Janice Day, the Young Homemaker Part 26

"Oh, what a fine car, Daddy!" she whispered, clinging to his hand. "Let's play it is ours--while we are in it, of course."

"Would you like to have a car my dear?" he asked her, as they settled themselves in the tonneau, and the driver started the machine.

"Oh!" she cried. "I could just jump out of my skin when I think of it! Every time I ride with Stella

Latham I'm just as covetous as I can be. I guess I am real wicked, Daddy."

"I shouldn't be surprised," he returned, smiling. "It would be nice to have all the comforts and the luxuries of the rich--without their troubles."

"M-mm!" said Janice. "But even their troubles can't be so bad.

Not as bad as poor people's troubles."

"Like ours?" he returned, smiling down at her.

"It is a fact that we cannot keep a hired girl. We're not as lucky as the man I heard of who was boasting of having kept a cook a whole month. But it seemed that this month his house was quarantined for scarlet fever."

"Oh, Daddy!" giggled Janice. "Let's get a yellow, or a red, card from the Board of Health, and tack it up outside the door."

"And so keep Mrs. Watkins, whether or no? I am not sure that we can stand her, my dear."

"We-ell, there are worse," Janice confessed. "And we have had them," commented her father rather grimly. "Ah, that's the little house where the Johnsons live!"

"Oh, dear me! If it should be our Olga!"

"We'll know about that pretty soon," said Mr. Day comfortingly.

"Stop here, Harry."

The car was halted, and Mr. Day jumped out and went up to the house. When he knocked a tall, pale woman, with a little baby in her arms, opened the narrow door. It took but a glance to reveal her nationality.

"You bane want my hoosban'?" asked the Swedish woman.

"No, Mrs. Johnson," replied Mr. Day. "I came to inquire about a young woman that I believe is staying here."

"No vooman here but me," declared the other, shaking her head vigorously.

"What? Haven't you a friend here named Olga?"

"Olga bane gone," declared the woman sullenly.

"Gone away? exclaimed Mr. Day. "Since last evening?"

"She bane gone."

"Are you Mrs. Johnson?" asked the man, earnestly.

"My name bane Yonson--yes," she agreed. "I don't know nottin'

'bout Olga. She bane gone. She did not mane to break dish, anyway."

"Oh!" exclaimed Mr. Day, remembering what Janice had told him about the accident at the Latham's the evening before. "We have not come about the dish. It is for another matter entirely that we wish to find Olga."

"I not know where Olga bane go," pursued Mrs. Johnson, shaking her head vigorously.

"She went away this morning, then?"

"Yah. She bane go dis mornin'."

"Is her name Olga Cedarstrom?".

"No! No!" exclaimed Mrs. Johnson, shaking her head vigorously.

"You not b'know dis Olga. She 'nudder girl."

"Where is your husband?" asked Mr. Day hopelessly. "Perhaps he can tell me more about her."

"Yon Yonson gone to Dover," declared his wife, suddenly shutting the door and leaving Mr. Broxton Day outside on the step.

CHAPTER XVI. A LETTER FROM POKETOWN

"It looks as though we had come upon a fool's errand," said Mr.

Day, coming back to the car and his daughter. "Mrs. Johnson says that girl was not named Cedarstrom, and that she has already gone away."

"Do you suppose it is the truth, Daddy?" asked the anxious Janice.

"Well, it is probably the truth. All Olgas are not named 'Cedarstrom,' of course. And I fancy the girl was frightened because of the broken cutgla.s.s dish and escaped early this morning."

"Why? Would Mrs. Latham try to make her pay for it?"

"Perhaps. At least, this mysterious Olga thought she would be made to pay for the dish. Or perhaps she feared arrest.

Sometimes these foreigners are very ignorant regarding our laws.

She might easily have been frightened away."

"But if she is our Olga--"

"This woman here is stubborn. She will probably tell us nothing more about her friend. And she said flatly that the name was not Cedarstrom."

"Oh, dear!" sighed Janice, "it is too, too bad."

"It is too bad that the trail seems lost. I will try to see Mr.

Johnson himself. We will make sure that the girl was not the one we are after. But, you see, we are inquiring for Olga for a reason that is likely to frighten her and her friends. I think some of those people over in Pickletown might tell me more than they do about Olga and that Willie Sangreen."

"It is just too bad!" half sobbed Janice. "I hoped we should find the treasure-box this time."

"Have patience. Rome was not built in a day," said her father.

"We're not building Rome," the girl retorted, but trying to smile again. "I guess even that was an easier job than finding a lost Swedish girl." "Don't worry, honey."

"But I can't help worrying," said Janice, sobbing again.