THE TESTING OF JANICE DAY

“DID YOU COME TO LOOK FOR ME, TOO?” (see page 293)

THE SECOND “DO SOMETHING” BOOK

The Testing of Janice Day

BY HELEN BEECHER LONG AUTHOR OF “JANICE DAY”

Illustrated by CORINNE TURNER

NEW YORK SULLY AND KLEINTEICH

Copyright, 1915, by SULLY AND KLEINTEICH All rights reserved

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE TESTING OF JANICE DAY

CHAPTER I WHAT DADDY HAD WRITTEN

Bang! bang! bang!

Three loud thumps sounded on the door of Janice Day’s bedchamber and were quickly followed by an eager rattling of the doorknob.

“Janice! I say, Janice, ain’t you ever going to wake up?” came in a strong boyish voice. “Don’t you know this is the day for the great surprise?”

“Oh, Marty, so it is!” replied his cousin, sitting up very suddenly and throwing the covers aside. “How stupid of me to lie abed when the sun is up! I’ll be dressed and downstairs in a jiffy.”

“Thought maybe you didn’t care fer that surprise,” went on the boy dryly. “If you don’t want it, o’ course you can pass it over to me!”

“Why, the idea! I do want it, whatever it is, Marty. Oh, what can it be, do you think?”

“Don’t ask me!” returned the youth, and then[2] cut an odd grimace, which of course nobody saw. “I’ll tell ’em you’ll be down by dinner time,” he added, and then turned and clumped noisily down the narrow farmhouse stairs.

Janice had already hopped out of bed. Now she made her way across the neatly-kept bedchamber to the wide-open window. Her eyes met a most beautiful world, and a new day—a day with all the dew upon it!

She was at the window which overlooked the slope of the hill on which Polktown was built, the sheltered cove below, and the expanse of the broad lake beyond. Janice never wearied of this view—especially at sunrise.

The stern old fortress, far away on a rocky promontory of the other shore of the lake, was decked out with darts of golden sunshine. Gold, too, fresh from the sun’s mint, was scattered along the pastures, woodlands and farms of that western shore as far north and south as her bright eyes could search.

And Janice Day’s eyes were bright. They were the hazel eyes of expectancy, of sympathy, of inquiry. In all her countenance, her eyes attracted and held one’s attention.

Her face was intelligent, her smile confiding; Janice Day usually made friends easily and kept them long. If she had personal troubles she never flaunted them before the world; but she was ever[3] ready with a sympathetic word or a helping hand for those who needed such comfort.

She was no sluggard. The sun had caught her abed on this morning; but he did not often do so. She was usually the earliest astir in the Day household, and on pleasant mornings often had a run in the woods or fields before breakfast.

Now she shook out her hair, brushed it quickly, did it up in a becoming little “bob” behind for the nonce, then took her “dip” at the chintz-hung washstand, which was the best means for bathing that the old-fashioned house afforded.

In a few minutes she left her room and ran downstairs and out upon the porch as fresh and sweet and clean as any lady from her luxuriously-appointed bathroom. On the porch she almost ran over a short, freckled, red-haired boy who was coming in with a great armful of stove-wood.

“Goodness sakes alive!” cried Janice, her eyes dancing. “You must have been up all night, Marty Day! What is the matter? Toothache? Or is there a circus in town, that you are up so early?”

“Naw—I haven’t been up all night,” drawled her cousin. “I got the start of you for once, didn’t I, Miss Smartie? This is going to be a great day for you, too. I wonder you slept at all,” and the boy chuckled as he staggered into the kitchen with his armful of stove-wood.

“I didn’t sleep well the first part of the night,”[4] confessed Janice, hovering at the kitchen door to talk to him. “I was so eager, Marty, and so curious! What do you suppose is the surprise Daddy said in his last letter he was sending me?”

“Mebbe he’s captured one of those Mexicans—or a wild Indian,” ventured Marty, grinning, “and is sending it to you.”

“What nonsense!”

“Or one o’ them stinging lizards—or a horned toad, such as he was writing to you about,” suggested the fertile-minded youth.

“Now, Marty!”

“I’ll bet it’s something that’ll make Dad and me work, and we got that addition to the wagon-shed to finish,” and the boy grinned slily as he stooped, piling the wood neatly into the woodbox. There was a change in Marty. Formerly, if he had brought the wood in at all, he would have flung it helter-skelter into the box and run.

“I don’t see,” said Janice thoughtfully, “why you really need that new wagon-shed. And it’s only big enough for one vehicle.”

“Huh!” grunted Marty. “Don’t you like the looks of it?”

“Why—yes; it’s all right. Uncle Jason is a fine carpenter. But I don’t just see the use of it.”

“Mebbe we’re building it to keep that elephant in Uncle Brocky is going to send you—he, he!” chortled Marty, who seemed to be so full of[5] “tickle” that he could not hold the expression of it in.

“Now! I wish you wouldn’t be so ridiculous, Marty Day,” declared Janice, more soberly. “You know Daddy will send me something nice. He says it is something to make me forget my loneliness for him. As though anything could do that!

“For two years, now, he has been down at that hateful mine in Mexico,” continued the girl, with a sigh, and speaking to herself more than to her cousin. “It seems a lifetime. And he says he may have to stay a long time yet.”

“Well, he’s making money,” said Marty bluntly. “Wish I had his chance.”

“Money isn’t everything,” said Janice earnestly. “It does seem as though there ought to be some other man in the mining company who could keep things running down there in Chihuahua, as well as keep peace with both the Constitutionalists and the Federals, and let Daddy take a vacation.

“Oh, Marty! sometimes I feel as though I’d just got to run away down there to see him. Two—long—years!”

“Well, you’d just better not!” ejaculated her cousin. “I’d just like to see you running away and going down there to where all those Mexicans are fighting. Huh! we wouldn’t let you, not much!”

Janice smiled on him suddenly, and if there was a little mist in her eyes, the smile was all the[6] sweeter. It warmed her heart to hear Marty speak in this way, for the boy was not naturally of an affectionate nature.

“All right, Marty!” she exclaimed. “If you don’t want me to go, I’ll stop a while longer.”

“You’d better,” grunted her cousin. “Hi tunket! whatever would Polktown do without you?” he added, with a burst of feeling that was quite amazing, and brought a happy thrill of laughter from Janice Day’s lips.

“You are just as ridiculous as you can be, Marty. Polktown would get along very well without me. Polktown has waked up——”

“And who woke it up?” shot back Marty, belligerently, looking up from the fresh fire he was now kindling in the cookstove.

“Why—why—Mrs. Marvin Petrie and her ‘Clean-Up Day,’ I guess,” laughed Janice, her eyes dancing again. “I know that Polktown began to be Polktown from that very day, and was no longer ‘Poketown,’ as it used to be called.”

Marty shook his head in remembrance of those old times too.

“Don’t know how it all came about, Janice,” he said slowly. “Seems to me things began to happen just about as soon as Uncle Brocky sent you here to live with us. Crackey! We certainly were a slow crowd till you came and began to do something.”

[7]He grinned again broadly. “Walky Dexter says you had the same effect on Polktown as a flea has on a dog. If the flea don’t do nothing else, it keeps the dog stirring!”

“Well, I declare!” exclaimed Janice. “I’m much obliged to Walky, I am sure—comparing me to a flea! I’ll be a bee and sting him next time I get a chance. Here comes Aunt ’Mira. I’m going to help her get breakfast.”

Marty went off, whistling, to help with the chores. His father was already out at the barn. Mrs. Day came heavily into the room—she was almost a giantess of a woman—to find a brightly-burning fire and her niece flitting about, setting the breakfast table.

“I declare for’t, Janice, you are a spry gal,” said the good lady, beginning the preparations for the meal in a capable if not particularly brisk manner. “Ain’t nobody going to get up ahead of you.”

“The sun was ‘up and doing’ before me this morning,” laughed Janice. “And I believe Marty and Uncle Jason were, too. At any rate, they were down before me.”

“It does seem good,” said Aunt ’Mira reflectively, “to come down and find a hot fire in the stove, and water in the bucket. Why, Janice! it never uster be so before you come. I don’t understand it.”

The girl made no reply. For a moment a picture[8] of “the old Day house” and its inmates arose before her mental vision, as it was when first she had come to Polktown from her mid-western home at Greensboro.

The distress she had felt during the first few days of her sojourn with these relatives, who had been utter strangers to her, was not a pleasant thing to contemplate, even at this distance of time.

Until she had taken Daddy’s advice, and put her young shoulder to the local wheel and pushed, Janice Day had been very unhappy. Then her father’s do something spirit had entered into the young girl and she had determined, whether other folk were lazy and lackadaisical or not, that she would go ahead.

Polktown had changed, as Marty said. Slowly but surely it had progressed, and from a very unkempt, slovenly borough, as it was when Janice Day first stepped ashore from the little lake steamer, Constance Colfax, two years before this bright and beautiful summer morning, it had become a clean, orderly and very attractive New England village, with most people doing their best to make the improvement permanent.

Janice was looking forward to the arrival of the little lake steamer to-day with almost as much expectancy as she felt when she first saw Polktown. Daddy had written from Mexico that she could[9] look on this day for a great surprise to arrive by the Constance Colfax.

“The greatest and most lovely surprise in the world,” sighed Janice, looking from the kitchen door as the pork was sizzling in the pan, and Mrs. Day was deftly turning the johnny-cakes, “would be dear Daddy himself coming to Polktown. But, of course, that cannot be for a long, long time.

“I must be patient. I mustn’t look for that. But, goodness me, how curious I am to know just what it is he’s sending me!”

CHAPTER II A VISTA OF NEW POSSIBILITIES

The family sat down to breakfast, and Mr. Day said grace.

He was a spare, gray-faced man, with watery and wandering eyes. Jason Day had never moved quickly in his whole life; but there had been much improvement in him, as well as in the remainder of the family, since first Janice had seen him standing on the dock to welcome her on her arrival at Polktown.

“Great doin’s to-day, I s’pose, Niece Janice,” he said, with rather more humor in his light eyes than they usually displayed.

“That rhinoceros Uncle Brocky is sending her arrives to-day,” chimed in Marty, broadly agrin.

“Wa-al,” observed Mr. Day, with the naturally critical feeling of one brother for another, “Broxton Day has spent some of his money, I kalkerlate, almost as foolish as buying rhinoceroses. He spiles you, Janice, with all the money he’s sent for you to scatter around.”

“Now, Jason Day!” exclaimed Aunt ’Mira, quite[11] vigorously for her, “you be still! You know you don’t mean that. Don’t you mind him, Janice.”

“I don’t,” replied the girl, smiling at her uncle. “And I expect I have spent some of my money foolishly. I didn’t have to tell Daddy what I did with my thousand dollars. And—and maybe I didn’t just want to tell him how I spent some of it.”

“Sending that youngster of Hopewell Drugg’s to Boston,” grumbled Uncle Jason. “I call that a wicked waste! Hopewell orter saved money enough to pay for the child’s being operated on himself.”

“Now, Jason!” admonished Aunt ’Mira again.

“I do not regret spending my money on little Lottie,” said Janice softly, “though I didn’t tell Daddy about it. I just said in my letter that I preferred getting something different from the little car I wanted.

“And I did get something different,” added Janice, with decision. “I get far more satisfaction and pleasure out of knowing that little Lottie Drugg can see again, and will soon hear and talk like other children, than I could possibly experience if I had bought my car.”

Here Marty laughed, and choked, coming near to strangling.

“What’s the matter with you, boy?” demanded his father sternly.

“Lemme pat you on the back, son,” said his[12] mother, trying to rise from her chair to reach him. But with a whoop Marty got up and ran out of doors to finish his spasm in the open air.

“He was laughing and trying to swallow coffee at the same time. I don’t know what he is laughing at,” said Janice, a little plaintively, “but he’s been doing it ever since Daddy’s letter came, telling me to look out for the surprise.

“Why!” she added, “I’d really think that Marty knew what Daddy has sent me—only that’s impossible, of course.”

“Wa-al,” began Uncle Jason; but Aunt ’Mira gave him a look that froze his further words upon his lips, and she likewise changed the subject with an adroit question addressed to her husband:

“How did that railroad business turn out last night, Jason? You went down to the Board of Trade meeting.”

“All right, all right, Almiry, if it don’t double our taxes in the end to hev that railroad come in here,” said Uncle Jason, shaking his head doubtfully. “I kalkerlate that ev’rything that’s new don’t allus mean progress, no-sir-ree-sir! Our committee reported that the V. C. road was coming——”

“Why,” spoke up Marty, who had now come back to finish his breakfast, “there’s a feller in town that’s going to build the bridge for the V. C. branch over Mr. Cross Moore’s brook. His name’s Frank Bowman. I know him,” said Marty proudly.

[13]“Well, I certainly shall be glad when the road’s built,” sighed Aunt ’Mira. “Then a body may get to the city once ’n a while.”

Uncle Jason snorted—no other word could express the sound of disgust he made. “There!” he added. “I s’pose you’ll be runnin’ to town all the endurin’ time, Almiry.”

“Yes,” she said calmly. “I been once to Middletown in the past five years, and ain’t been as far as Montpelier since our weddin’ tower. I’m a great gad-about, Janice. Ain’t that just like a man?”

Uncle Jason subsided, while Marty went on retailing the gossip of the new railroad work that had been the most exciting topic of conversation in Polktown that week.

“This Mr. Bowman’s a civil engineer; and he ain’t much older than Nelson Haley,” said Marty, careful now to distribute his talk and his mouthfuls so as not to choke a second time.

“You’d oughter say Mr. Haley. He’s your school teacher,” his mother admonished him.

“Well,” said Marty, too much interested in his information to take umbrage at his mother’s correction. “Well, this Bowman is going to build the bridge. It’s his first big job with the V. C. I’m going to carry the chain for him, I am!” the boy added, with satisfaction.

“You’d better be in the cornfield, boy, if we[14] expect to make a crop this year,” remarked Mr. Day.

“Hi tunket! you expect a feller to work all the time,” grumbled Marty. “I done my share of that old corn cultivatin’. Might’s well be a slave as to belong around here——”

His grumbling remarks faded out gradually; his father ignored them, saying:

“I ’low Polktown will pick up a bit if all that’s promised comes true. The steamboat company is going to build a new boat. Got to com-pete with the trains when they git to runnin’.”

“It’s lucky that old tub, the Constance Colfax, has held together as long as she has,” said Mr. Day. “There’s some talk of rebuilding the dock, too. I declare for’t! we won’t know the town, come next year this time.”

Her Aunt Almira turned on Janice suddenly, failing to continue her interest in the vista of changes which marked Polktown’s immediate future.

“Say, Janice, is it true that Mr. Haley is going to leave the school?”

Janice flushed a little; but nobody noticed it, for which she was glad.

“I don’t just know what his plans are, Aunt ’Mira,” said the girl hesitatingly. “He has a chance to become an instructor at the college—of course, beginning in a small way. It is really his work[15] here at the new Polktown school that brought him the offer.”

“And of course he’ll take it,” grumbled Marty. “I ain’t goin’ to school no more if Nelse Haley leaves us—now I tell you.”

“How you talk, Marty!” cried Janice. “Of course you will.”

“And of course I won’t, Miss!” reiterated Master Marty.

“Why not?”

“Oh, they’ll git somebody to teach the school like ’Rill Scattergood. Ain’t goin’ to school again to no old maid,” declared Marty, with a finality that could not be doubted.

“Perhaps Mr. Haley will not leave us so soon,” said Janice quietly. “I think he has not decided finally to accept the offer of the college committee. He thinks, and so do—do his friends,” added Janice hastily, “that another year’s experience with his present school might help him a great deal in the future.”

“And sartain sure,” Uncle Jason, who was one of young Haley’s staunchest partizans, said, “Polktown needs him. He’s one fine feller. Now, Marty! if you’ve tucked away about all the feed you can carry for a while, we’ll put the finishing touches to that new shed.”

“Well, we’ve got to hurry,” declared the younger Day. “I promised to meet Frank Bowman about[16] that chain-carrying job this forenoon; and you bet I want to be at the dock when the Constance Colfax arrives with that African gi-raffe that Janice is expecting.”

“What do you suppose Marty means?” demanded Janice, as she helped Aunt ’Mira scrape and stack the breakfast plates, preparatory to their bath in hot suds. “I am almost ready to believe that he does know what Daddy’s surprise is to be. But he can’t really know; can he, Auntie?”

“Oh, it’s only Marty’s foolishness. I wouldn’t bother my head about him,” said Mrs. Day comfortably.

But to expect Janice Day to think of anything that morning but the promised present from Daddy, was to demand the impossible. She helped about the house as usual, singing blithely the while; but her active thought was with the Constance Colfax blundering up the lake from The Landing toward the Polktown dock.

The hammers of Uncle Jason and Marty rang vigorously until about nine o’clock. The new shed which had so puzzled Janice was finished. Mr. Day went off to the cornfield while Marty slipped away, probably to meet Mr. Bowman and “see about that job,” as he had told Janice.

Marty was a good deal like the majority of human beings. He did not care to do the tasks right at his hand, but wanted something that looked better[17] and bigger in the distance. He disliked school—or had done so until Nelson Haley came to Polktown to teach; and now that school was not in session he did not want to help his father run their small farm.

There was a halo of romance, in fact, about any trade that took him away from home. He often told Janice he wished he was like “Uncle Brocky,” and could “go ’way off to a mine in Mexico, or any old place!”