E-text prepared by Al Haines
Transcriber's note:
The book's Frontispiece was missing. There were no other
illustrations.
JANICE DAY AT POKETOWN
by
HELEN BEECHER LONG
Author of "The Testing of Janice Day,"
"How Janice Day Won,"
"The Mission of Janice Day," Etc.
Illustrated by Walter S. Rogers
The Goldsmith Publishing Co.
Cleveland
Copyright, 1914, by
Sully & Kleinteich
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. A NEW-FASHIONED GIRL
II. POKETOWN
III. "IT JEST RATTLES"
IV. FIRST IMPRESSIONS
V. 'RILL SCATTERGOOD AND HER SCHOOL
VI. AN AFTERNOON OF ADVENTURE
VII. THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LOST THE ECHO
VIII. A BIT OF ROMANCE
IX. TEA AND A TALK WITH DADDY
X. BEGINNING WITH A BEDSTEAD
XI. A RAINY DAY
XII. ON THE ROAD WITH WALKY DEXTER
XIII. NELSON HALEY
XIV. A TIME OF TRIAL
XV. NEW BEGINNINGS
XVI. "SHOWING" THE ELDER
XVII. CHRISTMAS NEWS
XVIII. "THE FLY-BY-NIGHT"
XIX. CHRISTMAS, AFTER ALL!
XX. THE TROUBLE WITH NELSON HALEY
XXI. A STIR OF NEW LIFE IN POKETOWN
XXII. AT THE SUGAR CAMP
XXIII. "DO YOU MEAN THAT?"
XXIV. THE SCHOOL DEDICATION
XXV. THROUGH THE SECOND WINTER
XXVI. JUST HOW IT ALL BEGAN
XXVII. POKETOWN IN A NEW DRESS
XXVIII. NO ODOR OF GASOLINE!
XXIX. JANICE DAY'S FIRST LOVE LETTER
XXX. WHAT THE ECHO MIGHT HAVE HEARD
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!"