Janice Day, Young Homemaker | Page 4

had been a real home instead of "just a place to stay"; for her mother had been dead only a year. The experiences of that year had been trying, both for the sorrowing widower and the girl who had been her mother's close companion and confidant.
Janice was old enough and well trained enough in domestic affairs to have kept house very nicely for her father. But she had to go to school, of course; an education was the most important thing in the world for her. And the kind of help that came into the Days' kitchen often balked at being "bossed by a slip of a gur-r-rl," as one recent incumbent of the position had said.
Olga Cedarstrom was stupid and often cross in the morning; and she was careless and slatternly in her ways. But she did not object when Janice came down early to get her father's breakfast, and serve it daintily, as her mother had taught her.
Only, Olga could not be taught to do these things. She did not want to learn. She said she had a "fella" and would be married soon; and under the circumstances she did not consider that she needed to learn anything more about domestic work!
Janice did not wish to go down into the kitchen so early, for that would awaken Olga who would come from her room, bleary-eyed with sleep and with her temper at a saw-tooth edge, to ask, "why she bane get oop in de middle of de night?"
Janice had washed and dressed and read her morning Bible chapter, which she always managed to find time for, even when she did not get up as early as on this occasion. For her age, and perhaps because of her mother's death, which still seemed recent to Janice, she was rather serious-minded. Yet she was no prig, and she loved fun and was as alert for good times as any girl of her age in Greensboro.
The talk she had had overnight with daddy had perhaps put her in a rather more serious mood than usual. The talk had been all about her mother and the hopes the mother and father had had and the plans they had made for their little girl's future.
To carry through those plans necessitated the proper schooling of Janice Day. She was already in the upper grade of the grammar school. Even if the household affairs were all "at sixes and at sevens," she must stick to her books, for she had ambitions. She was quite sure she wanted to teach when she grew up.
There was another reason that spurred Janice Day to the point of early rising, although daddy had not even hinted that he missed the comfortable, daintily served breakfasts which he used to enjoy when Mrs. Day was alive. It was something he had said about an entirely different matter that started this serious train of thought in the girl's mind.
She had expressed herself as so many of us do when we are in difficulties, or when we see conditions we would like to have changed: "Oh, if things were only different!"
Broxton Day had looked at her with his head held sideways and a quizzical smile in his eyes as well as on his lips.
"Different? Do you want to know how to bring about a change? Do something. Don't just talk, or think, or wonder, or wish, or hope; but do! It is all right to say that good things become a reality because somebody has a good thought. Actually, thinking does not bring things about. It is doing. Do something in the world, my dear. Don't wait for somebody else to set the example, or to lead. Do what you can yourself while you are waiting for a leader. Do something.
"Of course thought must precede action, and, furthermore, must accompany action if action is not to run wild. But in the end thought must become action and we must all of us--little girls, as well as adults--do something if the conditions we do not like are to be changed."
That was really what had got Janice Day out of bed so early on this morning. Poor daddy! He sometimes had most awful meals served to him. And the house was usually in a state of confusion if it was not actually dirty.
Olga had come straight from a peasant cottage in her
country, and her idea of scrubbing the kitchen floor was to dash pails of water over it and then sweep the water out of the back door with a broom.
There was a Swedish colony established around the pickle factories on the northern edge of the town, and Olga went over there with her "fella" to a dance or downtown or to a picture show almost every evening. No wonder she was not fit for