Janice Day at Poketown Part 21

The very worst of it was, there was nothing Janice could do! She must wait, and to contemplate that pa.s.sive state, almost drove her mad!

Day after day pa.s.sed without bringing any further news. She read the papers just as eagerly as before; but the center of military activity in Mexico had suddenly s.h.i.+fted to an entirely different part of the country. There was absolutely no news in the papers from the district where the mine was situated.

Mr. Buchanan wrote once again, but even more briefly. He was a busy man, and had done all that he could. If he heard from, or of, Mr. Day he would telegraph Janice at once, and if _she_ heard she was to let him know by the same means.

That was the way the matter stood. It seemed as though the State Department could, or would, do nothing. Mr. Day, like other citizens of the United States, had been warned of the danger he was in while he remained in a country torn by civil strife. The consequences were upon his own head.

The folks who knew about Janice's trouble tried to be good to her.

Walky Dexter drove around to invite the girl to go with him whenever he had a job that took him out of town with the spring wagon. Janice loved to jog over the hilly roads, and she saw a good bit of the country with Dexter.

"I'd love to own just a little automobile that I could run myself," she said once.

"Why don't you borry Nelse Haley's gasoline bike?" demanded Walky, with a grin. "Or, mebbe he'll put a back-saddle on fer yer. I've seen 'em ride double at Middletown."

"I don't like motorcycles. I want a wide seat and more comfort," said Janice. "Daddy said that, perhaps, if things went well with him down there in Mexico, I could have an auto runabout," and she sighed.

"Now, Miss Janice!" exclaimed the man, "don't you take on none. Mr.

Broxton Day'll come out all right. I remember him as a boy, and he was jest as much diff'rent from Jason as chalk is from cheese! Yes, sir-ree!"

This implied a compliment for her father, Janice knew, so she was pleased. Walky Dexter meant well.

Little Miss Scattergood was Janice's greatest comfort during this time of trial. She did not discuss the girl's trouble, but she showed her sympathy in other ways. Old Mrs. Scattergood always wanted to discuss the horrors of the Mexican War, whenever she caught sight of Janice, which was not pleasant. So Miss 'Rill and Janice arranged to meet more often at Hopewell Drugg's, and little Lottie received better care those days than ever before.

Miss 'Rill was not a bad seamstress, and the two friends began to make Lottie little frocks; and, as Hopewell only had to supply the material out of the store, Lottie was more prettily dressed--and for less money--than previously.

As Janice and the ex-schoolmistress sat sewing in the big Drugg kitchen, Hopewell would often linger in the shed room with his violin, when there were no customers, and play the few pieces he had, in all these years, managed to "pick out" upon his father's old instrument.

"Silver Threads Among the Gold" was the favorite--especially with Lottie. She would dance and clap her hands when she felt the vibration of certain minor chords, and come running to the visitors and attract their attention to the sounds that she could "hear."

"He-a! he-a! he-a!" she shouted in that shrill toneless voice of hers.

Janice noticed that she talked less than formerly. Gradually the power of speech was going from her because of disuse. It is almost always so with the very young who are deprived of hearing.

Such a pitiful, pitiful case! Sometimes Janice could not think of little Lottie without weeping. It seemed so awful that merely a matter of money--a few hundred dollars--should keep this child from obtaining the surgical help and the training that might aid her to become a happy, normal girl.

It was from Mr. Middler--rather, through a certain conversation with the minister--that Janice received the greatest help during these weeks when her father's fate remained uncertain.

She could not spend all her time at Hopewell Drugg's, or with Walky Dexter, or even about the old Day house. Autumn had come, and the mornings were frosty. The woods were aflame with the sapless leaves.

Ice skimmed the quiet pools before the later-rising sun kissed them.

Janice had sometimes met the minister when she tramped over the hillside--and especially up toward the Shower Bath in Jason Day's wood lot. One glowing, warm October afternoon the girl and the gentle little parson met on the cow path through Mr. Day's upper pasture.

"Ah, my dear!" he said, shaking hands. "Where are you bound for?"

"I don't know whether I had better tell you, or not, sir," she returned, smiling, yet with some gravity. "You see, I was going to get comfort."

"Comfort?"

"Yes, sir. You see, sometimes I get to thinking of--of Daddy so much that the whole world seems just made up of _my_ trouble!" said Janice, with a sob. "Do you know what I mean, sir? Just as though me and my troubles were the most important things in existence--the _only_ things, in fact."

"Ah--yes. I see--I see," whispered Mr. Middler, patting her shoulder, but looking away from her tear-streaked face. "We are all that way--sometimes, Janice. All that way."

"And then I go somewhere to get out of myself,--to--to get comfort."

"I see."

"And so I am going now to the place I call The Overlook. It's a great rock up yonder. I scramble up on top of it, and from that place I can see so much of the world that, by and by, I begin to realize just how small I really am, and how small, in comparison, my troubles must be in the whole great scheme of things. I begin to understand, then," she added, softly, "that G.o.d has so much to 'tend to in the Universe that He can't give me first chance _always_. I've got to wait my turn."

"Oh, but my dear!" murmured the doctrinarian. "I wouldn't limit the power of the Almighty--even in my thoughts."

"No-o. But--but G.o.d does just seem more _human_ and close to me if I think of Him as very busy--yet thoughtful and kind for us all.

Just--just like my Daddy, only on a bigger scale, Mr. Middler."

The minister looked at her gravely for a moment and then took her hand again. "Suppose you show me that place of comfort?" he suggested, quietly.

They went on together through the pasture and up into the wood lot.

They came out upon an unexpected opening in the wood, at the beginning of a great gash in the hillside. At the center of this opening was a huge boulder, surrounded by hazel-nut bushes, to which the brown leaves still clung.

"You can climb up easily from the back. Let me show you," said Janice, who had by now got control of her tears, and was more like her smiling, cheerful self.

She ran up the incline, sure-footed as a goat; but at the more difficult place she gave the minister her hand. He was much more breathless than she when they stood together upon the overhanging rock.

Below them was the steep, wooded hillside, and the broken pastures and scattered houses north of Poketown, along the sh.o.r.e of the lake. This spot was on the promontory that flanked the bay upon one side. From this point it seemed that all of the great lake, with both its near and distant sh.o.r.es, lay spread at their feet!

In the northwest frowned the half-ruined fortress, so heroic a landmark of pre-Revolutionary times. Nearer lay the wooded, rocky isle where a celebrated Indian chief had made his last stand against the encroaching whites. Yonder was the spot where certain of those bold pioneers and fighters, the Green Mountain Boys, embarked under their famous leaders, Allen and Warner, upon an expedition that historians will never cease to write of.

It was a n.o.ble, as well as a beautiful, view. G.o.d's world _did_ look bigger and greater from The Overlook. Sitting by her side, the minister held the girl's hand, and listened to her artless expressions.

She told him quite frankly what all this view meant to her,--how it helped and soothed her worried spirit, brought comfort to her grieving heart. Here were many square miles of G.o.d's Footstool under her gaze; and there were many, many thousands of other spots like this between her and the Mexican mountains in which her father was held a prisoner.

And G.o.d had the same care over one bit of landscape as he did over another!

"Then," she said, softly, in conclusion, "then I just seem to grasp the idea of G.o.d's _bigness_--and how much He has to do. I won't complain.

I'll wait. And meanwhile I'll do, if I can, what Daddy told me to."

"What is that, Janice?" asked the minister, still gazing out over the vast outlook himself.

"I must _do something_,--keep to work, you know. Try and make things better. You know: 'Each in his small corner.' And there's so much to be done in Poketown!"

"So much--in Poketown?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the minister, suddenly brought out of his reverie.

"Yes, sir."

"But I thought Poketown was a particularly satisfactory place. There really is very little to do here. We have a very clean political government, remarkably so. Of course, that fact would not so much interest you, Janice. But the life of the church is very spiritual--very. We have no saloons; we seldom have an arrest----"

"Oh, I never thought of those things," admitted Janice. "There isn't really anything for young people to do in the Poketown Church, I know.

But outside----"

"And what can be done outside?" asked the minister, and perhaps he winced a little at the confidence in Janice's voice when she spoke of the church system which kept the young people at a distance.

"Why, you know, there are the boys. Boys like Marty--my cousin. He goes to school now, it's true; but he's down town just as much as ever at night. And there's no good place for the boys to go--to congregate, I mean."