During the days immediately succeeding the fire and the
Carringford's poignant trouble, Janice Day had a mental problem
to solve which occupied her thoughts a good part of the time.
Daddy's broken leg was getting along nicely. With the aid of
crutches he could get around very well indeed. He had even gone
down to the bank in an automobile.
So Janice did not have to give him quite the close care and
attention that she previously had. Daddy declared she was making
a mollycoddle of him, anyway--that she babied him too much.
She had more freedom of action, therefore, and now she proceeded
to put a certain plan she had made into effect. Janice had not
forgotten what Bertha Warring had said regarding the information
Stella Latham had hidden from her, Janice, at the time school
closed.
Could it be that, after all was said and done, the Olga who had
broken Mrs. Latham's dish was the same Olga that had run away
with the Day's treasure-box? Was it Olga Cedarstrom, with her
name changed, and Stella had known it to be so, all the time?
Really, when Janice thought of this she felt exceedingly angry
with Stella. She had intended, after Stella had acted so meanly
toward Amy Carringford, to let the farmer's daughter strictly
alone in the future. She would have as little to do with her as
it was possible, considering that she had to go to school with
her. That was at first. Then her anger had cooled. Now it was
aflame again.
But if Stella knew positively that the Swedish girl who had
visited Mrs. Johnson had been married, and therefore her name was
no longer Cedarstrom, Janice was determined to find it out.
Unpleasant as might be to ask Stella, Janice would do just this.
She knew Stella had returned from her visit to the lake shore
resort. Janice had seen her flying past in the Latham car more
than once within the week. Janice could not stop her at such
times; she could not expect Stella to put herself out at all to
give her any information. So she set forth one August morning to
trudge through the heat and dust out to the Latham farm. There
was no interurban car that would take her near there; and how she
did wish daddy could afford an automobile!
Indeed, just as she turned up the road leading to the door of the
Latham house a motor-car turned, too, into the road, powdering
Janice with dust. The latter saw the malicious smile of Stella
Latham, driving the car herself, as the farmer's daughter looked
back over her shoulder at the pedestrian.
Janice kept grimly on; nor would she show Stella that she was
hurt or ruffled in temper. Stella waited on the porch for her
schoolmate to approach. A man came to take the car around to the
garage.
"Well, what do you want?" asked Stella, when Janice came within
hearing. "Are you begging more old clothes for that protegee of
yours, Amy Carringford?"
"I have come on my own business, Stella," said Janice gently.
"It is something that I want to know, and you can tell me."
Stella was smiling broadly; but it was by no means a pleasant
smile. She was spiteful. She had found since coming back from
her summer vacation that the girls had not forgotten her behavior
toward Amy Carringford and some of them still resented it. She
was nowhere near as popular as she had been; and even her
father's motorcar could not regain the friendship of many of her
schoolmates whom she wished to be chums with.
Stella laid all this to "that sly Janice Day." She dared not so
speak of Janice before her mother; for Mrs. Latham liked Janice.
Just now, however, Stella's mother was not at home, and she felt
free treat Janice in any way she chose.
"Of course, you expect me to tell you everything you want to
know, Janice Day," said Stella. "But I don't know why I should."
"You will tell me, won't you, Stella, if you really know that the
Swedish girl who broke your mother's dish is the same girl who
used to work for daddy and me?"
"Why should I?"
"Because it is the right thing to do, isn't it? You do not know
what it means to us if we can find that
girl--"
"And why should I care?" snapped Stella "You never did anything
for me, Janice Day."
"I think I tried to--at least once," her schoolmate said mildly.
"Nothing of the kind! You did something for Amy Carringford--the
pauper! You were spoons with her then, and you wanted to get her
to my party. You begged an invitation for her and then dressed
her up. like a freak so she could come, and--"
"That is not so, Stella," Janice interrupted with some spirit.
"But I want to talk about Olga, not about Amy."
"Go along with your old Olga!" cried the other angrily. "I
wouldn't tell you anything about her if I knew."
"I shall go to Mrs. Johnson again then. And if Mrs. Johnson is
not willing to tell me, I shall come back and see your mother."
"Oh! you will?" sneered Stella. "So you think the Johnsons will
tell you about Olga's last name do you?"
"I will ask them."
"Good luck to you!" jeered Stella, as Janice went on through the
Latham's yard. "You can ask anybody you like, but you'll get
nothing out of me I assure you!"
Janice made no further reply. She was hurt to the quick, for she
did not believe she deserved any such treatment from her
schoolmate. And it did, too, worry Janice Day when she knew she
had an enemy.
"Friends are so much nicer to make than enemies," was one of
daddy's sayings; and his little daughter always bore that fact in
mind when in contact with her schoolmates.
But really, one could do nothing with Stella Latham, once that
subborn person had made up her mind to be "mad." Stella gloried
in showing all the perversity with which she was cursed; so
Janice sighed and gave it up.
"No use. I hope I won't have to ask Mrs. Latham. Then there will
be trouble, I fear."
The walk over the hill and down the lane, crossing the brook
Gummy Carringford had once spoken of, was a pleasant walk, after
all. It was not dusty, and there were shade trees part of the
way. By the time Janice came to the little house which her
father and she had once visited to look for Olga, she was quite
cool and collected again.
But as soon as she drew near to the tenant house the girl was
startled. There was not a sign of life about it. There were no
wagons or farm tools about the sheds or barnyard. There were no
cattle in the stable, nor pigs in the pen, nor poultry in the
wired run.
"Goodness me! have the Johnsons gone, too?" cried Janice.
She hurried to the little house. There were no curtains at the
windows, and she could see right through the empty house.
"That's what Stella meant!" exclaimed Janice. "Oh, the mean,
mean thing! To let me walk away over here without telling me
that they had gone! And now she is waiting back there to laugh
at me when I return!" Janice Day did not like to be laughed at
any more than other people. And she particularly shrank from
facing the sarcastic Stella on this occasion.
"At least, I will make some inquiries elsewhere, first," she
thought, and set forth along the public highway, on which the
little house fronted, toward another dwelling that was in sight.
There were people in this house, that was sure. There were
children playing in the yard and a pleasant-faced woman on the
front porch, sewing and keeping an eye on the children.
She did put out a somewhat forbidding air when Janice turned in
at the gate; but then she saw the girl had no bag or sample case,
so she brightened up again.
"You haven't anything to sell, I guess?" the woman began, even
before Janice uttered a word.
"Oh, no," answered the girl.
"Come up and sit down," said the woman. Then she added: "Dear
me, you are only a little girl. It's hot walking. Will you have
a drink of water?"
"No, thank you. I got a drink at the well back there," and
Janice pointed at the tenant house on Mr. Latham's place.
"Oh, yes; Latham's cottage."
"The Johnsons used to live there, did they not? asked the caller.
"Swedes--yes," said the woman.
"I was looking for them."
"But goodness, you're not a Swede!" exclaimed the woman.
"Oh, no," laughed Janice. "But I wanted to see them about a
friend of theirs--a girl who used to work for us."
"Oh! I thought you couldn't be a foreigner," said the woman.
"Well," she added, "I'm afraid you'll have to go a long way to
find out anything from the Johnsons."
"You don't mean--"
"I mean they've left the country," said the woman.
"Left this part of the country?"
"They have gone back to Sweden," said Janice's informant, nodding
over her sewing. "Yes. They had a stroke of luck. Mrs. Johnson
told me herself in her broken talk. Near's I could find out her
grandfather had died and left her a bit of property, and she and
her family were going back to the place they came from ten years
ago, to attend to it. Lucky folks, some of them foreigners. I
don't see for the life of me why they ever leave their homes and
come over here, when they've got money and land comin' to them at
home."
The woman talked on, even faster than Miss Peckham was wont to
talk. But her volubility gave Janice a chance to recover her
self-possession. She saw quite clearly that her errand had come
to naught. Even if the Lathams positively knew the missing Olga
had been named Cedarstrom before her marriage they probably did
not know where Olga now was.
The people who were the more likely to know, these Johnsons, had
gone back to their native land. Janice wondered, despairingly,
if Olga had gone back to Sweden too.
But the girl was able to hide her trouble from this new
acquaintance. The woman was glad to have her stay-- and talk.
Rather, the hostess did the talking. It was evident that she got
little chance for conversation, living as she did on this rather
lonely road.
Janice planned what she would do, however, while she listened.
Rather than go back and perhaps have another quarrel with Stella,
she decided she would go home and tell her father what she had
found out. He might write to Mrs. Latham for information--if the
farmer's wife had any--regarding Olga.
At least, it was one sure thing, that such information as Janice
had obtained was much too late. An ocean separated her now from
the Johnsons, Olga's friends.