How Janice Day Won Part 27

"By jove! so would I!" exclaimed Frank Bowman, vigorously. "It was pay night for my men last Sat.u.r.day night. One third of them have not shown up this morning, and half of those that have are not fit for work.

I've got a reputation to make here. If this drunkenness goes on I'll have a fat chance of making good with the Board of Directors of the railroad."

"How about making good with that pretty daughter of Vice President Harrison's?" asked Janice, slily.

Bowman blushed and laughed. "Oh! she's kind. She'll understand. But I can't take the same excuses for failure to a Board of Directors."

"Of course not," laughed Janice. "A mere Board of Directors hasn't half the sense of a lovely girl--nor half the judgment."

"You're right!" cried Bowman, seriously. "However, to get back to my men. They've got to put the brake on this drinking stuff, or I'll never get the job done. As long as the drink is right here handy in Polktown, I'm afraid many of the poor fellows will go on a spree every pay day."

"It is too bad," ventured Janice, warmly.

"I guess it is! For them and me, too!" said Bowman, shaking his head.

"Do you know, these fellows don't want to drink? And they wouldn't drink if there was anything else for them to do when they have money in their pockets. Let me tell you, Janice," he added earnestly, "I believe that if these fellows had it to vote on right now, they'd vote 'no license' for Polktown--yes, ma'am!"

"Oh! I wish we could _all_ vote on it," cried Janice. "I am sure more people in Polktown would like to see the bar done away with, than desire to have it continued."

"I guess you're right!" agreed Bowman.

"But, of course, we 'female women,' as Walky calls us, can't vote."

"There are enough men to put it down," said Bowman, quickly. "And it can come to a vote in Town Meeting next September, if it's worked up right."

"Oh, Frank! Can we do that?"

"Now you've said it!" crowed the engineer. "That's what I meant when I wondered if you had begun your campaign."

"_My_ campaign?" repeated Janice, much flurried.

"Why, yes. You intimated the other night that you wanted the bar closed, and Walky has told all over town that you're 'due to stir things up,' as he expresses it, about this dram selling."

"Oh, dear!" groaned Janice, in no mock alarm. "My fatal reputation!

If my friends really loved me they would not talk about me so."

"I'm afraid there is some consternation under Walky's talk," said Bowman, seriously. "He likes a dram himself and would be sorry to see the bar chased out of Polktown. I hope you can do it, Janice."

"Me--_me_, Frank Bowman! You are just as bad as any of them. Putting it all on my shoulders."

"The time is ripe," went on the engineer, seriously. "You won't be alone in this. Lots of people in the town see the evil flowing from the bar. Mrs. Thread tells me her brother would never have lost his job with Ma.s.sey if it hadn't been for Lem Parraday's rum selling."

"Do you mean Jack Besmith?" cried Janice, startled.

"That's the chap. Mrs. Thread is a decent little woman, and poor Benny is harmless enough. But she is worried to death about her brother."

Janice, remembering the condition of the ex-drug clerk when he left Polktown for the woods, said heartily: "I should think she would be worried."

"She tells me he tried to get back his job with Ma.s.sey on Friday night--the evening before he went off with Trimmins and Narnay. But I expect he'd got Mr. Ma.s.sey pretty well disgusted. At any rate, the druggist turned him down, and turned him down hard."

"Poor fellow!" sighed Janice.

"I don't know. Oh, I suppose he's to be pitied," said Frank Bowman, with some disgust. "Anyhow, Besmith got thoroughly desperate, went down to the Inn after his interview with his former employer, and spent all the money he had over Lem's bar. He didn't come home at all that night----"

"Oh!" exclaimed Janice, remembering suddenly where Jack Besmith had probably slept off his debauch, for she had seen him asleep in her uncle's sheepfold on that particular Sat.u.r.day morning.

"He's a pretty poor specimen, I suppose," said the engineer, eyeing Janice rather curiously. "He's one of the weak ones. But there are others!"

Janice was silent for a moment. Indeed, she was not following closely Bowman's remarks. She was thinking of Jack Besmith. Mr. Ma.s.sey had evidently been much annoyed by his discharged clerk.

When she and Frank Bowman, with Hopewell Drugg, had gone to the druggist's back door that eventful Sat.u.r.day night, Ma.s.sey had thought it was Jack Besmith summoning him to the door. Ma.s.sey had spoken Besmith's name when he first opened the door and peered out into the mist.

"Now, Janice," she suddenly heard Frank Bowman say, "what shall we do?"

She awoke to the subject under discussion with a start. "Goodness! do you really expect me to tell you?"

"Why--why, you see, Janice, you've got ideas. You always do have,"

said the civil engineer, humbly. "I've talked to such of my men as have come back to work this morning. Of course, they have been off before, on pay day; but this is the worst. They had a big time down there at the Inn Sat.u.r.day night and Sunday morning."

"Poor Mrs. Parraday!" sighed Janice.

"You're right. I'm sorry for Marm Parraday. She's the salt of the earth. But there are more than Marm Parraday suffering through Lem's selling whiskey. But about my boys," added the engineer. "They tell me if the stuff wasn't so handy they would finish the job without going on these sprees. And I believe they would."

"Well! I'll think about it," Janice rejoined, preparing to start her car. "I suppose if I don't go ahead in the matter, the railroad will never get its branch road built into Polktown?" and she laughed.

"That's about the size of it!" cried Bowman, as the wheels began to roll.

But it was of Jack Besmith, the ex-drug clerk, that Janice Day thought as she sped on toward the seminary and not of the opening of the campaign against the liquor traffic in Polktown, which she felt had really been organized on this morning.

In some way the ne'er-do-well was connected in her mind with another train of thought that, until now, had had "the right of way" in her inner consciousness. What had Jack Besmith to do with Nelson Haley's troubles?

Janice Day was puzzled.

CHAPTER XVIII

HOPEWELL SELLS HIS VIOLIN

Janice Day had no intention of avoiding what seemed, finally, to be a duty laid upon her. If everybody else in Polktown opposed to the sale of liquor, merely complained about it--and in a hopeless, helpless way--it was not in her disposition to do so. She was Broxton Day's own daughter and she absolutely had to _do something_! She was imbued with her father's spirit of helpfulness, and she believed thoroughly in his axiom: If a thing is wrong, go at it and make it right.

Of course, Janice knew very well that a young girl like herself could do little in reality about this awful thing that had stalked into Polktown. She could do nothing of her own strength to put down the liquor traffic. But she believed she might set forces in motion which, in the end, would bring about the much-desired reformation.

She had done it before. Her inspiration had touched all of Polktown and had awakened and rejuvenated the old place. She had learned that all that the majority of people needed to rank them on the active side of right, was to be made to think. She determined that Polktown should be made to think upon this subject of liquor selling.

After school she drove around by the Upper Road and branched off into a woods path that she had not dared venture into the week before. The Spring winds had done much to dry this woodroad and there were not many mud-holes to drive around before she came in sight of the squatters'

cabin occupied by the family of Mr. Trimmins.

This transplanted family of Georgia "crackers" had been a good deal of a misfit in the Vermont community until Janice had found and interested herself in them. Virginia, a black-haired sprite of eleven or twelve, was the leader of the family in all things, although there were several older children. But "Jinny" was born to be a commander.