A VISTA OF NEW POSSIBILITIES
The family sat down to breakfast, and Mr. Day said grace.
He was a spare, gray-faced man, with watery and wandering eyes. Jason
Day had never moved quickly in his whole life; but there had been much
improvement in him, as well as in the remainder of the family, since
first Janice had seen him standing on the dock to welcome her on her
arrival at Polktown.
“Great doin’s to-day, I s’pose, Niece Janice,” he said, with rather
more humor in his light eyes than they usually displayed.
“That rhinoceros Uncle Brocky is sending her arrives to-day,” chimed in
Marty, broadly agrin.
“Wa-al,” observed Mr. Day, with the naturally critical feeling of
one brother for another, “Broxton Day has spent some of his money, I
kalkerlate, almost as foolish as buying rhinoceroses. He spiles you,
Janice, with all the money he’s sent for you to scatter around.”
“Now, Jason Day!” exclaimed Aunt ’Mira, quite vigorously for her, “you
be still! You know you don’t mean that. Don’t you mind him, Janice.”
“I don’t,” replied the girl, smiling at her uncle. “And I expect I have
spent some of my money foolishly. I didn’t have to tell Daddy what I
did with my thousand dollars. And--and maybe I didn’t just want to tell
him how I spent some of it.”
“Sending that youngster of Hopewell Drugg’s to Boston,” grumbled Uncle
Jason. “I call that a wicked waste! Hopewell orter saved money enough
to pay for the child’s being operated on himself.”
“Now, Jason!” admonished Aunt ’Mira again.
“I do not regret spending my money on little Lottie,” said Janice
softly, “though I didn’t tell Daddy about it. I just said in my letter
that I preferred getting something different from the little car I
wanted.
“And I did get something different,” added Janice, with decision. “I
get far more satisfaction and pleasure out of knowing that little
Lottie Drugg can see again, and will soon hear and talk like other
children, than I could possibly experience if I had bought my car.”
Here Marty laughed, and choked, coming near to strangling.
“What’s the matter with you, boy?” demanded his father sternly.
“Lemme pat you on the back, son,” said his mother, trying to rise from
her chair to reach him. But with a whoop Marty got up and ran out of
doors to finish his spasm in the open air.
“He was laughing and trying to swallow coffee at the same time. I don’t
know what he is laughing at,” said Janice, a little plaintively, “but
he’s been doing it ever since Daddy’s letter came, telling me to look
out for the surprise.
“Why!” she added, “I’d really think that Marty knew what Daddy has sent
me--only that’s impossible, of course.”
“Wa-al,” began Uncle Jason; but Aunt ’Mira gave him a look that froze
his further words upon his lips, and she likewise changed the subject
with an adroit question addressed to her husband:
“How did that railroad business turn out last night, Jason? You went
down to the Board of Trade meeting.”
“All right, all right, Almiry, if it don’t double our taxes in the end
to hev that railroad come in here,” said Uncle Jason, shaking his head
doubtfully. “I kalkerlate that ev’rything that’s new don’t allus mean
progress, no-sir-ree-sir! Our committee reported that the V. C. road
was coming----”
“Why,” spoke up Marty, who had now come back to finish his breakfast,
“there’s a feller in town that’s going to build the bridge for the V.
C. branch over Mr. Cross Moore’s brook. His name’s Frank Bowman. I know
him,” said Marty proudly.
“Well, I certainly shall be glad when the road’s built,” sighed Aunt
’Mira. “Then a body may get to the city once ’n a while.”
Uncle Jason snorted--no other word could express the sound of disgust
he made. “There!” he added. “I s’pose you’ll be runnin’ to town all the
endurin’ time, Almiry.”
“Yes,” she said calmly. “I been once to Middletown in the past five
years, and ain’t been as far as Montpelier since our weddin’ tower. I’m
a great gad-about, Janice. Ain’t that just like a man?”
Uncle Jason subsided, while Marty went on retailing the gossip of the
new railroad work that had been the most exciting topic of conversation
in Polktown that week.
“This Mr. Bowman’s a civil engineer; and he ain’t much older than
Nelson Haley,” said Marty, careful now to distribute his talk and his
mouthfuls so as not to choke a second time.
“You’d oughter say Mr. Haley. He’s your school teacher,” his mother
admonished him.
“Well,” said Marty, too much interested in his information to take
umbrage at his mother’s correction. “Well, this Bowman is going to
build the bridge. It’s his first big job with the V. C. I’m going to
carry the chain for him, I am!” the boy added, with satisfaction.
“You’d better be in the cornfield, boy, if we expect to make a crop
this year,” remarked Mr. Day.
“Hi tunket! you expect a feller to work all the time,” grumbled Marty.
“I done my share of that old corn cultivatin’. Might’s well be a slave
as to belong around here----”
His grumbling remarks faded out gradually; his father ignored them,
saying:
“I ’low Polktown will pick up a bit if all that’s promised comes true.
The steamboat company is going to build a new boat. Got to _com_-pete
with the trains when they git to runnin’.”
“It’s lucky that old tub, the _Constance Colfax_, has held together as
long as she has,” said Mr. Day. “There’s some talk of rebuilding the
dock, too. I declare for’t! we won’t know the town, come next year this
time.”
Her Aunt Almira turned on Janice suddenly, failing to continue her
interest in the vista of changes which marked Polktown’s immediate
future.
“Say, Janice, is it true that Mr. Haley is going to leave the school?”
Janice flushed a little; but nobody noticed it, for which she was glad.
“I don’t just know what his plans are, Aunt ’Mira,” said the girl
hesitatingly. “He has a chance to become an instructor at the
college--of course, beginning in a small way. It is really his work
here at the new Polktown school that brought him the offer.”
“And of course he’ll take it,” grumbled Marty. “I ain’t goin’ to school
no more if Nelse Haley leaves us--now I tell you.”
“How you talk, Marty!” cried Janice. “Of course you will.”
“And of course I won’t, Miss!” reiterated Master Marty.
“Why not?”
“Oh, they’ll git somebody to teach the school like ’Rill Scattergood.
Ain’t goin’ to school again to no old maid,” declared Marty, with a
finality that could not be doubted.
“Perhaps Mr. Haley will not leave us so soon,” said Janice quietly. “I
think he has not decided finally to accept the offer of the college
committee. He thinks, and so do--do his friends,” added Janice hastily,
“that another year’s experience with his present school might help him
a great deal in the future.”
“And sartain sure,” Uncle Jason, who was one of young Haley’s
staunchest partizans, said, “Polktown needs him. He’s one fine feller.
Now, Marty! if you’ve tucked away about all the feed you can carry for
a while, we’ll put the finishing touches to that new shed.”
“Well, we’ve got to hurry,” declared the younger Day. “I promised to
meet Frank Bowman about that chain-carrying job this forenoon; and you
bet I want to be at the dock when the _Constance Colfax_ arrives with
that African gi-raffe that Janice is expecting.”
“What do you suppose Marty means?” demanded Janice, as she helped Aunt
’Mira scrape and stack the breakfast plates, preparatory to their bath
in hot suds. “I am almost ready to believe that he does know what
Daddy’s surprise is to be. But he can’t really know; can he, Auntie?”
“Oh, it’s only Marty’s foolishness. I wouldn’t bother my head about
him,” said Mrs. Day comfortably.
But to expect Janice Day to think of anything that morning but the
promised present from Daddy, was to demand the impossible. She helped
about the house as usual, singing blithely the while; but her active
thought was with the _Constance Colfax_ blundering up the lake from The
Landing toward the Polktown dock.
The hammers of Uncle Jason and Marty rang vigorously until about nine
o’clock. The new shed which had so puzzled Janice was finished. Mr. Day
went off to the cornfield while Marty slipped away, probably to meet
Mr. Bowman and “see about that job,” as he had told Janice.
Marty was a good deal like the majority of human beings. He did not
care to do the tasks right at his hand, but wanted something that
looked better and bigger in the distance. He disliked school--or had
done so until Nelson Haley came to Polktown to teach; and now that
school was not in session he did not want to help his father run their
small farm.
There was a halo of romance, in fact, about any trade that took him
away from home. He often told Janice he wished he was like “Uncle
Brocky,” and could “go ’way off to a mine in Mexico, or any old place!”
“This doing chores, and going to school, and bringing in wood and
water, and all that, is good enough for half these fellers in Polktown.
They haven’t any spirit in ’em!” Marty frequently complained to his
cousin.
Janice was far too wise to try to talk him out of this mental attitude.
Marty--as his mother often said--was “as stubborn as a mule.”
But she influenced him by other means. She shamed the boy into doing
some things that he would gladly have left undone; she ignored his
faults, bolstered up his pride, and spurred his ambition. Secretly her
cousin would have done much to keep Janice’s good opinion. But, of
course, boy-like, he would not admit his affection for her.
The hour for the arrival of the lake steamboat approached. From her
window Janice had watched for the smudge of her smoke against the sky,
and the appearance of her bow around the steep promontory which hid
the lower end of the lake from the Day house.
When the steamer thus appeared she was more than two miles from the
Polktown dock. But Janice seized her hat and hastened down the hill.
She was not the only person abroad interested in the arrival of the
boat. When Janice came to the main street of the town she saw several
people going down to the dock.
Walky Dexter, the expressman, a well-known town character, was driving
Josephus, his poky old horse, dockward, in expectation of a load of
drummers’ sample cases and a possible trunk.
Some of the boys and many of the village idlers were drifting lakeward,
too; and, yes! there was Marty, in the company of a tall young man in
good clothes, and with well set-up shoulders, walking briskly in the
same direction.
“I wonder if that is the Frank Bowman he spoke of?” thought Janice. “It
must be. I wonder if he’s nice?”
And then she forgot all about the stranger and Marty and everybody
else for something that she caught sight of on the freight deck of the
_Constance Colfax_. That ugly, blundering old craft was almost at the
dock, and Janice could see this startling object plainly. Something
within told her that this was the joyful surprise Daddy had prepared
for her.
Big girl that she was, Janice broke into a run. She could not get
to the dock quickly enough, so eager was she to make sure about the
expected gift.