Janice Day at Poketown Part 37

There was more to it, however, than the giving notice to the people of Poketown that they had a chance to get rid of the collection of rubbish every family finds in cellar, shed, and yard in the spring. People in general had to be stirred up about it. Clean-Up Day was so far ahead that the apostles of neatness and order---those who were thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the thing and realized Poketown's need--had time to preach to most of the delinquents.

There were cards printed, too, announcing the date of Clean-Up Day and its purposes, and these were hung in every store and other public place. Janice urged the young people's society of the church into the work of getting the storekeepers to promise to clean up back rooms, cellars, sheds, and the awful yards behind their ancient shops.

There were a few--like Mr. Bill Jones--who at first refused to fall in with the plans of those who had at heart the welfare of the old town.

Mr. Jones had been particularly "sore" ever since he had been ousted from the school committee the year before. Now he declared he wouldn't "be driv" by no "pa.s.sel of wimmen" into changing the order of affairs in the gloomy old store where he had made a good living for so many years.

But Bill Jones reckoned without the new spirit that was gradually taking hold upon Poketown people. One of his ungracious statements, when his store was well filled with customers, brought about the retort pointed from none less that Mrs. Marvin Petrie herself.

"Well, Bill Jones," declared that plain-spoken old lady, "we wimmen have made up our minds to clean out the flies, an' all other dirt, if we can. Poketown is unsanitary--so Dr. Poole says--and we know it's always been slovenly. There ain't a place, I'll be bound, in the whole town, that needs cleaning up more'n this, your store!"

"I ain't no dirtier than anybody else!" roared Jones, very red-faced.

"But you aim to be. So you say. When other folks all about you are goin' to clean up, you say you won't be driv' to it. Wa-al! I'll tell you what's going to happen to you, Bill Jones: We wimmen air goin' to trade at stores that are decently clean. Anyway, they're cleaner than this hovel of your'n. Don't expect me in it ag'in till I see a change."

Mrs. Marvin Petrie marched out of the shop without buying. Several other ladies followed her and distributed their patronage among the other shops. Old Bill hung out for a few days, "breathing threatenings and slaughter." Then the steady decrease in his custom was too much for the old man's pocketbook. He began to bleed _there_. So he signified his intention of falling in with the new movement.

There were householders, too, who had to be urged to join in the general clean-up of Poketown. Dr. Poole wrote a brief pamphlet upon the house-fly and the dangers of that pest, and this was printed and scattered broadcast about the town. To the amazement of a good many of the older members, like Elder Concannon, Mr. Middler read this short treatise from the pulpit and urged his hearers to screen their pantries, at least, to "swat the fly" with vigor, and to remove barns and stables so far away from the dwellings that it would be, at least, a longer trip for Mr. Fly from the barnyard to the dining-table and back again!

The Board of Selectmen, stirred by Mr. Cross Moore and others, cleaned the gutters of High Street and used the sc.r.a.per on the drive itself fully two months earlier than usual. Sidewalks were rebuilt, and many painted tree boxes appeared along the main street to save the remainder of the tree trunks from the teeth of crib-biting horses.

Before most of the shops--the general stores particularly--were hitch-rails. Many of these were renewed; some even painted. Store fronts, too, were treated to a coat or two of paint. Show windows were cleaned and almost every store redressed its display of goods.

Trees were trimmed, and some of the tottering ones cut down entirely.

There were still plenty of shade trees on the steep High Street.

It was Janice who urged Hopewell Drugg to refurbish his store--painting it inside and out, rebuilding the porch, and erecting a long hitch-rail to attract farmers' trade.

"Of course you cannot afford it, Mr. Drugg," said the girl. "That is, it seems as though every dollar you spend is putting Lottie back. But 'nothing ventured, nothing gained.' You must throw out sprats to catch herring. To get together the money that specialist demands to treat Lottie's eyes, you must endeavor to increase your trade. Make the store just as attractive as possible. That's business, I believe.

Daddy would say so, I am sure."

Hopewell allowed himself to be convinced. There was not a store in town as attractive as Drugg's, after Clean-Up Day. The whole of Poketown, indeed, was in a new dress. The trees were just budding out nicely, there was a breath of lilac in the air, and the lawns were raked clean and showed a velvety, green sheen that was delightful to the eye.

The old Town Hall had been repainted. Had it not been for the opposition of Elder Concannon, the young folks would have collected money for the repainting of the Union Church. However, they cleaned everything around it--yard and all--till it was as spick and span as it could be. And the burial ground in the rear of the church was made beautiful, too. The edges of the paths were trimmed, the paths themselves raked, and all the tottering headstones were set up straight.

Gates were rehung and fences straightened all over town. A smell of fresh paint rivaled the scent of the bursting lilac blooms. Never had Poketown been so busy.

The cleaning-up process went on inside the houses as well as out. Of course, among pure-blooded New English housewives, such as the majority of Poketown matrons were, there were few drones. They prided themselves on their housekeeping.

Earlier than usual the carpets went out on the lines, the curtains at chamber and sitting-room windows were renewed, there was a smell of soap and water in every entry, as one pushed the door open, and altogether Poketown was generally turned out of doors, aired, dusted, and brought back again into thoroughly clean rooms.

The old Day house had its "ridding up;" too. Janice gave her aunt considerable help; but Mrs. Day was not the slovenly housekeeper she had been when first the girl had come to Poketown. Even Uncle Jason kept himself more neatly than ever before. And he went to the barber's at frequent intervals.

Janice once went down to the dock to see the _Constance Colfax_ come in. There was the usual crowd of loafers waiting for the boat--all perched along the stringpiece of the wharf.

"But I declare!" thought Janice, her eyes dancing, "somebody certainly _has_ 'slicked 'em up,' as Mrs. Scattergood would say. Whoever would believe it! Walky has got a new shirt on--and straw cuffs, too--and a necktie! My goodness me! And the hotel keeper really looks as though his wife cared a little about his appearance. And Ben Hutchins wears whole boots now, and has washed his face, and had a shave.

"I must admit they don't look so much like a delegation from the poorfarm as they did the day I came in on the _Constance Colfax_.

There has been a change in Poketown--there most certainly _has_ been a change!" and the girl laughed delightedly.

It was marked everywhere. It even seemed to Janice as though people whom she met on the street stepped quicker than they once had!

Janice knew she had given her own folks--Uncle Jason, and Aunt 'Mira, and Cousin Marty--a push or two in the right direction. She had helped Hopewell Drugg, too; and maybe she had instigated the waking up of several other people. But not for a moment did she realize--healthy, thoughtless girl that she was--how much Poketown owed to her on Clean-Up Day.

That was one great occasion in the old town. Although the selectmen had allowed two days in which the farmers' wagons were to cart away the rubbish for the householders, the removal men had hard work to fill their contract.

Some curbs were piled shoulder high with boxes of ashes, old bedsprings, broken furniture, decayed mattresses, yard rakings, unsightly pots and pans hidden away for decades in mouldy cellars--debris of so many kinds that it would be impossible to catalogue it!

For two days, also, hundreds of rubbish fires burned, and the taint of the smoke seemed to saturate every part of Poketown. Janice declared that all the food on the supper table at the Day house seemed to have been "slightly scorched."

"By jinks!" declared Marty, gobbling his supper with an appet.i.te that never seemed to lag. "I bet I burned three wagon-loads of stuff 'sides what I set outside on the street for 'em to take away. No use talkin', Dad, you got ter build a new pen and yard for the shoats."

"Whuffor?" demanded his father, eyeing him slowly.

"'Cause the old boards and rails was so rotten that I jest burned 'em up," declared his son. "You know folks could see it from the street, an' it looked untidy."

"Wa-al," drawled Uncle Jason, with only half a sigh.

Janice could scarcely keep from clapping her hands, this so delighted her. She compared this with some of the conversation at the Day table soon after the time she had arrived in Poketown!

CHAPTER XXVIII

"NO ODOR OF GASOLINE!"

During the winter now pa.s.sed, Janice had watched the progress of the new school under Nelson Haley's administration with growing confidence in that young man. Nelson was advancing as well as his pupils and the school discipline. Educators from other towns in the state--even in neighboring states--had come to visit Poketown's school.

Janice could not help having a thrill of pride when she learned of these visitations and the appreciation shown by other educators of Nelson Haley's work. She did not so often see the young man in a situation where they could talk these wonders over; for Nelson was very, very busy and gave both his days and evenings to the work he had set for himself the fall before.

The girl might no longer honestly complain of Nelson's lack of purpose.

He had "struck his gait" it seemed; it was as though he had suddenly seen a mark before him and was pressing onward to that goal at top speed.

When he and Janice met as they did, of course, at church and occasionally at evening parties, the teacher and the girl were the very best of friends. But tete-a-tetes were barred. Was it by Janice herself? Or had Nelson deliberately changed his att.i.tude toward her?

Sometimes she tried to unravel this mystery; but then, before she had gone far in her ruminations, she began to wonder if she _wanted_ Nelson to change toward her? That question frightened her, and she would at once refuse to face the situation at all!

Once Nelson told her that a small college in middle Ma.s.sachusetts offered a line of work that he believed he would like to take up--if he was "doomed to the profession of teaching, after all."

"And does the doom seem so very terrible?" she asked him, laughingly.

"I admit that I can _do_ things with the scholars," he said, gravely.

"I have just begun to realize it. It seems easy for me to make them understand. But the profession doesn't give one the freedom that the law does, for instance."

Janice had made no further comment, nor did Nelson advance anything more regarding the work offered by the college in question.

She had her own intense interests, now and then. Clean-Up Day was past but its effect in Poketown was ineradicable. Janice was satisfied that there were enough people finally awake in the town to surely, if slowly, revolutionize the place.

How could one householder drop back into the old, shiftless, careless manner of living when his neighbors' places on either hand were so trim? The carelessly-kept shop showed up a hundred per cent. worse than it had before Clean-Up Day. Even old Bill Jones kept in some trim, and the meat markets began to rival each other in cleanliness.