Mr. Day had not yet gone to bed when the young folks reached the
house; but Mrs. Watkins had long since retired. The light in the
living room assured Janice that her father awaited her return,
and bidding Amy and Gummy good-night at the gate, she ran into
the house in great excitement.
"Oh, Daddy! Daddy! Guess!" she cried to him. "Just think! She
broke a big cutglass dish, and I'm 'most sure it's Olga--"
"Wait!" exclaimed Mr. Day, putting up both hands. "Mercy, I
pray, my dear. I don't know what you are talking about."
"But you know Olga, Daddy."
"To my sorrow," he groaned, "It can't be that you have found out
anything about that Swedish girl? I have been searching
Pickletown again this evening."
"Oh, Daddy!" she cried, "maybe Olga is just where you can find
her to-morrow. And she did break one of Mrs. Latham's very best
dishes, and--"
"Let us hear all about this in due order," laughed Broxton Day.
"I can see that you are far too much excited to go promptly to
bed. Explain yourself, my dear."
When he had heard it all, he did not appear to be as much
impressed as Janice expected him to be. It was a small chance,
in his opinion, that the girl who had broken Mrs. Latham's dish
was the same Olga who had for two months held sway in the Day
kitchen.
"But we will make a pilgrimage to the cottage on the back of the
Latham farm," Daddy promised. "If I can get away from the bank
early to-morrow afternoon, we will go. I know the place, and
there is a family of Swedish people living there. Of course, by
chance, it might be Olga your friend Gummy followed home."
"Oh, no! It would be providential, Daddy," Janice declared,
smiling. "You say yourself that Providence is not chance."
"True," he agreed, with gravity. "If we get back the
treasure-box, with all in it, I shall be very, very thankful
indeed, and shall consider it a Providential happening."
"Daddy, dear!" whispered Janice.
It was at these times, when they spoke of the lost treasures,
that Janice was so heart-stricken because of daddy's expression
of countenance. Those letters from her dear, dead mother, which
her father prized so highly, were continually in Broxton Day's
mind. She realized it was a loss that time would hardly mend.
"And all my fault! All my fault!" she sobbed when she was alone
in her bedroom. "Had I not been so dreadfully careless Olga
would never have got hold of that box when she was mad and run
off with it. And suppose she doesn't think the things in it are
worth much? She might throw them away!"
So, despite the good time they had had at Stella Latham's party,
Janice went to bed in no happy frame of mind.
Saturday was bound to be a very busy day; and Janice did not wake
up early. Daddy left a note for her on the table saying he would
be at home with some kind of a conveyance not long after the bank
closed at one o'clock.
She knew what that meant. They were to ride out to the Johnson
house and make inquiries for the girl, Olga. Janice was sorry she
had slept so late, for Mrs. Watkins expected her to do what she
termed "her share" of the work.
"If your pa lets you sit up till all hours, so that you're not
fit for anything in the morning, should I be blamed?" complained
the faded-out lady. "I'm sure I have enough to do every day, and
all day. I have got to have some help on Saturdays and that is
all there is to it."
Janice knew well enough that the reason the work piled up so upon
the last day of the week was because it was allowed to accumulate
through the other days. But the kitchen floor did have to be
scrubbed. It was a sight!
If the woman would only mop it every other day it would not be so
bad; but it seemed to Janice that Mrs. Watkins would just wade
through dirt to her knees in the kitchen before she would use
either mop or scrubbing brush.
It was true that daddy did not often look into the kitchen, now
that there was somebody supposedly capable of keeping the room,
as well as the rest of the house, in order. And Janice was glad
he did not look around the house much.
Such training as she had enjoyed under her mother's eye had made
Janice thorough. Mrs. Day had been a thoroughly good
housekeeper.
And she had always kept so well up with her housework that there
were never any difficult jobs left to haunt one, and her house
looked always neat. Nor was she obliged to keep half her
prettily furnished rooms shut up to keep them clean!
Janice did all she could on this short Saturday morning. She had
first of all to he sure that daddy's room was dusted--every bit.
Then there were the halls and stairs to do. After those, the
porches must be swept.
"For you know," sighed Mrs. Watkins, "it looks so much better for
a child like you to be out sweeping the porch and paths than what
it would me."
Janice could not quite understand this reasoning. But she knew
it must be a deal easier for Mrs. Watkins to rock in a chair in
the house than to wield the broom. That went without saying.
She did not think of lunch, although the faded-out lady did not
neglect her own. Janice was down on her hands and knees, with
scrubbing brush and pail, when the housekeeper carried some
savory dish or other into the dining room.
"I presume since you had your breakfast so late you will not care
to eat now," said the woman. To tell the truth, a tear or two
dropped into the strong soda water in the pail.
"Though I don't believe salt will help start the grease-spots on
this floor," Janice thought, rubbing her eyes with the wrist of
one hand. "There! I am a regular cry-baby. I said I would do
something to relieve daddy of bothering about the housework. And
if scrubbing a floor is the best I can do--"
Suddenly a shadow appeared at the door. Janice looked up and
squealed. There was daddy himself--at least an hour and a half
too early.
"Well, well!" exclaimed Broxton Day, rather sternly, "what is
the meaning of this?"
"Dirt on the floor boards--scrubbing brush--elbow grease,"
retorted his daughter, making vigorous explanatory motions.
"Didn't you ever see a 'scrub lady' before, Daddy?"
"Humph! so there is a Cinderella in the house is there?" he said.
Mrs. Watkins opened the dining-room door. She was swallowing a
mouthful which seemed to go down hard. Mr. Day's unexpected
appearance disturbed her.
"Oh, Mr. Day," she cried, feebly, "have--have you had your
lunch?"
"I have, Mrs. Watkins," he replied. Then to Janice: "No matter
how much you may like to scrub floors, my dear, you will have to
leave this one for Mrs. Watkins to finish. There is a car at the
door. I have borrowed it for a couple of hours, and you must
make haste and put on something different and come with me to
look for Olga."
"Well," Janice got up from her knees slowly.
"Hurry," said daddy sternly. And he stood and waited until
Janice went out of the room.
"So you will not have lunch, Mr. Day?" asked Mrs. Watkins coolly.
"No. But there is one thing I will have, Mrs. Watkins," he said
sternly. "I will have you attend to your work, and not put it on
Janice, while you remain here!"
"I do not understand you, sir," said the woman, her nose in the
air.
"Let me make myself plain then," said Broxton Day. "I will not
pay you wages to shift such work as this," pointing to the
scrub-pail, "upon my daughter. I want that understood here and
now. I can no longer give you carte blanche at the grocery and
provision store. I will do the marketing myself hereafter. You
will furnish the lists."
"Sir?" ejaculated Mrs. Watkins haughtily.
"I have kept tabs on the accounts this last week. In no seven
days since I was married have the expenses for the table been
half what they have been this week."
"I am not used to a poverty-stricken household, Mr. Day!" sneered
Mrs. Watkins.
"But you soon will be," Broxton Day told her grimly, "if I let
you have a free hand in this way. I am not a rich man, and I
soon will be a poor one at this rate."
"I want you to understand, Mr. Day, that no lady can demean
herself."
"Wait a moment," said the man, still grimly. "I did not hire you
to be a lady. I hired you to do the housework. I can't have you
here unless you keep your share of the contract. Please remember
that, Mrs.
Watkins."
He left her abruptly and walked through to the front of the
house. He saw that at her place on the dining table was the
remains of a broiled squab-chicken--a very tasty bit for a hard
working woman like Mrs. Watkins.
"Are you ready, daughter?" he called up the stairway.
"Just a minute or two, Daddy," replied Janice.
She felt that they were in trouble again. All she had tried to
do to keep him from knowing just how badly things about the house
were going had been for naught.
But she winked back the tears and "practised a smile" in her
looking glass before she ran down to join daddy on the porch.
There was a big touring car out in front. Janice knew it
belonged to the vice-president of the Farmers ad Merchants Bank.
"Oh, what a fine car, Daddy!" she whispered, clinging to his
hand. "Let's play it is ours--while we are in it, of course."
"Would you like to have a car my dear?" he asked her, as they
settled themselves in the tonneau, and the driver started the
machine.
"Oh!" she cried. "I could just jump out of my skin when I think
of it! Every time I ride with Stella
Latham I'm just as covetous as I can be. I guess I am real
wicked, Daddy."
"I shouldn't be surprised," he returned, smiling. "It would be
nice to have all the comforts and the luxuries of the
rich--without their troubles."
"M-mm!" said Janice. "But even their troubles can't be so bad.
Not as bad as poor people's troubles."
"Like ours?" he returned, smiling down at her.
"It is a fact that we cannot keep a hired girl. We're not as
lucky as the man I heard of who was boasting of having kept a
cook a whole month. But it seemed that this month his house was
quarantined for scarlet fever."
"Oh, Daddy!" giggled Janice. "Let's get a yellow, or a red, card
from the Board of Health, and tack it up outside the door."
"And so keep Mrs. Watkins, whether or no? I am not sure that we
can stand her, my dear."
"We-ell, there are worse," Janice confessed. "And we have had
them," commented her father rather grimly. "Ah, that's the little
house where the Johnsons live!"
"Oh, dear me! If it should be our Olga!"
"We'll know about that pretty soon," said Mr. Day comfortingly.
"Stop here, Harry."
The car was halted, and Mr. Day jumped out and went up to the
house. When he knocked a tall, pale woman, with a little baby in
her arms, opened the narrow door. It took but a glance to reveal
her nationality.
"You bane want my hoosban'?" asked the Swedish woman.
"No, Mrs. Johnson," replied Mr. Day. "I came to inquire about a
young woman that I believe is staying here."
"No vooman here but me," declared the other, shaking her head
vigorously.
"What? Haven't you a friend here named Olga?"
"Olga bane gone," declared the woman sullenly.
"Gone away? exclaimed Mr. Day. "Since last evening?"
"She bane gone."
"Are you Mrs. Johnson?" asked the man, earnestly.
"My name bane Yonson--yes," she agreed. "I don't know nottin'
'bout Olga. She bane gone. She did not mane to break dish,
anyway."
"Oh!" exclaimed Mr. Day, remembering what Janice had told him
about the accident at the Latham's the evening before. "We have
not come about the dish. It is for another matter entirely that
we wish to find Olga."
"I not know where Olga bane go," pursued Mrs. Johnson, shaking
her head vigorously.
"She went away this morning, then?"
"Yah. She bane go dis mornin'."
"Is her name Olga Cedarstrom?".
"No! No!" exclaimed Mrs. Johnson, shaking her head vigorously.
"You not b'know dis Olga. She 'nudder girl."
"Where is your husband?" asked Mr. Day hopelessly. "Perhaps he
can tell me more about her."
"Yon Yonson gone to Dover," declared his wife, suddenly shutting
the door and leaving Mr. Broxton Day outside on the step.