Janice Day at Poketown Part 13

"Daddy!" she gasped. "A letter from Daddy?"

"Aw, shucks! ain't there nothin' else you want?" the boy returned, teasingly.

"Not so much as a talk with Daddy," she declared, breathlessly. "And that's almost what a letter will be. Dear Marty! If you've got a letter from him do, do let me have it!"

"Don't you torment Janice now, Marty," cried his mother. "I hope he is all right, Janice. Is it writ in his own hand, Marty?"

"I dunno," said the plaguesome boy, looking at the address covertly.

"It is postmarked 'Juarez'."

"Oh, yes! oh, yes!" cried Janice. "He would send it down there to be mailed. So he said. Mail service up in Chihuahua is so uncertain.

Oh, Marty! p-l-e-a-s-e!"

"You give her that, Marty!" commanded Mr. Day.

Janice s.n.a.t.c.hed the letter when the boy held it out to her; but she flashed Marty a "Thanks, awfully!" as she ran out of the room and upstairs. Supper? What did she care for supper? In the red light of the sunset she sat by the window in her room and read Mr. Broxton Day's loving letter.

It _was_ almost like seeing and talking with Daddy! Those firm, flowing lines of black ink, displaying character and firmness and decision, looked just like Daddy himself! Janice kissed the open page ecstatically, and then began to read:

"DEAR DAUGHTER:

"The several thousand miles that separate us seem very short indeed when I sit down to write my little Janice. I can see her standing right before me in this barren, corrugated-iron shack--which would have been burned the last time a bunch of the Const.i.tutionalists swept through these hills, only iron will not burn. If a party of Federal troops come along they may try to destroy our plant, too. Just at the present time the foreigner, and his property, are in no great favor with either party of belligerents. The cry is 'Mexico for the Mexicans'--and one can scarcely blame them. But although I have seen a little fighting at a distance, and plenty of the marks of battle along the railroad line as I came up here, I do not think I am as yet in any great danger.

"Therefore, my dear, do not worry too much about your father's situation. At the very moment you are worrying he may be eating supper, or hob-n.o.bbing with a party of very courteous and hospitable ranch owners, or fishing in a neighboring brook where the trout are as hungry as shoats at feeding time, or otherwise enjoying himself.

"And so, now, to you and your letter which reached me by one of my messengers from Juarez, by whom I shall send this reply. Yes, I knew you would find yourself among a people as strange to you as though they were inhabitants of another planet. Relatives though they are, they are so much different from our friends in and about Greensboro, that I can understand their being a perfect shock to you.

"I was afraid Jason and Almira lived a sort of shiftless, hopeless, get-along-the-best-way-you-can life. When I left Poketown twenty-five years ago I thought it had creeping paralysis! It must be worse by this time.

"But you keep alive, Janice, my dear. Keep kicking--like the frog in the milk-can. _Do something_. Don't let the poison of laziness develop in your blood. If they're in a slack way there at Jason's, help 'em out of it. Be your Daddy's own girl. Don't shirk a plain duty. _Do something yourself, and make others do something, too!_"

There was much in Mr. Broxton Day's letter beside this; there were intimate little things that Janice would have shown to n.o.body; but downstairs she read aloud all Daddy's jolly little comments upon the country and the people he saw; and about his eating beans so frequently that he dreamed he had turned into a gigantic Boston bean-pot that was always full of steaming baked beans. "They are called 'frijoles'," he wrote; "but a bean by any other name is just the same!"

The paragraphs that impressed Janice most, however, as repeated above, she likewise kept to herself. Daddy had expected she would find Poketown just what it was. Yet he expected something of her--something that should make a change in her relatives, and in Poketown itself.

He expected Janice to _do something_.

CHAPTER X

BEGINNING WITH A BEDSTEAD

Janice got up and took her usual before-breakfast run the next morning.

The Days remained the last family to rise in the neighborhood. The smoke from the broken kitchen chimney crawled heavenward long after the fires in other kitchen-stoves had burned down to hot coals.

So when the girl got back to the house, Aunt 'Mira had scarcely begun getting the meal. Janice rummaged about in the tool-shed for some minutes before she went upstairs to her room again. Marty crawled down, yawning, and started for the usual morning pail of water from the neighbor's well. Mr. Day was smoking on the bench outside of the kitchen door. The pork began to hiss in the pan.

Suddenly, from upstairs, came a noisy pounding. Nail after nail was being driven with confidence and dispatch.

"For the land's sake!" gasped Aunt 'Mira, looking up from the stove, a strip of pork hanging from her up-raised fork.

Uncle Jason took his pipe from his lips and screwed his neck around so as to look in at the door.

"What d'you reckon that gal's up to?" he demanded.

Marty came back from the d.i.c.kerson's at almost a lope. "What in 'tarnation is Janice doin' up in her room?" he queried, slopping the water as he put the pail hurriedly upon the shelf.

"I haven't the least idea what it can be," said Mrs. Day, almost aghast.

"By jinks!" exclaimed the slangy boy. "I wanter see. By jinks! she socked that nail home--she did!"

The whole house rang with the vigor of Janice's blows. Marty started up the stairs in a hurry, and Mr. Day followed him. Mrs. Day came to the foot of the stairs with the piece of pork still dangling from her fork.

Marty reached his cousin's door and banged it open without as much as saying "By your leave."

"Hullo! What you doin'?" demanded the boy.

"Can't you _see_?" returned Janice, coolly. "I got sick of being rocked to sleep every night on that old soap-box. I'll wager, Marty, that this leg will stay put when I get through with it."

"Wal! of all things!" grunted Mr. Day, with his head poked in at the open door.

"What's Janice doing?" demanded his wife, too heavy to mount the stairs easily.

Uncle Jason turned about and descended the flight without replying to his wife; but at her reiterated cry Marty explained.

"Ain't that gal a good 'un?" said the boy. "She's gone and put on the old leg to that bedstead. That's been broke off ever since you cleaned house last Fall, Maw."

"Oh! Well! Is that it?" repeated Mrs. Day. Then, when she and her husband were alone in the kitchen, before the young folk came down, she said, pointing the fork at him: "I declare for't! I'd feel ashamed if I was you, Jason Day."

"What for?" demanded her husband, scowling.

"Lettin' Broxton's gal do that. You could ha' tacked on that leg forty times if you could once. Ain't that true?"

But Mr. Day refused to quarrel. He took a long drink from the pail of fresh water Marty had brought. Then he said, tentatively:

"Breakfast most ready, Almiry? I'm right sharp-set."

When Janice and Marty came down they were not talking of the bedstead at all. But Aunt 'Mira was rather gloomy all through the meal, and looked accusingly at her husband every time she heaped his plate with pork, and cakes, and "white gravey."

Mr. Day quite ignored these looks. He was even chatty--for him--with Janice. It was a school day, and Janice hurried to put on her hat and get her school bag, into which she slipped the luncheon that her aunt very kindly put up for her. Aunt 'Mira had really begun to "put herself out" for her niece, and the luncheon was always tasty and nicely arranged.

"Wait for me, Marty!" she cried, as her cousin was sliding out of the door in his usual attempt to get away un.o.bserved, and so not be called back for any unexpected ch.o.r.es.

"Aw, come on! A gal's always behind--like a cow's tail!" growled the chivalrous Marty. "What you want?"