"It seemed that Mrs. Sophronia Watkins had never sent for her
trunk; so all she had to do was to pack her bag and walk out of
the house. And she had done that very thing.
"'What can't be cured, must be endured,'" quoted Daddy. "Here is
a nice little island of clean floor where you scrubbed, Janice.
I will build the fire, heat water, and finish the job."
'"Oh, no, Daddy! Let me. Your poor knees--" "My knees are not
poor, I'd have you know," he retorted, laughing. "You dust
around and make the house presentable for Sunday. 'Thus endeth
the lesson.' No more 'lady' housekeepers, Janice, for us."
"No-o. I s'pose not. But who shall we get?"
"That is on the knees of the gods, my child," answered Daddy, who
often used quotations that Janice did not altogether understand,
but which she thought were very fine, just the same.
"I guess you mean that nobody knows unless he's omniscient," she
said now. "That's a big word, Daddy, but we had it in our lesson
the other day. And I guess only somebody who knows everything
could guess who will work for us next. Oh, dear!"
"These three weeks have been an expensive experience," said her
father, ruefully enough. "Besides the addition to our household
bills, Mrs. Watkins asked me the other evening for her month's
wages. 'Salary,' she called it. She was about ten days ahead of
time; but I gave it to her.
"So we can figure that our month's expenses have been about
doubled. We could not stand that for long, Janice. Perhaps it
is a blessing that Mrs. Watkins has taken herself off."
"Just the same, Daddy, I'm sorry you came home and caught me
scrubbing the floor," Janice sighed. "We were getting along
without your being bothered--after a fashion."
"At your cost," he said grimly. "No; we'll hobble along
somehow."
"But it's such a hobble, Daddy! It seems to me that I'm not much
of a 'do something' girl or I'd manage better than I do." And
Janice sighed.
"You do wonders, daughter, for a girl of your age. Maybe it is
daddy who fails."
"Oh, Daddy, never!"
Janice hurried to do the things Mrs. Watkins had left undone.
And so she forgot some little purchases that had to be made,
until it was almost dark.
Remembering these, she put on her hat and jacket in haste, and
telling her father where she was going, ran out to the street.
There were the "Weeks' tribe," Junior in the lead, with most of
the other children of the neighborhood, running through Love
Street in a noisy and excited throng.
"What can be the matter now? A fire?" wondered Janice.
Her errand took her in an opposite direction. But she saw people
standing at their gates and chatting to each other as though
there was some neighborhood interest that she did not know about.
"What is the matter with everybody?" Janice asked one girl whom
she met.
"Why, didn't you see it?" was the surprised answer.
"Maybe I did, only I didn't know what it was," laughed Janice.
"A dancing bear. A great, big, brown fellow. You never saw the
like," said her acquaintance.
"Well," thought Janice, "we cannot hire a dancing bear to do our
housework, that is sure. So I don't believe he interests me."
She did the errand and hastened home, for daddy and she had not
yet had supper. She ran in at the side door, and as she did so
she heard voices in the kitchen. She halted, listening; for one
of the voices she recognized as Miss Peckham's and it was
high-pitched and angry.
"I wash my hands of you both--I can tell you that? exclaimed the
spinster from next door. "I don't know why I should have put
myself out to help you, Broxton Day, in any case."
"I do not see why you should," Daddy replied rapidly. "Yet I
believe you meant well, and I thank you."
"'Meant well'?" sniffed the visitor. "I don't know what that's
got to do with it. I gave you both--both Sophrony and you--the
chance of your lives. And neither of you appreciate it. I wash
my hands of you
.
Janice pushed open the door quietly and stepped in, closing it
after her. Miss Peckham, with flashing black eyes and more color
in her face than usual, had drawn herself up commandingly in the
middle of the kitchen floor and was staring at Mr. Day angrily.
"There's that gal!" exclaimed the spinster. "She's the one to
blame."
"I assure you to the contrary, Janice was doing her best to hide
Mrs. Watkins' shortcomings from me," said Mr. Day, smiling warmly
at his daughter.
"It don't matter. 'Twas over her you and Sophrony quarreled.
You admit it."
"I certainly do not admit that I quarreled with Mrs. Watkins," he
said firmly. "She evidently took offense
at what I said to her, and she left. Now she cannot come back.
Under no circumstances would I consider it."
"Well, I wash my hands of you both!" exclaimed Miss Peckham
again, and she turned sharply toward the back door--the door
opposite the one by which Janice had just entered.
The matter of washing her hands seemed important, if only a
figure of speech. She repeated it angrily as she jerked open the
kitchen door. And then she uttered a strange, squeaking cry that
startled Janice and her father before they caught sight of what
had caused the woman's fright.
Miss Peckham seemed transfixed with terror. She threw up her
hands stiffly and toppled over backward. She fell just as though
she had not a joint in her body, and she fell so hard that her
feet sprang up into the air when her shoulders and the back of
her head struck the floor.
Standing upright, framed by the doorframe, was a huge, shaggy,
ragged looking bear, and he was snuffling and whining as bears do
when they want something. Really the bear was begging, but none
of those in the kitchen for a moment realized that fact.
Mr. Day grabbed the poker. Janice squealed and hid behind him.
But her single affrighted cry was all the sound Miss Peckham
made. She really had collapsed in what Janice thought was a
faint.
Before Mr. Day could attack the creature, a whining voice from
the darkness behind the bear said:
"Bread-butter, please, Signore--Signora. Pietro no bite. He
gooda bear. Give supper, please. Pietro lika bread-butter."
The bear came down upon his forepaws, still whining. They could
see, then, the chain by which a very dark man, with little gold
rings in his ears, held the animal in leash. The trainer smiled
very broadly while Pietro snuffed curiously at the soles of Miss
Peckham's shoes.
And Miss Peckham kicked the harmless Pietro on the nose.