Janice Day at Poketown Part 6

Over the lip of a smoothly-worn ledge the water sprayed into a granite basin. The dimpling pool might have been knee-deep, and was as cold as ice.

"It's like that the hottest day in August," said Marty. "But it's lots more fun to go swimmin' in the lake."

It was late afternoon when they came down the hillside to the old Day house once more. Mr. Day was puttering around the stables.

"Ye didn't finish them 'taters, Marty," he complained.

"Oh, I'll do 'em to-morrer," said the boy. "It most broke my back a'ready. And did ye see all the carrots we got weeded?"

"Uh-huh," observed his father. "Lots _you_ had to do with weedin' the carrots, Marty," he added, sarcastically.

When Janice went into the house the dinner dishes were still piled in the sink; yet Aunt 'Mira was already getting supper. She was still shuffling around the kitchen in her list slippers and the old calico dress.

"I declare for't!" she complained. "Seems ter me I never find time to clean myself up for an afternoon like other women folks does. There's allus so much ter do in this house. Does seem the beatenes'! An'

there ain't n.o.body nowheres likes nice clo'es better than I do, Niece Janice. I use ter dress pretty nifty, if I do say it. But that was a long time ago, a long time ago.

"No. Never mind 'em now. I'll wash the hull kit an' bilin' of 'em up after supper. No use in takin' two bites to a cherry," she added, referring to the dishes in the sink.

Janice climbed the stairs to her room, carefully stepping over the broken tread. There was water in her pitcher, and she made her simple toilet, putting on a fresh frock. Then she sat down in the rocker by the window. Every time she swung to and fro the loose rocker clicked and rattled.

The red light that heralded the departure of the sun behind the wooded hills across the lake seemed to make the room and its mismated furnis.h.i.+ngs uglier than before. The girl turned her back upon it with almost a sob, and gazed out upon the terraced hillside and the lake, the latter already darkening. The shadows on the farther sh.o.r.e were heavy, but here and there a point of sudden light showed a farmhouse.

A belated bird, winging its way homeward, called shrilly. The breeze sobbed in the nearby tree-tops, and then died suddenly.

Such a lonely, homesick feeling possessed Janice Day as she had never imagined before! She was away off here in the East, while Daddy's train was still flying westward with him, down towards that war-ruffled Mexico. And she was obliged to stay here--in this ugly old house--with these s.h.i.+ftless people----.

"Oh, dear Daddy! I wish you could be here right now," the girl half sobbed. "I wish you could see this place--and the folks here! I know what _you'd_ say, Daddy; I know just what you'd say about it all!"

CHAPTER V

'RILL SCATTERGOOD AND HER SCHOOL

With the elasticity of Youth, however, Janice opened her eyes the following morning on a new world. Certainly the outlook from her window was glorious; therefore her faith in life itself--and in Poketown and her relatives--was renewed as she gazed out upon the beautiful picture fresh-painted by the fingers of Dawn.

All out-of-doors beckoned Janice. She hurriedly made her toilet, crept down the squeaking stairs, and softly let herself out, for n.o.body else was astir about the old Day house.

The promise of the morning from the window was kept in full. Janice could not walk sedately--she fairly skipped. Out of the sagging gate and up the winding lane she went, her feet twinkling over the dew-wet sod, a song on her lips, her eyes as bright as the stars which Dawn had smothered when she tiptoed over the eastern hills.

And then at a corner of a cross-lane above her uncle's house, Janice came upon the only other person in Poketown astir as early as herself--Walkworthy Dexter, who led Josephus, the heavy harness clanking about the horse's ribs.

"Ah-ha! I see there's a new _day_," chuckled Mr. Dexter, his pale blue eyes twinkling. "And how do you find your Uncle Jase? Not what you'd call a fidgety man, eh? He ain't never stirred up about nothing, Jase Day ain't. What d'ye think?"

Janice didn't know just what to think--or, to say, either.

"Find Jase jest a mite leisurely, don't ye?" pursued the gossipy Dexter. "I bet a cooky he ain't much like the folks where you come from?"

"I couldn't give an opinion so soon," said Janice, shyly, not sure that she liked this fat man any more for the scorn in which he held his neighbors.

"There speaks the true Day--slow but sure," laughed Dexter, and went his way without further comment, leading the bony Josephus.

But the morning was quite spoiled for Janice. She wondered if her uncle's townsfolks all held Walkworthy Dexter's opinion of the Day family? It hurt her pride to be cla.s.sed with people who were so s.h.i.+ftless that they were a byword in the community.

She went back to the house when she saw the smoke curling out of the chimney below her. Aunt 'Mira was shuffling around the kitchen in slow preparation for the morning meal. Mr. Day was pounding on the stairs with a stick of stove-wood, in an endeavor to awaken Marty.

"That boy sleeps like the dead," he complained. "Marty! Marty!" he shouted up the stairs, "your marm is waitin' for you to git her a pail of water."

Then he started for the stable to feed the stock, without waiting to see if his young hopeful was coming down, or not.

"I declare for't!" Aunt 'Mira sighed; "I'm allus bein' put back for water. I do wish Jason would mend that pump."

Janice took the empty pail quietly and departed for the neighbor's premises. It was an old-fas.h.i.+oned sweep-and-bucket well at the d.i.c.kerson's, but Janice managed it. The pail of water was heavy, however, and she had to change hands several times on her way up the hill. Marty came yawning to the door just as his cousin appeared.

He grinned. "You kin git up an' do that ev'ry morning, if ye want to, Janice," he said. "I won't be jealous if ye do."

"Ye'd oughter be ashamed, Marty," whined his mother, from the kitchen, "seein' a gal do yer work for ye."

"Who made it my work any more'n it's Dad's work?" growled Marty. "And she didn't have ter do it if she didn't want to."

Janice did her best to keep to a cheerful tone. "I didn't mind going, Aunty," she said. "And we'll get breakfast so much quicker. I'm hungry."

She endeavored to be cheerful and chatty at the breakfast table. But the very air her relatives breathed seemed to feed their spleen. Mr.

Day insisted upon Marty's finis.h.i.+ng the hoeing of the potatoes, and it took almost a pitched battle to get the boy started.

Mrs. Day was inclined, after all, to "take sides" with her son against his father, so the smoke of battle was not entirely dissipated when Marty had flung himself out of the house to attack the weeds.

"Ef you'd do a few things yourself when they'd oughter be done, p'r'aps the boy'd take example of ye," said Mrs. Day, bitterly.

Her husband reached for his pipe--that never-failing comforter--and made no reply.

"Ev'rythin' about the house is goin' to rack an' ruin," pursued the lady, slopping a little water into the dishpan. "No woman never had to put up with all _I_ hafter put up with--not even Job's wife! There!

all the water's gone ag'in. I do wish you'd mend that pump, Jason."

But Jason had departed, and only a faint smell of tobacco smoke trailed him across the yard.

Janice tried to help her aunt--and that was not difficult. Almira Day was no rigid disciplinarian when it came to housekeeping. By her own confession she frequently satisfied her housewifely conscience by giving things "a lick and a promise." And anybody who would help her could make beds and "rid up" as best pleased themselves. Aunt 'Mira was no housekeeping tyrant--by no means! Consequently she did not interfere with anything her niece did about the house.

The upstairs work was done and the sitting room brushed and set to rights much earlier than was the Day custom. When Janice had done this she came back to the kitchen, to find her aunt sitting in a creaky rocker in the middle of the unswept floor and with the dishes only half washed, deep in a cheap weekly story paper.

"Why! how smart you be, child! All done? Wa-al, ye see, I gotter wait for Jason, or Marty, to git me a pail o' water. They ain't neither of 'em been down to the house yit--an' I might's well rest now as any time."

It was this way all day long. Aunt Almira was never properly through her work. Things were always "in a clutter." She did not find time from morning till night (to hear her tell it) to "clean herself up like other wimmen."

Janice helped in the garden again; but Marty was grumpy, and as soon as the last row of potatoes was hoed he disappeared until supper time.

Uncle Jason was marking a field for corn planting. A harness strap broke and he was an hour fixing it, while old Lightfoot dragged the rickety marker into the fence corner and patiently cropped the weeds.

Later a neighbor leaned on the fence, and Uncle Jason gossiped for another hour.