Janice Day at Poketown | Page 7

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!" exclaimed his mother. "That ain't perlite."
"Who said 'twas?" returned her hopeful son, shortly. "I ain't tryin' ter be perlite ter no girl. And I ain't goin' ter 'Rill Scattergood's school--never, no more!"
"Young man," commanded his father, angrily, "you hold that tongue o' yourn. And you be perlite to your cousin, or I'll dance the dust out o' your jacket with a hick'ry sprout, big as ye be."
Janice hastened to change the subject and tune the conversation to a more pleasant key.
"It is so pretty all over this hillside," she said. "Around Greensboro the country is flat. I think the hills are much more beautiful. And the lake is just dear."
"Ya-as," sighed her aunt. "Artis' folks come here an' paint this lake. I reckon it's purty; but ye sort er git used ter it after a while."
It was evidently hard for Aunt 'Mira to enthuse over anything. Marty volunteered:
"We got a waterfall on our place. Folks call it the Shower Bath. Guess a girl would think 'twas pretty."
"Oh! I'd love to see that," declared Janice, quickly.
"I'll show it to you after dinner," said Marty, of a sudden surprisingly friendly.
"You'll hoe them 'taters after dinner," cried his father,