ONE SATURDAY AFTERNOON
From the evening of the lawn party (the Ladies’ Aid was bitter about
that) Annette Bowman’s influence upon the younger element of Polktown
was established. Contrary to her brother’s expectations, Annette did
not find the little provincial town a bore. Indeed, she began to “have
the time of her young, sweet life,” as Frank confessed, with chagrin,
to Janice.
“I wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t see it with my own eyes. I thought
she would be disgusted with the place in a day--dead sore on it in a
week--and desirous of never hearing the word ‘Polktown’ mentioned as
long as she lived, when she turned her back on it and hiked for New
York, where we have a lively bunch of cousins.
“But what do you think?” continued the amazed young civil engineer.
“She is talking now of our taking a house, if one can be found, hiring
a woman to do the work, and remaining all winter. For I shall be on
this job, I expect, all this year and next. She declares she is going
to wake Polktown up. She is going to innovate carpet dances, and hopes
to see frequent balls in the Odd Fellows’ Hall, and wants to stir up
the whole place as it hasn’t been stirred since the Year One.
“Believe me, Miss Janice! I didn’t think it was in her. I thought
she would make everybody laugh at her, or angry with her, inside of
a week--everybody she met, I mean. And I declare! Old Mrs. Parraday
almost worships her already. That funny little Mrs. Scattergood--the
mother of your friend--has been to call on her, and Annette put herself
out to delight the old lady.
“Old Dexter is beginning to stop and talk whenever he meets her; and
if you’ll believe it, she was in Massey’s drug store yesterday with
Maggie Price and Mrs. Price, and she was teaching those old loafers
that congregate there--Cross Moore, and Dexter, and Len Phinney--some
dancing steps.
“She says what they need and what she is going to import--if she can
get one--is a dancing teacher. What do you know about that? A dancing
teacher, no less! Says people ought not to be allowed to grow up and
just exist, as folks do here, until Death reaps ’em, without getting
any joy out of life.”
“I guess she’s right as far as that goes, Mr. Bowman,” said Janice
reflectively.
“Well, I think she got it all out of a book,” said the young engineer,
rather doubtfully. “You never heard such talk in your life! I imagine
it’s just a pose of Annette’s. She’s a nice enough girl, but she’s got
Aunt Lettie’s idea of always being in the public eye. I don’t know how
long the Polktown public will stand for her.”
There was a branch of it already that was displeased with Annette
Bowman, as Janice very well knew. The ladies of the Aid Society laid
it all to her that they had not made a financial success of the lawn
party. People had been so much interested in the exhibitions of dancing
on the Prices’ porch that they had forgotten to spend their money at
the tables. So, much of the food prepared had been wasted.
Elder Concannon led a party, too, who opposed the régime of the city
girl, though that was a chronic opposition that did not count for much,
after all. And Miss Bowman set out at once to charm away the grouch
of the Ladies’ Aid. She succeeded to a degree, for she was willing to
be interviewed upon the subject of dress morning, noon and night, and
idling about the village as she did all day, she was always ready to be
questioned, and offered advice in the matter of style, in and out of
season.
Janice and Annette did not meet frequently. The former could not
complain of any particular neglect upon the part of Frank’s sister--not
at all! Nor did Miss Bowman slight her when they were in company
together. Only the girl from the fashionable boarding school appeared
to set Janice in her place as a girl of much tenderer years; which
might have hurt Janice had she been sensitive about her lack of age.
Frank often expressed his desire that Janice and Annette should be good
friends; but, to tell the truth, neither girl desired any intimacy.
They had few tastes in common. Whereas Janice Day was as ready and as
eager for a good time as any normal girl possibly could be, her idea of
amusement was not always in accord with the ideas of Annette and the
crowd of girls whom she very quickly won to her train.
Janice had her car, and she could have filled it every afternoon with
a party of girls of her own age, and ridden about the country, or to
Middletown or some neighboring hamlet. But Janice found most of the
girls distasteful to her. When she had first come to Polktown the big
girls in Miss ’Rill Scattergood’s school had been very unkind. Their
treatment had driven Janice to find companionship and friends in other
directions. She visited more people like Miss ’Rill and her mother,
Hopewell Drugg, the Hammett Twins, and the like, than she did houses
where there were girls of her own age.
She did not wish to be considered arrogant, or selfish; therefore
she had asked many of the girls to ride with her. But almost always
her companions talked of things that did not interest Janice in the
least. Of late the conversation of most of the girls of a companionable
age was made up of fashion and dress, while they sang the praises of
Annette Bowman, what she was doing and what she was going to do.
“I am afraid I must be jealous of her,” thought Janice, with some
horror. “I even wish Mr. Bowman would stop talking about her. And I am
sure she dislikes me. I never did feel just so about anybody in my life
before.”
So she took out older ladies in her car almost entirely. Sometimes she
went to call on the Hammett Twins--Miss Blossom and Miss Pussy. Neither
of them had plucked up sufficient courage to ride in Janice’s car; but
they loved to have the girl come to see them.
And when she was alone, she liked to ride around by the squatters’
cabin in Elder Concannon’s woods. Not that she could get near to the
Trimmins children, nor did she meet their mother again. But she had
such a deep interest in the black-haired girl, Jinny, that Janice
actually could not keep her out of her mind.
“There must be something I can do for her. There is something to do
for all the girls around town of her age. They are running wild--a
good many of them; and they will grow up to be as silly as their older
sisters are now, if something isn’t found to interest them.”
Not that this problem occupied all Janice Day’s thought. Since the lawn
party she had hoped that Nelson Haley would become more friendly again.
She heartily wished that she had been able that evening to broach the
subject of their estrangement, but there had been too many people
around to enter into any private conversation.
He did not seem to be with Annette so much during these few days before
the school opened, but Janice did not happen to run across him save
in some public place. She was looking forward to the next Sunday and
determined to try to get the school teacher to stroll home with her, as
he had formerly been so fond of doing. Saturday, however, intervened;
and Saturday was a fateful day.
If Janice had but known it, Nelson Haley was quite as desirous of
being friendly with her as she was with him. In spite of his careless,
easy-going manner, the young man was sensitive in the extreme. The
sight of Frank Bowman speeding about town with Janice in her car had
hurt Nelson.
Then slighting little remarks that Annette had let drop served to fan
the flame of Nelson’s jealousy. Annette continued to speak of Janice
and treat her as though she were a little girl. But she intimated
that Frank had become strangely enamored “of the child.” She chose to
consider Frank’s praise of Janice as intimating that her brother was in
love with her. Her sneering, laughing little quips about this supposed
attachment cut Nelson to the quick.
For underneath Nelson Haley’s easy-going exterior was a serious
character that he seldom showed to the world. Janice knew it was there;
she had seen flashes of sentiment and of strength that few people
who met the school teacher would ever have suspected was back of his
semi-humorous smile and light-hearted speech. To Janice he had confided
his desires and hopes regarding his future career. It had been her
suggestion that perhaps, after all, he should teach another year in
Polktown before accepting the offer from the small college which he had
received a few weeks before.
Nelson missed his quiet little talks with the girl. She had been a
help and an inspiration to him and he had long since learned to think
much of her. The way she seemed to have taken Frank Bowman, the civil
engineer, into her confidence, and to have made a companion of him,
did not please Nelson at all. He could not understand Janice’s being
fickle; yet it seemed as though she must be. Why--the day she and Marty
came to the hotel and drove off with Frank in the car, Janice had not
even suggested his going along! And there were seats for four. He and
Bowman’s sister might have been asked to join the party, crowding Marty
in with them.
Take it all in all, Nelson Haley had spent a very uncomfortable
summer. It had been nothing like what he expected when school closed in
June and he had come to Janice with the offer he had received from the
college faculty to join it in the fall. He thought he had “made good”
with her then; and she had been more than kind to him. Now he felt
Janice was becoming a stranger.
It bothered Nelson in his studies (he had spent most of the summer in
preparing for his work in the Polktown school for the coming winter)
and finally, on this Saturday before the opening of the term, he
determined that he must have a fair and square understanding with
Janice, and free his mind.
He came downtown immediately after dinner, did some errands, and then
walked up Hillside Avenue to the old Day house. Had he glanced into the
rain-soaked roadway (it had showered the night before) he would have
seen the wheel-tracks of Janice’s automobile; but he saw with a pang
that the garage door was open when he reached the house.
“I declare for’t, Mr. Haley!” exclaimed Aunt ’Mira, coming to the door
to meet him. “Janice? If she ain’t jest gone! Didn’t you meet her?
I declare for’t! She gits about in that ortermobile as lively as a
water-witch. Marty, he’s gone fishin’, so Janice said she’d run over
an’ take Miss ’Rill and her mother out for a run. She’ll be back ’long
about five. Won’t you stop, Mr. Haley?”
But the disappointed school teacher refused her polite offer, and Aunt
’Mira went back to the wonderful gown she was making with a sigh of
relief. Haley returned to Mrs. Beasely’s cottage. As he passed Hopewell
Drugg’s store he heard the storekeeper’s violin and saw the flutter of
a white dress on the side porch between the store and the dwelling.
“Why, there’s Miss ’Rill now!” he thought, in some surprise. “Can it be
possible that Janice is with her?”
But he saw no sign of the car anywhere about, and was quite sure that
Janice would not have lent it to anybody. Nelson walked across the
street for a nearer view of Drugg’s vine-enshrouded porch. Hopewell
was sawing away at the gay little tune he now played so much, “Jingle
Bells.” Miss ’Rill and he were alone.
Nelson felt almost a physical pang at the discovery. Surely Aunt ’Mira
could not have been mistaken as to what Janice had told her. Nor could
the girl have already taken out the Scattergoods and returned.
Suspicion took hold upon the young man’s mind, and it was all the
keener as jealousy tinged it. Almost in spite of himself he began
to walk toward High Street. The Scattergoods lived just around the
corner, having half of a double cottage, with a pretty flower-garden in
front and a bit of lawn.
He came in sight of this and there was old lady Scattergood, in her
sunbonnet and garden gloves, working in the flower-bed. Surely she had
not been automobiling, nor did she expect to go this afternoon.
Nelson stopped, hesitated, then turned on his heel with the sudden
stiffening all through his body that proclaimed indignation. It looked
as though Janice had not told her aunt the truth. He would never have
suspected the girl of speaking a falsehood! He strode down the hill
toward the hotel. He was determined to find out if Frank Bowman was
there.