murmured. "I go with her
Sundays--and when the store is closed. But she is so quick--in a flash
she is out of my sight."
"Can--can nothing be done for her?" questioned Janice, in a whisper.
"She cannot hear you--now," said Hopewell Drugg, gloomily, shaking his
head. "And the doctors here tell me she is almost sure to be dumb, too.
If I could only get her to Boston! There's a school for such as her,
there, and specialists, and all. But it would cost a pile of money."
"You play the fiddle, father," commanded little Lottie. "And make it
quiver--make it cry, father! Then _I_ can hear it."
He set her down carefully, still shaking his head. Her strange little
voice kept repeating: "Play for her, father! Play for her, father!"
Hopewell Drugg picked up the violin and bow from the end of the counter.
He leaned against the counter and tucked the violin under his chin.
There was only a brown light in the dusky store, and the dust danced in
the single band of sunlight that searched out a knot hole in the wall of
the back room--the shed between the store proper and the cottage in the
rear.
"Darling, I am growing old,
Silver threads among the gold----"
The old violin wailed out the tune haltingly. The deaf and blind child
caught the tremulo of the final notes, and she danced up and down and
clapped her little hands.
"I can hear that! I can hear that!" she muttered, her lips writhing to
form the sounds.
Janice felt the tears suddenly blinding her. "I'll come back and see you
again--indeed I will!" she said, brokenly, and hugging and kissing
little Lottie impetuously, she released her and ran out of the ugly,
dark little store.
It is doubtful if Hopewell Drugg even heard her. The violin was still
wailing away, while he searched out slowly the minor notes of the old,old song.
CHAPTER 8
Дженис Дэй
© Copyright: Вячеслав Толстов, 2023
Свидетельство о публикации №223101201005
Свидетельство о публикации №223101201005
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