Janice Day at Poketown Part 35

Of a sudden people began to notice the need of a new flag. Who mentioned it first? Why, that Day girl!

And she kept right on mentioning it until some people began to see that it was really a disgrace to Poketown--and almost an insult to the flag itself--to raise such a tattered banner. A grand silk flag, with new halyards and all, was finally obtained, the Congressman of the district having been interested in the affair. And on Was.h.i.+ngton's Birthday the Congressman himself visited the village and made an address when the flag was raised for the first time.

Gradually, other improvements and changes had taken place in Poketown.

There was the steamboat dock. It had been falling to pieces for years.

It had originally been built by the town; but the various storekeepers were most benefited by the wharf, for their freight came by water for more than half of the year.

Walky Dexter started the subscription among the merchants for the dock repairs. He subscribed a fair sum himself, too, for he was the princ.i.p.al teamster in Poketown.

"But who d'you s'pose started Walky?" demanded Mr. Cross Moore, shrewdly. "Trace it all back to one 'live wire'--that's what! If that Day gal didn't put the idee into Walky's head for a new dock, I'll eat my hat!"

And n.o.body asked Mr. Moore to try that gastronomic feat.

The selectman, himself, seemed to get into line during that winter. He stopped sneering at Walky Dexter and for some inexplicable reason he began agitating for better health ordinances.

There was an unreasonable warm spell in February; people in Poketown had always had open garbage piles during the winter. From this cause Dr. Poole, the Health Officer, declared, a diphtheria epidemic started which caused several deaths and necessitated the closing of a part of the school for four weeks.

Cross Moore put through a garbage-collection ordinance and a certain farmer out of town was glad of the chance to make a daily collection, the year around, for the value of the garbage and the small bonus the town allowed him. If the truth were known Mr. Moore's ordinance was copied almost word for word from the printed pamphlet of ordinances in force in a certain town of the Middle West called Greensboro. Now, how did the selectman obtain that pamphlet, do you suppose?

Yet Poketown, as a whole, looked about as forlorn and unsightly as it had when Janice Day first saw it. The improvement was not general.

The malady--general neglect--had only been treated in spots.

There were still stores with their windows heaped with flyspecked goods. The horses still gnawed the boles of the shade trees along High Street. The flagstone sidewalks were still broken and the gutters unsightly. High street itself was rutted and muddy all through the early spring, after the snow had gone.

A few of the merchants patterned after Hopewell Drugg, brightened up their stores, and exposed only fresh goods for sale. But these few changes only made the general run of Poketown inst.i.tutions appear more slovenly. The contrast was that of a new pair of shoes, or a glossy hat, on a ragged beggar!

With Janice on one side to spur him, and Miss 'Rill's unbounded faith in him on the other hand, how _could_ Hopewell Drugg fall back into the old aimless existence which had cursed him when first Janice had taken an interest in his little Lottie, his store, and himself?

But, of course, Hopewell could not _make_ trade. He had gained his full share of the Poketown patronage, and held all his old customers.

But the profits of the business acc.u.mulated slowly. As this second winter drew to a close the storekeeper confessed to Janice that he had only saved a little over three hundred dollars altogether towards the betterment of Lottie's condition.

Janice began secretly to complain. Her heart bled for the child, shut away in the dark and silence. If only Daddy would grow suddenly very wealthy out of the mine! Or if some fairy G.o.dmother would come to little Lottie's help!

The person who seemed nearest like a fairy G.o.dmother to the child was Miss 'Rill. She spent a great deal of her spare time with the storekeeper's daughter. Sometimes she went to Mr. Drugg's cottage alone; but oftener she had Lottie around to the rooms she occupied with her mother on High Street.

"I declare for't, 'Rill," sputtered old Mrs Scattergood, one day when Janice happened to be present, "you'll have the hull town talkin'

abeout you. You're in an' aout of Hopewell Drugg's jest as though you belonged there."

"I'm surely doing no harm, mother," said the little spinster, mildly.

"Everyone knows how this poor child needs somebody's care."

"Wal! let the 'somebody' be somebody else," snapped the old lady. "I sh'd think you'd be ashamed."

"Ashamed of what, mother?" asked Miss 'Rill, with more spirit than she usually displayed.

"You know well enough what I mean. Folks will say you're flingin'

yourself at Hopewell Drugg's head. An' after all these years, too.

I----"

"Mother!" exclaimed her daughter, in a low voice, but earnestly.

"Don't you think you did harm enough long, long ago, without beginning on that tack now?"

"There! that's the thanks one gets when one keeps a gal from makin' a perfect _fule_ of herself," cried the old lady, bridling. "S'pose you'd been jest a drudge for Hopewell, all these years, Amarilla Scattergood?"

"I might not have been a drudge," said Miss 'Rill, softly, flus.h.i.+ng over her needlework. "At least my life--and his--would have been different."

"Ye don't know how lucky you be," snapped her mother. "And this is all the thanks I git for tellin' Hopewell Drugg that he'd brought his pigs to the wrong market."

"At least," said the spinster, with a sigh, "he will never worry you on that score again, mother--he nor any other man. When a woman gets near to forty, with more silver than gold in her hair, and the best of her useless life is behind her, she need expect no change in her estate, that's sure."

"Ye might be a good deal wuss off," sniffed her mother.

"Perhaps that is so," agreed Miss 'Rill, with a sudden hard little laugh. "But don't _you_ take pattern by me, Janice, no matter what folks tell you. Mrs. Beasely is better off than I am. She has the memory of doing for somebody whom she loved and who loved her. While I----Well, I'm just an old maid, and when you say that about a woman, you say the worst!"

"Why, the idee!" exclaimed her mother, with wrath. "I call that flyin'

right in the face of Providence."

"I don't believe that G.o.d ever had old maids in the original scheme of things."

"Humph! didn't He?" snapped Mrs. Scattergood. "Then why is there so many more women than men in the world? Will you please tell me that, Amarilla?" and this unanswerable argument closed what Janice realized was not the first discussion of the unpleasant topic, between the ex-schoolteacher and her sharp-tongued mother.

CHAPTER XXVI

JUST HOW IT ALL BEGAN

It was one of those soft, irresponsible days of April. The heavens clouded up and wept like a naughty child upon the least pretext; yet between the showers the sun warmed the glad earth, and coaxed the catkins into bloom, and even expanded the first buds of the huge lilac bush at the corner of the Day house.

This was a special occasion; one could easily guess that from the bustle manifest about the place. Aunt 'Mira and Janice had been busy since light. Mrs Day was not in the habit of "givin' things a lick and a promise" nowadays when she cleaned house. No, indeed! They gave the house a "thorough riddin' up," and were scarcely through at dinner-time.

Then they hurried the dinner dishes out of the way, drove Marty and his father out of the house, and hurried to change into fresh frocks; for company was expected.

The ladies' sewing circle of the Union Church was to meet with Mrs.

Day. These meetings of late had become more like social gatherings than formerly. The afternoon session was better attended; then came a hearty supper to which the ladies' husbands, brothers, or sweethearts were invited; and everything wound up with a social evening.

Aunt 'Mira and Janice had made many extra preparations for the occasion in the line of cooked food; there were two gallon pots of beans in the oven cooking slowly; and every lady, as she arrived, handed to Janice some parcel or package containing cooked food for the supper.

The girl was busy looking after these donations when once the members of the sewing circle began to arrive; and Aunt 'Mira's pantry had never before been so stacked with food. Marty stole in to gaze at the goodies, and whispered:

"Hi tunket! Just you go away for half an hour, Janice, and lemme be here. I could do something to that tuck right now."

"And so soon after dinner?" cried his cousin. "I wonder if boys _are_ hollow all the way down to their heels, as they say they are?"

"It ain't that," grinned Marty. "But a feller runs so many chances in this world of going hungry, that he ought ter fill up while he can.

You just turn your back for a while and I'll show you, Janice."

But his cousin turned the key in the pantry door and slipped it into her pocket for safety. "We'll have no larks like _that_, Master Marty," she declared.