Janice Day, the Young Homemaker Part 37

When she catalogued the day's industries sometimes he shook his head.

"But where is the fun? When do you play? What have you been doing to celebrate your freedom from the scholastic yoke?" he would demand.

"We-ell, you know, Daddy, I can't be a gadabout all the time--and with Miss Peckham watching me from behind her blinds every time I go out," and she giggled.

"Miss Peckham be eternally-- Hem! I don't suppose I can use strong language in regard to the lady who has washed her hands of us, can I?"

"Not very strong language, Daddy," she rejoined, laughing aloud now.

"Well, in that case, we'll merely ignore our neighbor. That means you, too, Janice; and you must play a little more in spite of Miss Peckham."

"But, Daddy, I do play, as you call it. There was the picnic in Emmon's Woods, and the straw ride to Clewitt--"

"And the picnic on the Latham farm to which I found you did not go," interrupted daddy. "How about that, daughter?"

"Oh--oh--well, you know, Daddy, I--I--"

"What's all this stammering about, honey," asked daddy, putting his arm about his daughter.

"Daddy, Amy and I just couldn't go to that picnic. Of course, it was not given by Stella, but by all the boys and girls of our crowd, but it was on Stella's farm. And-- Well, Daddy, Stella doesn't really like Amy and me just now. It's nothing--just about that dress Amy wore to Stella's party. I told you all about that. Stella promised not to tell, you know, and then she did. I'm not mad at Stella--I was, though, for a while--but she's still mad at me. She'll be all right in a little while, though, Daddy."

"I trust so, daughter. Do your best to make friends again. You will all be happier if you are on a friendly footing with your companions."

These first days of the long vacation were not really happy ones for Janice, although she tried to make believe they were. All the time she was hoping to herself that daddy would not insist on her visiting his relatives in the East.

He had not really said that he contemplated sending her w.i.l.l.y-nilly, to Aunt Almira. Yet the girl felt that daddy believed her health called for a change. And that was not what she needed. She was sure that the air of Poketown would never in this world make her feel any happier or healthier than she felt right here at home in Greensboro.

"I just hope something will happen to keep me from going to Poketown--or anywhere else," Janice repeated, over and over again.

And then, it did happen. Nothing that she had imagined, of course.

And this happening shocked Janice Day almost as much as anything could. It came in the afternoon, when she was getting dinner for daddy. She heard the clang of a gong, and an automobile stopped before the house. She ran to the window. It was a white painted ambulance-- not from the City Hospital, but a private ambulance.

And two men in white uniforms were preparing to take somebody on a stretcher out of the car.

CHAPTER XXIII. THE SILVER LINING TO A VERY BLACK CLOUD

Janice dropped the mixing spoon and the dishcloth and ran out upon the side porch, and from thence down the steps and the walk to the gate. Her heart beat so that she could scarcely get her breath.

The white uniformed men were drawing the stretcher out of the ambulance, and Janice, horrified and all but breathless, suddenly saw her father sitting up on the stretcher.

"Don't be scared, Janice. Be a brave girl," he cried. "It is only my leg."

"But--but what have they done to your leg, Daddy?" she cried, wringing her hands.

One of the uniformed men laughed. It was a cheerful laugh, and he was a jolly looking man. But Janice thought it was very easy indeed for him to laugh.

"It isn't his leg--or any of his relations" she thought.

"I tell you what they have done to him," he said, taking hold of both handles at the foot of the stretcher. "They have just set a compound fracture below the knee and put it into splints. Your daddy is going to have a gla.s.s leg for some time to come, and you must take good care of it. Where shall we carry him?"

While he spoke and the other man was taking hold of the other handles of the stretcher, Mr. Day lay down again. He did not groan, but he was very white. He gave Janice's hand a strong grip, however, when she got to him.

"Pluck up your courage, dear," he said. "This is no killing matter."

But now neighbors began to hurry to them. Children, of course, for Knight Street was well supplied with them. But Mrs. Arlo Weeks and Mrs. Peckinpaw came from across the street, while Miss Peckham appeared from her cottage.

"Dear me! Was he picked up that way?" asked Mrs. Weeks, in her high, strident tone. "My Arlo had a fit once--"

"Tain't a fit," said Mrs. Peckinpaw, who was a very old woman and who never spoke to Miss Peckham because of some neighborhood squabble which had happened so long before that neither of them remembered what it was about.

"Tain't a fit," she said acidly; "for then they foam at the mouth, or drool. I never knew he had anything the matter with him, chronic."

The jolly looking man laughed. Miss Peckham on the other side of the stretcher, and without looking at the other women, asked:

"Oughtn't he be took to the hospital? There's n.o.body here to take care of him but that fly-away young one."

"I won't have him taken to a hospital!" cried Janice stormily.

"You bring him right into the house--"

"Well, 'tain't fittin'," said Miss Peckham decidedly.

"I guess both Mr. Day and his daughter know what they want," said the cheerful looking man, decidedly. "He wanted to be brought home. Now, my little lady, where shall we put him? All ready, Bill?"

"All ready," said Bill, who had the handles at the head of the stretcher.

"But what's the matter with him?" demanded Mrs. Peckinpaw again.

"Is it ketchin'?"

"He has a compound fracture of the tibia," declared the cheerful man.

"Oh! My mercy!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mrs. Peckinpaw, shrinking away from the stretcher. "I--I didn't kmow Mr. Day drank!"

She had evidently heard alcoholism called by so many queer sounding terms that anything she not understand she set down to that dread trouble. But Miss Peckham had run ahead into the house.

"Take him right up to his bedroom," she said commandingly to the men with the stretcher.

"Well, if that woman's goin' to take hold, they don't need me,"

said Mrs. Peckinpaw, snappishly, and she retained her stand upon the strictly neutral ground of the sidewalk.

Mrs. Arlo Weeks was "all of a quiver," as she herself said. She followed the men as far as the steps and there sank to a seat.

"My, my! I feel just like fainting," she murmured.

Meanwhile the two uniformed men were carrying Mr. Day into the house.

"Right up here!" cried Miss Peckham from the stairway.