Janice Day at Poketown | Page 7

the seam at
the back of one, which Janice very plainly saw as her aunt preceded her
upstairs to the room the visitor was to occupy.
"I hope ye won't mind how things look," drawled Aunt 'Mira. "We ain't
as up-an'-comin' as some, I do suppose. But nothin' ain't gone well with
Jason late years, an' he's got some mis'ry that he can't git rid of, so's he
can't work stiddy. Look out for this nex' ter the top step. The tread's

broke an' I been expectin' ter be throwed from top to bottom of these
stairs for weeks."
"Can't Uncle Jason fix it?" asked Janice, stepping over the broken tread.
"Wal, he ain't exactly got 'round to it yet," confessed her aunt. "There! I
do hope you like your room, Niece Janice. There's a pretty outlook
from the winder."
True enough, the window overlooked the hillside and the lake. Only,
had the panes been washed one could have viewed the landscape and
the water so much better!
The room itself was the shabbiest bedchamber Janice Day had ever
seen. The carpet on the floor had, generations before, been one of those
flowery axminsters that country people used to buy for their "poller."
Then they would pull all the shades down and shut the room tightly, for
otherwise the pink roses faded completely out of the design.
This old carpet had long since been through that stage of existence,
however, and was now worn to the warp in spots, its design being
visible only because of the ingrained grime which years of trampling
had brought to it.
The paper on the walls was faded and stained. Empty places where
pictures had hung for years, showed in contrast to the more faded
barren districts. A framed copy of the Declaration of Independence
ornamented the space above the mantel. Hanging above the bed's head
were those two famous chromos of "Good-Morning" and
"Good-Night." A moth-eaten worsted motto and cross, "The Rock of
Ages," hung above the little bureau glass. There was, too, a torn and
faded slipper for matches, and a tall glass lamp that, for some reason,
reminded Janice of a skeleton. She could never look at that lamp
thereafter without expecting the oil tank to become a grinning skull
with a tall fool's cap (the chimney) on it, and its thin body to sprout
bony arms and legs.
The furniture was decrepit and ill matched. Janice could have

overlooked the shaky chair, the toppling bureau, and the scratched
washstand; but the bed with only three legs, and a soap-box under the
fourth corner, did bring a question to the guest's lips:
"Where is the other leg, Aunty?"
"Now, I declare for't!" exclaimed Mrs. Day. "That is too bad! The leg's
up on the closet shelf here. Jase was calkerlatin' to put it on again, but
he ain't never got 'round to it. But the box'll hold yer. It only rattles,"
she added, as Janice tried the security of the bedstead.
That expression, "it only rattles," the girl from Greensboro was
destined to hear unnumbered times in her uncle's home. It was typical
of the old Day house and its inmates. Unless a repair absolutely must
be made, Uncle Jason would not take a tool in his hand.
As for her Cousin Martin ("Marty" everybody called the gangling,
grinning, idle ne'er-do-well of fourteen), Janice was inclined to be
utterly hopeless about him from the start. If he was a specimen of the
Poketown boys, she told herself, she had no desire to meet any of them.
"What do you do with yourself all day long, Marty, if you don't go to
school?" she asked her cousin, at the dinner table.
"Oh, I hang around--like everybody else. Ain't nothin' doin' in
Poketown."
"I should think it would be more fun to go to school."
"Not ter 'Rill Scattergood," rejoined the boy, in haste. "That old maid
dunno enough to teach a cow."
Janice might have thought a cow much more difficult to teach than a
boy; only she looked again into Marty's face, which plainly advertised
the vacancy of his mind, and thought better of the speech that had risen
to her lips.
"Marty won't go to school no more," her aunt complained, whiningly.

"'Rill Scattergood ain't got no way with him. Th' committee's been
talkin' about gittin' another teacher for years; but 'Rill's sorter sot there,
she's had the place so long."
"There's more than a month of school yet--before the summer
vacation--isn't there?" queried Janice.
"Oh, yes," sighed Mrs. Day.
"I'd love to go and get acquainted with the girls," the guest said,
brightly. "Wouldn't you go with me some afternoon and introduce me
to the teacher, Marty?"
"Me? Ter 'Rill Scattergood? Naw!" declared the amazed Marty. "I sh'd
say not!"
"Why, Marty!"