Janice Day at Poketown Part 36

Mrs. Scattergood and 'Rill were among the first to arrive; and then came Mrs. Middler, the minister's wife. Mrs. Beasely was there, and Walky Dexter's wife, and the druggist's sister, who kept house for him; and Mrs. Poole, the doctor's wife; and Mrs. Marvin Petrie, who had married children living in Boston and always spent her winters with them, and had just come back to Poketown again for the season.

Many of the ladies of Poketown never thought of making up their spring frocks, or having Mrs. Link, the milliner, trim their Easter bonnets, until Mrs. Marvin Petrie came from Boston. She was supposed to bring with her the newest ideas for female apparel, and her taste and advice was sought on all sides when the ladies sat down to their sewing in the big sitting-room of the old Day house.

Mrs. Marvin Petrie, however, was one of those persons who seem never to absorb any helpful ideas. Her forte was mostly criticism. She could see the faults of her home town, and her home people, in comparison with the Hub; but she had never, thus far, led in any benefit to Poketown.

"You can't none of you understand how glad I am to git to my daughter Mabel's in the winter; and then how glad I am to shake the mud of Boston off my gaiters when it comes spring," declared the traveled lady, who had a shrill voice of great "carrying" quality. When Mrs.

Marvin Petrie was talking there was little other conversation at the sewing circle. Her comments upon people she had met and things she had seen, were in the line of a monologue.

"I do sartainly grow tired of Poketown when it comes fall, and things is dead, and the wind gets cold, and all. I'm sartain sure glad to git shet of it!" she pursued on this particular afternoon. "And then the first sight of Boston--and the mud--and the Common and Public Library,--and the shops, and all, make me feel like I was livin' again.

"Mabel says to me: 'How kin you live, Maw, most all the year in Poketown! Why, I was so glad to git away from it, that I'd walk the streets and beg before I'd go back to it again!' An' she would; Mabel's lively yet, if she has been married ten years and got three children.

"But by this time o' year--arter bein' three months or more in the hurly-burly of Boston, I'm _de_-lighted to git into the country. Ye see, city folks keep dancin' about so. They're always on the go. They ain't no rest for a body."

"But you ain't got ter go because other folks dooes, Miz' Petrie,"

suggested old lady Scattergood. "Now, when I go ter see my son-in-law at Skunk's Holler, I jest sit down an' fold my hands, an' _rest_."

"Skunk's Holler!" murmured one of the other women. "To hear Miz'

Scattergood talk, one 'ud think she was traveled, too. An' she ain't never been out o' sight o' this lake, I do believe."

"If ye don't go yourself, you feel's though you had," said Mrs. Petrie, with good nature. "So much bustle around you--yes. An' so I tell my daughters. I git enough of it b'fore spring begins."

"But," said the minister's wife, timidly, "after all, there isn't so much difference between Poketown and Boston, excepting that Boston is so very much bigger. People are about the same everywhere. And one house is like another, only one's bigger----"

"Now, that's right foolish talk, Miz' Middler!" exclaimed the lady so recently from the Hub. "The people's just as different as chalk is from cheese; and there ain't a church in Boston--and there's hundreds of 'em--that don't make our Union Church look silly."

"But, Miz' Petrie," cried one inquiring body. "Just what is it that makes Boston so different from Poketown? After all, folks is folks--and houses is houses--and streets is streets. Ain't that so?"

"Wa-al!" The traveled lady was stumped for a moment. Then she burst out with: "There! I'll tell ye. It's 'cause there's some order in the city; ev'rything here is haphazard. Course, there's poor sections--reg'lar _slums_, as they call 'em--in Boston. But the poor, dirty buildings and the poor, dirty streets, are in sort of a bunch together. They're in spots; they ain't dribbled all through the town, mixed up with fine houses, and elegant squares, and boulevards. Nope.

Cities know how to hide their poor spots in some ways. Boston puts its best foot forward, as the sayin' is.

"But take it right here in Poketown. Now, ain't the good and the bad all shoveled together? Take Colonel Pa'tridge's fine house on High Street, stuck in right between Miner's meat shop and old Bill Jones'

drygoods an' groceries--an' I don't know which is the commonest lookin'

of the two."

"There you air right, Miz' Petrie," agreed the Widow Beasely. "Miner's got so dirty--around his shop I mean--that I hate to buy a piece of meat there."

"But the other butcher ain't much better," cried another troubled housewife. "And the flies!"

"Oh, the awful flies!" chorused several.

"Them critters is a pest, an' that's a fac'," declared Mrs.

Scattergood. "Talk abeout the plagues o' Egypt----"

"But Miz' Petrie was tellin' us how Boston was different----"

"My soul and body!" gasped Mrs. Beasely. "I reckon she's told us enough. It's a fac'. Poketown is all cluttered up--what ain't right down filthy. An' I don't see as there's anything can be done abeout it."

"Why--Mrs. Beasely--do you believe there is anything so bad that it can't be helped?" queried Janice, slowly and thoughtfully. It was the first time her voice had been heard amid the general clatter, since she had come to sit down. Her nimble fingers were just as busy as any other ten in the room; but her tongue had been idle.

"They say it's never too late to mend," quote 'Rill Scattergood; "but I am afraid that Mr. Miner, and Mr. Jones, and some of the rest of the storekeepers are too old to mend--or be mended!"

"Ain't you right, now, Amarilla!" sniffed her mother.

"'Tain't only the storekeepers," declared Mrs. Petrie, taking up the tale again. "How many of us--us housekeepers, I mean--insist upon having things as clean as they should be right around our own back doors?"

"Wa-al," groaned Aunt 'Mira, "it takes suthin' like an airthquake to start some of the men-folks----"

"Why wait for _them_?" interposed the demure Janice again, knowing that her aunt would not object if she interrupted her. "Can't we do something ourselves?"

"I'd like to know what you'd _do_?" exclaimed the helpless Mrs. Middler.

"Why, we could have a regular 'Clean-Up Day' in Poketown, same as they do in other places."

"Good Land o' Goshen!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mrs. Scattergood. "What's _that_, I'd like to know, Janice Day? You _do_ have the greatest idees! I never heard of no 'Clean-Up Day' in Skunk's Holler."

"Perhaps they didn't need any there," laughed Janice, for she was used to the old lady's sharp tongue and did not mind it.

"Seems to me I--I've heard of such things," said Mrs. Petrie, rather feebly. She did not wish to be left behind in anything novel.

"Why, a 'Clean-Up Day'," explained Janice, "is justly exactly what it _is_. Everybody cleans up--yard, cellar, attic, streets, and all. You get out all your old rubbish, of whatsoever kind, and get it ready to be carted away; and the town pays for the stuff's being removed to some place where it can be burned or buried."

"My soul and body!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Aunt 'Mira. "Jest the same as though the town was cleanin' house."

"That's it--exactly," said Janice, nodding. "And all at the same time, so that the whole town can be made neat at once."

"Now," declared Mrs. Petrie, giving her decided and unqualified approval, "I call that a right sensible idea. I'm for that scheme, hammer and tongs! This here Day girl, that I ain't never had the pleasure of meetin' before, has sartainly got a head on her. I vote we do it!"

CHAPTER XXVII

POKETOWN IN A NEW DRESS

That is just how it all began. If you had asked any of those sewing circle ladies about it, they would have said--"to a man!"--that Mrs.

Marvin Petrie suggested Poketown's "Clean-Up Day." And they would have been honest in their belief.

For Janice Day was no strident-voiced reformer. What she did toward the work of giving Poketown a new spring dress, was done so quietly that only those who knew her well, and had watched her since she had come to Poketown, realized that she had exerted more influence than a girl of her age was supposed to be ent.i.tled to!

It was Janice who spoke with Mr. Cross Moore that very night, after the women had loudly discussed the new idea with their husbands and other male relatives at the supper table. Mr. Moore was to put the ordinance through at the next meeting of the Board of Selectmen, covering the date of the Clean-Up Day, and the amount of money to be appropriated for the removal of rubbish by hired teams.

"Put a paragraph into the motion, Mr. Moore, making it a fifty-dollar fine for any taxpayer, or tenant, who puts rubbish out on the curb on any other day save the two mentioned in the main ordinance," Janice whispered to the selectman; "otherwise you will set a bad precedent with your Clean-Up Day, instead of doing lasting good."

"Now, ain't that gal got brains?" Moore wanted to know of Walky Dexter.

"Huh! Mary Ann can't tell me that the Widder Petrie started this idea.

It was that Day gal, as sure as aigs is aigs!" and Walky nodded a solemn agreement.