Janice Day at Poketown | Page 9

people just like these relatives of hers. She
was both ashamed and amused,--ashamed of their ill-breeding and
amused by their useless bickering.
"Wa-al," said her aunt, yawning and lowering herself upon the kitchen
couch, the springs of which squeaked complainingly under her weight,
"Wa-al, 'tain't scurcely wuth doin' the dishes now. Jason'll stop and gab
'ith some one. It takes him ferever an' a day ter git a pail o' water. You
go on about your play, Niece Janice. I'll git 'em done erlone somehow,
by-me-by."
Mrs. Day closed her eyes while she was still speaking. She was
evidently glad to relax into her old custom again.
Janice took down her aunt's sunbonnet from the nail by the side door
and went out. Amusement had given place in the girl's mind to
something like actual shrinking from these relatives and their ways.
The porch boards gave under even her weight. Some of them were
broken. The steps were decrepit, too. The pump handle was tied down,
she found, when she put a tentative hand upon it.

"'It jest rattles,'" quoted Janice; but no laugh followed the sigh which
was likewise her involuntary comment upon the situation.
CHAPTER IV
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
There was a long, well-shaded yard behind the house, bordered on the
upper hand by the palings of the garden fence. Had this fence not been
so over-grown by vines, wandering hens could have gone in and out of
the garden at pleasure.
Robins were whisking in and out of the tops of the trees, quarreling
over the first of the cherry crop. Janice heard Marty's hoe and she
opened the garden gate. About half of this good-sized patch was given
over to the "'tater" crop; the remainder of the garden seemed--to the
casual glance--merely a wilderness of weeds. There may have been
rows of vegetable seeds planted there in the beginning; but now it was
a perfect mat of green things that have no commercial value--to say the
least.
Marty was about halfway down the first row of potatoes. He was
cleaning the row pretty well, and the weeds were wilting in the sun; but
the rows were as crooked as a snake's path.
"Hullo!" said the boy, willing to stop and lean on the hoe handle.
"Don't you want to help?"
"I don't believe I could hoe, Marty," said Janice, doubtfully.
"If you'd been a boy cousin, I wouldn't have minded," grunted Marty.
"He and me could have had some fun."
"Don't you think I can be any fun?" demanded Janice, rather amused by
the frankness of the youth.
"Never saw a gal that was," responded Marty. "Always in the way.
Marm says I got to be perlite to 'em----"

"And is that such a cross?"
"Don't know anything about no cross," growled Marty; "but a boy
cousin that I could lick would ha' been a whole lot more to my mind."
"Oh, Marty! we're not going to quarrel."
"I dunno whether we are or not," returned the pessimistic youth. "Wait
till there's only one piece o' pie left at dinner some day. You'll have ter
have it. Marm'll say so. But if you was a boy--an' I could lick ye--ye
wouldn't dare take it. D'ye see?"
"I'm not so awfully fond of pie," admitted Janice. "And I wouldn't let a
piece stand in the way of our being good friends."
"Oh, well; we'll see," said Marty, grudgingly. "But ye can't hoe, ye
say?"
"I don't believe so. I'd cut off more potato plants than weeds, maybe.
Can't you cultivate your potatoes with a horse cultivator? I see the
farmers doing that around Greensboro. It's lots quicker."
"Oh, we got a horse-hoe," said Marty, without interest. "But it got
broke an' Dad ain't fixed it yet. B'sides, ye couldn't use it 'twixt these
rows. They're too crooked. But then--as the feller said--there's more
plants in a crooked row."
"What's all that?" demanded Janice, waving a hand toward the other
half of the garden.
"Weeds--mostly. Right there's carrots. Marm always will plant carrots
ev'ry spring; but they git lost so easy in the weeds."
"I know carrots," cried Janice, brightly. "Let me weed 'em," and she
dropped on her knees at the beginning of the rows.
"Help yourself!" returned Marty, plying the hoe. "But it looks to me as
though them carrots had just about fainted."

It looked so to Janice, too, when she managed to find the tender little
plants which, coming up thickly enough in the row, now looked as livid
as though grown in a cellar. The rank weeds were keeping all the sun
and air from them.
"I can find them, just the same," she confided to Marty, when he came
back up the next row. "And I'd better thin them, too, as I go along,
hadn't I?"