Janice Day at Poketown Part 39

"I forgot about poor Daddy's check. Of course--that's the way out."

"What's the way out?" he demanded.

"Haven't you heard about poor little Lottie?"

"What's happened to her?" he asked, anxiously.

She told him swiftly. Then stopped. He demanded:

"What's that got to do with the auto, Janice?"

"Don't you see it has _everything_ to do with it, Nelson?" she returned, gravely. "Of course, I could not buy a car when Lottie needs some of my money so much. She shall start for Boston just as soon as she is well enough to go--and of course Miss 'Rill will go with her.

Hopewell cannot leave the store. Lottie shall go to the specialist, Nelson."

For a minute the school-teacher was silent. He looked at the girl's s.h.i.+ning, earnest face in a way she had never noticed before. But at last he only smiled a little queerly, and said:

"Why-- Well, Janice Day, there's no odor of gasoline about _that_!"

CHAPTER XXIX

JANICE DAY'S FIRST LOVE LETTER

In a week, although little Lottie's head was still bandaged, she was driven over to Middletown with Miss 'Rill, Walky Dexter being the driver, of course, and took a train for Boston.

Before the day of departure Janice Day had a good deal to contend with.

It _did_ seem too bad that one could not spend one's own money without everybody trying to talk one out of it!

Not every one, however! Nelson Haley never said a word to discourage the girl's generosity. But, beginning with Hopewell Drugg himself, almost everybody else had something to say against it.

"I can never in this world pay you back, Miss Janice," said the storekeeper, faintly, after the girl had told him her plans fully.

"Who wants you to? I am giving it to Lottie," Janice declared. "Would you refuse to let her take it from me, when it means a new life to Lottie? You can't be so cruel!"

"Had you _ought_ to do it, dear Janice?" asked Miss 'Rill, herself.

"It seems too much for one person to do----"

"You're going to pay your own expenses, aren't you?" demanded Janice.

"Why should you do _that_? Just because you love Lottie, isn't it?"

"Ye-es," admitted the other, but with a little blush.

"Well, let _me_ show some love for her, too."

"Good Land o' Goshen!" cried old Mrs. Scattergood. "Somebody ought to take and shake you, Janice Day! I don't see what your folks can be thinking of. All that money just thrown away--for like enough the man can't help the poor little thing at all. It is wicked!"

"We sha'n't pay for the operation if it is not successful. That is the agreement Dr. Sharpless always makes," said Janice, firmly. "But, oh!

I hope he _is_ successful, and that the money will do him a lot of good."

"I declare for't! you are the strangest child!" muttered Mrs.

Scattergood. "I thought you was one o' these new-fas.h.i.+oned gals when I first seen ye--all for excitement, and fas.h.i.+ons, and things like that.

I've been wonderfully mistaken in you, Janice Day."

Oddly enough the old lady made small objection to her daughter's going to Boston with the child. "Anyhow," she grumbled to Janice, "she won't be runnin' into Hopewell's all the time if she ain't here."

"There will be no need of _that_, mother, if little Lottie is away,"

Miss 'Rill said, gently.

At home----Ah! that is where Janice had the greatest opposition to meet.

"I declare to goodness!" snarled Marty Day. "If you ain't the very craziest girl there ever was, Janice! Givin' all that good money away!

And goin' without that buzz-wagon you've been talking about so long!"

"Well, I've only been _talking_ about it, Marty," laughed Janice. "I couldn't really believe it was coming true----"

"And it ain't come true, it seems," snapped her cousin.

"No-o. Not exactly. But I had the surprise of getting Daddy's check, and it was just _dear_ of him to send me such a lot of money."

"What do you suppose Broxton will say, girl, when he learns how you've frittered that thousand dollars away?" demanded Uncle Jason, sternly.

"He'll never say a word--in objection," she cried. "You can read right here in his letter how I am to use the money in just any way I please--and no questions asked!"

"But you've talked so much about your automobile, deary," said Aunt 'Mira, faintly. "Ain't you most disappointed to death, child?"

"Oh, no, Aunty," returned Janice, cheerfully. "You know, I could be just awfully selfish, _in my mind_! But when it came to running about the country in an automobile, with poor Lottie blind and helpless because of my selfishness----No, no! I could not have done it."

"I don't suppose you could, child," sighed the large lady, shaking her head. "But whatever am I goin' to do with that auto coat and them veils I bought? They don't seem jest the thing to wear out, jogging behind old Sam and Lightfoot."

However, Mr. Day had a chance to trade the two old farm horses off that spring for a handsome pair of sorrels. They were good work horses as well as drivers. An old double-seated buckboard which had been under one of the Day sheds for a decade, was hauled out and repaired, painted and varnished, new cus.h.i.+ons made, and on occasion the family went to drive about the country.

"For it does seem," Mrs. Day, with wondering satisfaction, more than once declared, "it does seem as though your Pa, Marty, has a whole lot more time to gad abeout now than he use ter--yet we're gettin' along better. I don't understand it."

"Huh!" grunted Marty. "See all the work _I_ do. Don't ye s'pose that counts none?"

Janice merely smiled quietly as she heard this conversation. Uncle Jason was up and out to work now by daybreak, like other farmers. He smoked his after-dinner pipe by the back door; but it was only one pipe. He often declared that "his wimmen folk" made such a bustle inside the kitchen after dinner that he couldn't even think. He just _had_ to go back to work "to get shet of 'em."

The bacilli of _work_ had taken hold of the Day family. Uncle Jason had begun to take pride in his fields and in his crops. n.o.body in all Poketown, or thereabout, had such a garden as the Days this spring.

Janice and Mrs. Day attended to it after it was planted. Mr. Day had bought a man-weight hoe and seeding machine, and the garden mould was so fine and free from filth that the "women folks" could use the machine with ease.

Yes, the Jason Days were more prosperous than ever before. And all their prosperity did not arise from that twenty dollars a month that came regularly for Janice's board.

"Sometimes I feel downright ashamed to take that money, Jason," Aunt 'Mira admitted to her spouse. "Janice is sech a help to me. She is jest like a darter. I shall hate to ever haf ter give her up. And some day soon, now, Broxton will be comin' home."

"Wal, don't ye worry. If Broxton is makin' money like he says he is--so's he kin give that gal a thousand dollars to throw to the birdies like she's done--why should we worry? I ain't sayin' but what she's been a lot of help to us."

"In more ways than one," whispered his wife.