Janice Day, the Young Homemaker Part 27

"You are overwrought, my dear. Don't let your mind run upon unpleasant things. That treasure-box.

"Will never be found, Daddy!" cried his little daughter. "I am sure! And if it isn't found I don't --don't--know--what I--shall--do."

He put his arm about her and hugged Janice tight against his side. "Don't lose hope so easily. And see here! Here is something new I forgot to tell you."

"What is it, Daddy?" she asked, as he began to search an inner pocket of his coat.

"A letter. From your Aunt Almira. Just listen to it."

"Oh, Daddy! From Aunt Almira in--in Poketown?"

"Yes. My half-brother's wife--and a good soul she is."

He drew the letter from its envelope and unfolded it. He began to read the epistle with a smile wreathing his lips, for Aunt Almira's communication was unintentionally funny:

"'Dear Brocky:

"'Jase won't never get around to writing you, far as I see, so I had better do so before you get the suspicion that we are all dead. We might as well be and buried, too, here in Poketown--for it is right next door to a cemetery for deadness, I do believe.

You know what it was when you was lucky enough to get out of it twenty years ago. Well, it is worse now. There has been nothing new in Poketown since you went away, excepting the town pump's been painted once.

"That time you came to see us with Laura, when Janice was a little girl--"

"Why, Daddy!" interrupted Janice, her eyes round with wonder, "I don't remember Poketown at all."

"You were too little to recall that visit. I have only been back there once since you and your dear mother and I visited Jase and Almira." Then he went on, reading aloud:

"'You remember the house needed painting and the front gate hung by one hinge. Well, it still needs painting and that one hinge has give up the ghost now. So you see, there hasn't been many changes. You're the only Day, I guess, that ever had any "get up and get" to them.

"'But my heart has been full of thoughts of you since we heard of poor Laura's death. We often speak of you and wonder how you and that little girl get on all stark alone. I know how I should feel if Jase and Marty was left as you and Janice be.'"

"Oh," gasped Janice, "she'd be dead!"

"Well," mused her father, "Almira, living in such a dead place as Poketown, evidently considers that she knows about how she would feel in her grave."

"Is it such an awful place, Daddy?" Janice asked seriously.

"What do you mean?" he inquired, in surprise. "Oh, Poketown, I mean, of course.

"It is a lovely place. But it must be confessed that it is a good deal behind the times. It is not as bad as Aunt 'Mira makes it out to be, I guess. Only, the old Day house has pretty well gone to rack and ruin."

"Well. Let's hear the rest," urged Janice.

"'Jase says to be mighty careful if you should have to go down to that Mexico place. He reads in his Ledger that sometimes there is shooting down there and that the Mexicaners don't care who they shoot.'"

"Oh, Daddy!" cried Janice, "you don't mean you are going to Mexico?"

"I wrote them when I thought it might be necessary," he confessed.

"And you would send me East if you went? Oh, Daddy, please!"

"Well, my dear, that seemed the wisest thing to do."

"Oh, Daddy!"

"Don't worry now. We have engaged a new superintendent at the mines, and I guess things will go on all right. Listen to what your Aunt 'Mira says:

"'Of course, if you have to go down there on business, you send Janice right to us. I'm speaking for Jase as well as myself. We ain't rich, of course; but there's enough to fill another mouth yet awhile, so don't be bashful.

"'Hoping this finds you and Janice in health, it leaving us all the same, I will close,

"'Your, sister-in-law and Janice's aunt, "'ALMIRA DAY.'"

"I hope you won't have to go, and that I won't have to go, Daddy!" exclaimed the girl anxiously.

"She's a good soul--Almira. She'd do her best by you."

"I don't want anybody to do their best by me--only you, Daddy."

"But you see, my dear, I couldn't leave you alone at home here.

Certainly not with a woman like Mrs. Watkins."

"We-ell!"

"Why, she would be imposing upon you all the time. No, indeed.

I feel that she is not the woman for our house, after all."

"Oh, dear, Daddy! isn't it funny how many people there are in the world who don't just fit?"

"Right you are, my dear," he agreed, laughing again. "'Round pegs in square holes.' The woods are full of them."

"That Mrs. Watkins never should have gone out to work.'

"I guess not."

"And people like Mrs. Carringford have got their own families and their own troubles. So we can't get them."

"What put Amy's mother in your mind?"

"I wish you could see their house, Daddy."

"I have," he said, rather grimly. "And it is sight!"

"Not inside! Oh, not at all, Daddy!" she cried. "It is as neat as wax. Mrs. Carringford is just a love of a housekeeper. I wish you could see how neat everything is kept," and she sighed.

The automobile soon brought them to the house at Eight Hundred and Forty-five Knight Street. Mr. Day had become serious again as they came in sight of the cottage in which so much of a disturbing nature had happened of late.

For a few days, it was true, Broxton Day had hoped the new housekeeper would prove an efficient and trustworthy employee, but what he had seen on coming unexpectedly home this Sat.u.r.day noon, had caused doubt to rise in his mind.

Experience had taught him that domestic servants are the most independent of laborers. To dare call one to account--especially one like Mrs. Watkins--was to court disaster.