Janice Day at Poketown Part 34

Not that Janice held a very important position in the young people's society. But she had belonged to one back in Greensboro, in her own beloved church, and she had helped form this Poketown organization.

She would not take office in this new society, for all the time she hoped that her father's affairs would change and they might be together again.

There was never a day begun that Janice did not hope that this reunion might be consummated soon; and the desire was a part of her bedside prayer at night. She was no longer lonely, or even homesick, in Poketown. She really loved her relatives, and she knew that they loved her. She had made many friends, and her time was fairly well occupied.

But her longing for Daddy seemed to grow with the lapse of time. She wanted to see him so much that it actually _hurt_ when she allowed herself to think about it!

"Ain't you ever goin' to be still a minute, Janice?" complained her aunt frequently. "You're hoppin' 'round all the time jest like a hen on a hot skillet, I declare for't!"

"Why, Aunt 'Mira," she told the good lady, "I couldn't possibly sit with my hands folded. I'd rather work on the treadmill than do _that_."

"You wait till you've worked as many years as I have--an' got as leetle for it," said Aunt 'Mira, shaking her head. "You won't be so spry,"

and with that she buried herself in her story paper again.

There was an improvement, however, even in Aunt 'Mira. She could not leave the "love stories" alone, and if she had a particularly exciting one, she would sit down in her chair in the middle of the kitchen floor and let the breakfast dishes go till noon.

Usually, however, she "slicked up," as she called it, after dinner, instead of spending her time on the sofa, and sometimes she and Janice went calling with their needlework, like the other ladies up and down Hillside Avenue, or had some of the neighbors in to call on them.

Aunt 'Mira had spent some of Janice's board money on the furnishings of the house as well as in silk dresses and automobile veils. There were new curtains at the windows; the sitting-room had a new rag carpet woven by a neighbor; the rather worn boards of the kitchen were covered with brightly-figured linoleum.

Inside and out there were now few "loose ends" about the old Day house.

The stair to the upper story was mended, and covered with a bright runner. The premises about the house were kept neat and attractive, and Mr. Day had somehow found the money to paint the house that spring, while the stables and other outbuildings looked much neater than when Janice had first seen them.

She and Marty had taken complete charge of the garden this year, and the girl had inspired her cousin with some of her own love of neatness and order. The rows of vegetables were straight; the weeds were kept out; and they had earlier potatoes and peas for the table than anybody else on Hillside Avenue.

The lane was, by the way, different in appearance from the untidy and crooked street up which Janice had climbed with Uncle Jason that day of her arrival at Poketown. The neighboring homes showed the influence of a.s.sociation with the Day place.

There had been other houses painted on the street that spring. More fences had been reset and straightened. The driveway itself had had some attention from the town. And you couldn't have found a one-hinged gate the entire length of the street!

As for Uncle Jason, he was really carrying on his farming in a businesslike way. Marty was getting to be a big boy now, and he could help more than he once had. Janice had suggested to Uncle Jason that, as he had such good pasture at the upper end of his farm, and as the milk supply of Poketown was but a meager one, it would pay somebody to run a small dairy.

Mr. Day now had three cows that he proposed to winter, and was raising one heifer calf. Such milk as the family did not use themselves the neighbors gladly bought. Mrs. Day was doing better with her hens, too.

The wire fencing had been repaired and she gave the biddies more attention; therefore she was being repaid in eggs and chickens for frying. Altogether it could no longer be said that the Day family was shiftless.

Janice received several cheerful and entertaining letters that summer from Nelson Haley. He was clerk of a summer hotel on the Maine sh.o.r.e, and he seemed to be having a good time as well as earning a considerable salary.

When the new school committee of Poketown tendered him an offer of the head mastership of the school (he was to begin with one a.s.sistant for the kindergartners), he threw up his clerkship and hastened to a certain summer normal school in central Ma.s.sachusetts.

Janice was very glad, although his action surprised her, knowing, as she did, how much young Haley needed the money he was earning at the hotel. His tuition at the summer school for a month, and his board there, would eat up a good deal of the money he had saved. He might not be able to enter for his law studies at the end of another school year.

Janice believed, however, that Nelson Haley was "cut out," as the local saying was, for a teacher. He had an easy, interesting manner, which was bound to hold the attention of even the wandering minds among his pupils. She knew by the improvement in Marty that the young man's influence, especially on the boys of Poketown, was for good.

"If he would only make up his mind to _work_, he might rise high in the profession," she thought. "Some day he might even be president of a college--and wouldn't that be fine?"

But she did not write anything of this nature to the absent Nelson.

She treasured in her mind what he had said about working because _she_ was proud of him; and she wisely decided that Nelson Haley was a young man who needed very little encouragement in some ways. Janice was by no means sure that she liked Nelson Haley as he liked her.

So she kept her answers to his letters upon a coolly friendly basis and only showed him, when he returned to Poketown in September in time for the dedication exercises of the school building, how glad she was to see him by the warmth of her greeting.

It was a real gala day in Poketown when the new school building was thrown open for public inspection. In the evening the upper floor of the building (which for the present was to be used as a hall) was crowded by the villagers to hear the "public speaking"; and on this occasion Nelson Haley again covered himself with glory.

He seemed to have gained enthusiasm, as well as a distinct idea of modern school methods, from his brief normal training. He managed to inspire his hearers with hope for a broader and higher education; his hopes for the future of the Poketown school lit responsive fires in the hearts of many of his listeners.

Of course, Elder Concannon did not agree. He was heard to say afterward that he couldn't approve of "no such newfangled notions," and that he believed the boys and girls of Poketown "better stick to the three R's--reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic!"

However, the opinion of the people in general seemed to be in favor of the new ideas, and they promised to back up Nelson Haley in his work of modernizing the school.

"Of course you'll make it one of the best schools in the state--I know you will, Nelson," declared Janice, when he walked home with her after the exercises.

"If _you_ say so--of course!" replied the young man, with a smile.

CHAPTER XXV

THROUGH THE SECOND WINTER

During the summer, matters at the reading-room and library had been allowed to drift along to a great extent. Marty and one of his particular chums had kept the reading-room open evenings during Mr.

Haley's absence; but now Janice knew that the school-teacher would have his hands quite full without giving any time to the reading-room.

She set about making a second campaign for the advancement of the inst.i.tution and the broadening of its work. She found five girls beside herself willing to keep the reading-room open one afternoon a week, and to exchange books for the members of the library a.s.sociation.

The inst.i.tution had proved its value in the community and Janice privately went to several people who were well able to help, and collected a fund for the payment of a regular librarian in the evening.

One of the boys who had shown most advancement during the spring in school work was glad to earn a small wage as librarian and caretaker of the reading-room evenings. An effort was made, too, to increase the number of volumes in the library so as to obtain a share of the State Library Appropriation for the next year.

Janice was not alone interested in the reading-room's affairs. There was the matter of a new piano for the Sunday-school room. The instrument in use had been a second-hand one when the Sunday School obtained it; and it was forever out of tune.

"However can you expect the children to sing in unison, and sing well, Mr. Scribner," Janice said to the Sunday-school superintendent, "when there isn't an octave in harmony on the old piano? Come on! let's see what we can do about getting a brand-new, first-cla.s.s instrument?"

"Oh, my dear girl! Impossible! quite impossible!" declared the superintendent, who was a bald, hopeless little man, who kept books for the biggest store in town, and was imbued with the prevailing Poketown spirit of "letting well enough alone."

"How do you know it is impossible till you try?" demanded the girl, laughing. "How much would you give, yourself, toward a new instrument?"

Mr. Scribner winked hard, swallowed, and burst out with: "Ten dollars!

Yes, ma'am! I'd go without a new winter overcoat for the sake of having a decent piano."

"That's a beginning," Janice said, gravely, seizing paper and pad.

"And I can spare five. Now, don't you see, if we can interest everybody else in town proportionately, we'd have enough to buy _two_ pianos, let alone one.

"But let us start the subscription papers with our own offerings. You take one, and I'll take the other. You can ask everybody who comes into the store, and I'll go out into the highways and hedges and see what I can gather."

Janice interested the young people's society in the project, too; and her own enthusiasm, plus that of the other young folks, brought the thing about. At the usual Sunday-school entertainment on Christmas night the new piano was used for the first time, and Mrs. Ebbie Stewart, who played it, fairly cried into her score book, she was so glad.

"I was so sick of pounding on that old tin-panny thing!" she sobbed.

"A real piano seems too good to be true."

The old Town Hall standing at the head of High Street--just where the street forked to become two country highways--had a fine stick of spruce in front of it for a flagpole; but on holidays the flag that was raised (if the janitor didn't forget it) was tattered like a battle-banner, and, in addition, was of the vintage of a score of years before. Our flag has changed some during the last two decades as to the number of stars and their arrangement on the azure field.