The huge brown bear whined again and seemed grieved that his
innocent attentions should be so ungratefully received. The
hysterical Miss Peckham kicked again and Pietro backed away and
left space for his suavely smiling master in the doorway of the
Day's kitchen.
"I--I wash my hands of you!" moaned the prostrate spinster.
"What--How did you come to bring that bear into my yard?"
demanded Mr. Day, finally recovering his voice.
"Boy tella me you give Pietro supper," said the man with the very
engaging smile. "Bread-butter. Pietro lika heem."
"That Arlo Weeks Junior!" cried Janice suddenly. "Oh, Daddy,
there he is outside."
There was a loud explosion of laughter back of the bear and his
trainer, on the dark porch, and then the clatter of running feet.
Junior's proclivity for practical jokes was too well known for
the Days to doubt his connivance in this most surprising
happening.
"No maka troub', Signore," whined the Italian master of the bear
in about the same tone Bruin himself had begged.
Mr. Day was helping the overwrought Miss Peckham to her feet.
"Of all things!" he muttered, "Take her out the other way,
Janice--do."
"I wash my hands of you!" repeated the spinster, scarcely aware
yet of what had happened. Then she suddenly descried the bear
again. She shrieked in a most ear-piercing tone:
"There it is! I know Janice Day did that! Don't talk
to me! She's the plague of the neighborhood. No wonder Sophrony
couldn't stand it here. Bringing bears into the house!"
"Oh! Oh, Miss Peckham! I never!" cried Janice.
"Don't deny it. You--you horrid child!" declared the spinster;
and repeating again that she "washed her hands" of them all, she
ran out of the house by the other door and quickly disappeared in
the direction of her own cottage.
"Well, I never!" exclaimed Mr. Day, falling into a chair. Then
he burst into uproarious laughter.
The Italian, who had been about to withdraw, and was tugging on
the bear's chain, began to smile again. He foresaw leniency when
the master of the house could laugh like this.
Janice gave way to merriment, too. It was funny. Much as she
was sorry for Miss Peckham's fright, the situation altogether was
one to amuse her.
Pietro waddled into the kitchen and sat up like a dog to beg. A
bear is a foolish looking beast at best, unless it becomes
ill-tempered; and this big brown thing, so his smiling master
said, "had the heart of a child."
"And the stomach of an ostrich!" declared Janice, after almost
every cold scrap in the house had followed several slices of
"bread-butter" down Pietro's cavernous maw.
The old fellow was as good-natured as he could be. After the
feast he went through his little repertoire of tricks with little
urging.
He "played soldier" and went through his own particular manual of
arms with his master's stick as a gun. He "played dead," but
with his little pig-like eyes twinkling all the time.
Finally he danced with his master, and with such abandon, if not
grace, that the dishes rattled on the shelves in the kitchen
cupboard.
"There, that will do. He's paid for his supper. Next thing
he'll have the house down about our ears," declared Mr. Broxton
Day.
"Grazias, Signore; grazias, Signora," said the bear trainer, over
and over again, and bowing deeply as he jerked Pietro by the
chain toward the door.
His eyes, his teeth, and the little gold rings in his ears, all
twinkled together. Janice thought he was a very polite man.
"And I hope he is always kind to Pietro," she said, when the
foreigner and his strange pet were gone. "But, Daddy! Don't we
have the greatest happenings in our house?"
"Right you are, my dear. An aristocratic lady has left us flat;
the neighborhood censor has washed her hands of us; and we have
entertained a highly educated bear, all in a single day. As you
might say, all these astonishing happenings are 'all in the Days'
work.' The Days certainly do entertain the most astonishing
adventures."
"Oh, my! Don't we?" giggled his daughter.
"And now, if Pietro the bear has left us anything in the house to
eat, let us have supper, Janice. I expect that hereafter Miss
Peckham's opinion of us will be too acrimonious for speech."
"Oh, she never did like me much," sighed Janice. "And now Arlo
Junior has made it worse again. Just think! The bear on top of
the cats--"
"Scarcely that, my dear," laughed her father. "But if she really
believes you introduced that bear for the praise of scaring her,
her poor Sam's getting hurt over here will be a small incident
compared with this ursine hold-up. The neighbors are going to
hear about this, I feel sure."
Nor was he mistaken on that point. Before forty-eight
hours had elapsed it was noised around the neighborhood that
"that very ladylike person, Mrs. Watkins" had been obliged to
leave the Days and had returned to Marietteville, because of the
treatment accorded her in "that house, which she had entered only
as a favor."
It was told that Janice had invited a tramp with a dancing bear
into the house and that "no lady who deemed herself such" could
endure rudeness of that character. Somehow, the neighborhood
censor did not figure in the story of the dancing bear; perhaps
she feared to be ridiculed.
But Janice told Mrs. Carringford all about it. That good woman
had serious troubles of her own; but she was not so selfish that
she could not sympathize with Janice.
"I do wish I could do something to help you and your father, my
dear," said the woman. "When people have as nice a house as you
have Amy has told me all about
it
--it does seem too bad that it can't be kept as a home should be
kept."
"Like yours, Mrs. Carringford," said Janice.
"My dear," sighed Mrs. Carringford, "I don't know how long we'll
have our home, poor as it is. We owe a lot of money on it. I am
afraid I did wrong in trying to buy this place," and she shook
her head sadly.
Janice did not feel like asking the friendly woman pointblank
what she meant; but Amy afterward explained.
"You see, Janice, Mr. Abel Strout, of Napsburg, owned this house.
It was he who advised mother strongly to
buy a home with father's insurance money. We didn't know how
much it cost to keep up a house after you get possession of it.
"Mr. Strout took part of our money in payment and mother gave a
mortgage to him for the balance of the price. And that mortgage
is troubling mother greatly."
"I guess mortgages are bad things," Janice observed, with a wise
nod of her head.
"They are when poor folks have 'em, anyway. You see, mother held
back some money to live on. But taxes and repairs and
assessments have to come out of that, as well as the interest on
the mortgage that comes due half-yearly. And that isn't all."
"No?" asked Janice, interested.
"Now it seems that Mr. Strout only wrote that mortgage
for a year and he can do what he calls 'call it in' a month from
now. Of course, mother can't pay the mortgage; it is hard enough
to pay the interest on it. And so Mr. Strout says he will just
take the house back and we--we'll lose our money, and all,"
finished Amy with almost a sob.
"Why, I think that is too mean for anything!" cried her friend.
"Can't he be stopped?"
"I don't know how. And I guess mother doesn't. He says he would
accept a payment on the principal--that's
the mortgage, you know. But mother doesn't dare give up any more
of our money. There is nobody earning any but Gummy. And how
far do you suppose his three dollars a week goes in buying food
for all us children, for instance?"
Janice had no answer for this; but she determined to tell daddy
the particulars of Mrs. Carringford's trouble. Besides, she had
in her mind, and had had for a long time, a desire to bring her
father and Amy's mother together. She wanted them to know each
other, and for a very definite reason.