ECHOES
"Let's go down to the cove, Janice Day, and call on my echo," Lottie
said eagerly. "Do you know, I haven't been there for ever so long. My
echo must be awfully lonely with nobody to shout to him any more."
"If you like," the older girl said smilingly, "we will go there first."
"Oh, yes!"
Janice turned the car skillfully in the narrow street. She could even
safely wave her hand to Mrs. Beaseley who looked from her sitting room
window across the street, where Nelson Haley boarded.
There were other people who waved to Janice, or who spoke to her, as the
car rolled down the hill. Here was Mr. Cross Moore wheeling his invalid
wife in her chair around and around the smooth, graveled walks of their
garden. Janice stopped her car and shut off the engine here.
"Good-day, Mrs. Moore. How are you feeling this lovely weather?" Janice
asked.
"Ha! fooling away your time same's usual, are you?" snapped the
invalid, disapproval written large on her querulous features.
"She's feeling pretty well, for her," Mr. Moore said placidly. "But we
hate to see winter coming. Then she can't get out of doors so much."
"I wish you would let me take you out in the car sometimes, Mrs. Moore,"
Janice said, smiling. "You could see the country while it is so
beautiful."
"Huh! risk my neck and bones bein' driven about in one o' them things by
a silly girl? Not much!"
"I guess she'd feel safer if I was shoofer," said Cross Moore grimly.
"And I've a mind to get one o' them things next year."
"You will _not_, Cross Moore!" cried his wife, who made it a practice to
oppose every suggestion--verbally, at least.
"Oh, I dunno," said the man cheerfully. "You know I've shoofered you in
this here chair for many a year without an accident. I reckon I could
graduate to an automobile seat pretty easy."
"Why! it's just as e-asy to learn," Janice said, smiling. "And think how
far and how quickly you could go, Mrs. Moore."
"Huh! Why should I wish to go far or quick--me that ain't walked right
for ten years? I've got all over sech desires."
"Wait till you have tried it," Janice cried as she touched the
self-starter and the engine began to purr again.
"Now, ain't that mighty nice, Mother?" they heard Cross Moore say to the
fretful woman. "To go spinning about the old roads around Polktown would
do you good."
"Oh, you got more uses for your money, Cross Moore, than flitterin' it
away on sech things. If you spent money as careless as them Days
does,--look at the hole Jase Day is into right now--_you'd_ be 'Owin"
Moore, 'stead o' Cross Moore."
"Do you know," Lottie said to Janice as they drove on, "I think Miz'
Cross Moore would be lots happier if--maybe--she had an echo."
"An echo?"
"Yes," the child said, nodding her head. "Like me. You know, _I_ should
have been awfully lonesome, and maybe as short-tempered as she is, if I
couldn't have talked to my echo."
"Why?" Janice asked curiously, for the philosophy of the little girl
interested her.
"Why," Lottie said, still speaking seriously, "my echo was worse off
than I was. Yes it was. It couldn't get away from where it was--not even
to fly across the cove--unless I told it to. It had to stay right there
in the pine woods on Pine Point. But even while I was blind I could find
my way about."
"Very true," agreed Janice, likewise serious. "The echo is a poor little
prisoner."
"So it is! so it is!" laughed Lottie gayly, for these queer little
imaginings and fancies were part of her very nature. Then she grew grave
once more. "You 'member how I went to look for it that time, and it
snowed so hard, and Mr. Nelson Haley came to find me? He found me, but I
never did find out just where that echo lived. I was 'most afraid it had
gone for good, but it was there yet the last time I was down here."
While she was speaking the car ran down to the shore of Pine Cove at a
beautiful but rather retired spot with an old fish-house and disused
wharf in the foreground and, across the placid pool, the sheltering arm
of Pine Point, thickly grown with tall pines. Against the wall of the
pine wood Lottie's voice echoed back to her with almost uncanny
distinctness as she stood in her old place on the wharf.
"He-a! he-a! he-a!" she shouted shrilly and sweetly; and back to her
came the prompt echo:
"'E-a! 'e-a! 'e-a!"
"See! he's there yet," she cried, turning to Janice. "Come up here,
Janice, and see if he'll answer you. Mr. Haley says there are echoes
everywhere; but I don't believe there is a single one as nice as mine."
Janice came, laughing. "What shall I say to your friend?" she asked.
"Oh! you must not call what I do, of course. You shout somebody's
name--somebody you love," the child advised.
Instantly Janice opened her lips and expelled toward the wooded point:
"Nelson!"
"'Elson!" shot back the echo.
"Of course," cried Lottie, dancing up and down in her satisfaction. "He
knows Mr. Haley. But shout somebody's name he doesn't know."
"Here comes Mr. Thomas Drew's sloop, Lottie," Janice said as the big
sailing vessel on which she had several times sailed on fishing
excursions shot into the cove before a favoring wind.
"Oh! how pretty!" cried the little girl. "And what a big sail. He's
going to drop anchor where he usually does--see!"
The sloop swept majestically between the old wharf and the pine wood
where the echo "lived."
"Now, Janice!" urged Lottie, "shout again. Call a name my echo doesn't
know."
And Janice, still smiling, cried aloud:
"Daddy! Daddy!"
No repetition of the call came back from the wall of pine wood. Lottie
seized her friend's hand almost in fear.
"Oh! he doesn't answer! He doesn't know your father, Janice Day." Then,
awestruck, she put a question that stabbed Janice to the quick: "Do--do
you suppose anything real _bad_ has happened to your father 'way down
there in Mexico?"
Afterwards, Janice realized that the big sail of the sloop, flattened as
it crossed between the wharf and the distant wood, had caught her voice
and held it, echoless. Nevertheless the odd occurrence engendered in her
heart a fear of impending peril. She began to worry again about Broxton
Day. She counted the days that must elapse before she could possibly
hear from her father in reply to the letter she had written about her
Uncle Jason's difficulties.
The Day homestead on Hillside Avenue no longer housed a happy and
contented family. It grew very difficult for Janice, even, to be
cheerful. And Marty positively seemed to have lost his whistle. Janice
tried her best to don a sprightly air; but she observed her uncle and
aunt and Marty sometimes whispering together and watching her; and this
made her feel uncomfortable.
"Daddy" usually wrote his beloved daughter a weekly letter. Sometimes it
was delayed a day or so because the ore train was delayed out of
Alderdice to San Cristoval. So, when the expected letter did not arrive
with the maximum of speed Janice was patient.
"I just won't let that old echo foolishness get on my nerves," she told
herself firmly. "I am not superstitious--I won't be!"
It was hard to raise the spirits of the family; but the greater the
effort she put forth to that end the more she, herself, was helped. She
could not really understand what kept those about her so downhearted.
The bank people seemed willing to give Uncle Jason all the leeway
possible in settling the affairs of the absconded Tom Hotchkiss. Janice
had no idea her relatives were hiding a secret from her, and all of them
felt it the very hardest task they had ever undertaken.
Of course, in the general news from Mexico Mr. Day's plight caused
little comment in the daily press. Mexican troubles had continued for so
long that the American public considered it an old story. Mr. Day was
only one of hundreds of courageous Americans who felt as though they
must stay by their business in the embattled country, despite
Washington's warning to them to get out of the danger zone.
And now, it seemed, Janice's father had paid the toll for heeding his
own venturesome spirit. All the information Nelson, Mr. Middler, and
Uncle Jason had been able to gather from all sources pointed to the
truth of the first report of the situation in the Companos District.
Mr. Day was wounded; and so sorely that his escaping laborers could not
take him away from the mine when they were driven forth by the
insurrectos. This was the final news Janice's friends had obtained from
the Border, and now they did not know what to do next. Successfully
keeping the story of her father's peril from the girl was not enough.
How to reach and bring Mr. Day out of Mexico was a problem that balked
Janice's friends. Indeed, even to communicate with the wounded man was
impossible. It was reported that, although San Cristoval had been
retaken by the troops of the de facto government of Mexico, the
Alderdice and other mines in the Companos District were in the hands of
the rebel party.
Janice began to miss Nelson Haley's frequent calls. He had been coming
to the Day house several evenings during the week of late; and although
he offered the perfectly sound excuse of extra school work, the girl
missed him. To tell the truth Nelson shrank from being in Janice's
company. He had turned coward! Although he was the first to suggest
keeping Mr. Broxton Day's peril secret from his daughter, now Nelson
feared all the time that in some way the truth would come to the
surface. The conspirators walked upon a volcano that might at any moment
break out and overwhelm them. And what would Janice do or say, when this
eruption occurred? That query troubled the schoolmaster a great deal.
Naturally of a perfectly frank nature, the situation was bound to irk
his mind ceaselessly. Marty and his parents feared a sudden revelation
of the truth, too; so that every knock on the kitchen door during an
evening gave each of the three a sharp and distinct shock.
One evening Marty heard somebody drive into the yard after supper and he
ran hurriedly to open the porch door. He was always expecting to have
to head off some person not in the secret who would appear with the news
of Mr. Broxton Day's state.
"Who is it, Marty?" shrilled his equally anxious mother at the crack of
the door.
"Hi tunket!" ejaculated the boy, "'tlooks like--why, it is! It's Elder
Concannon. What's he want here?"
"Never you mind. Go out and hitch his horse in the shelter, and tell him
to come right in," ordered Aunt 'Mira. "Dear me! where's your manners,
Marty Day?"
"Well, _he's_ safe enough," muttered Marty, starting for the shed.