Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Josephine Paolucci
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
www.pgdp.net.
[Illustration: The quick eye of Janice Day caught sight of this row of
nondescripts. (See page 15.)]
JANICE DAY
BY
HELEN BEECHER LONG
ILLUSTRATED BY
WALTER S. ROGERS
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS :-: NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY
SULLY AND KLEINTEICH
All rights reserved
CONTENTS
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!"