Janice Day, the Young Homemaker Part 28

He had felt this to be the case at the time, yet he was unwilling to see Janice made a drudge of by the too ladylike Mrs. Watkins.

If the kitchen floor had to be scrubbed, and the houseworker would not scrub it, he would do it himself!

In this mood he entered his home. All was quiet. There was n.o.body in the living room or dining room. On the table in the latter room were the dirty dishes and the remains of Mrs.

Watkins' lunch.

"Oh! where is she?" gasped Janice, following her father through the rooms.

Mr. Day led the way to the kitchen. The pail stood where Janice had left it, the scrubbing brush beside it. The fire in the range had gone out.

With a smothered cry Janice darted upstairs. In a moment her voice reached his expectant ear:

"Oh, Daddy, she's gone!" she cried.

CHAPTER XVII. MISS PECKHAM WASHES HER HANDS

"It seemed that Mrs. Sophronia Watkins had never sent for her trunk; so all she had to do was to pack her bag and walk out of the house. And she had done that very thing.

"'What can't be cured, must be endured,'" quoted Daddy. "Here is a nice little island of clean floor where you scrubbed, Janice.

I will build the fire, heat water, and finish the job."

'"Oh, no, Daddy! Let me. Your poor knees--" "My knees are not poor, I'd have you know," he retorted, laughing. "You dust around and make the house presentable for Sunday. 'Thus endeth the lesson.' No more 'lady' housekeepers, Janice, for us."

"No-o. I s'pose not. But who shall we get?"

"That is on the knees of the G.o.ds, my child," answered Daddy, who often used quotations that Janice did not altogether understand, but which she thought were very fine, just the same.

"I guess you mean that n.o.body knows unless he's omniscient," she said now. "That's a big word, Daddy, but we had it in our lesson the other day. And I guess only somebody who knows everything could guess who will work for us next. Oh, dear!"

"These three weeks have been an expensive experience," said her father, ruefully enough. "Besides the addition to our household bills, Mrs. Watkins asked me the other evening for her month's wages. 'Salary,' she called it. She was about ten days ahead of time; but I gave it to her.

"So we can figure that our month's expenses have been about doubled. We could not stand that for long, Janice. Perhaps it is a blessing that Mrs. Watkins has taken herself off."

"Just the same, Daddy, I'm sorry you came home and caught me scrubbing the floor," Janice sighed. "We were getting along without your being bothered--after a fas.h.i.+on."

"At your cost," he said grimly. "No; we'll hobble along somehow."

"But it's such a hobble, Daddy! It seems to me that I'm not much of a 'do something' girl or I'd manage better than I do." And Janice sighed.

"You do wonders, daughter, for a girl of your age. Maybe it is daddy who fails."

"Oh, Daddy, never!"

Janice hurried to do the things Mrs. Watkins had left undone.

And so she forgot some little purchases that had to be made, until it was almost dark.

Remembering these, she put on her hat and jacket in haste, and telling her father where she was going, ran out to the street.

There were the "Weeks' tribe," Junior in the lead, with most of the other children of the neighborhood, running through Love Street in a noisy and excited throng.

"What can be the matter now? A fire?" wondered Janice.

Her errand took her in an opposite direction. But she saw people standing at their gates and chatting to each other as though there was some neighborhood interest that she did not know about.

"What is the matter with everybody?" Janice asked one girl whom she met.

"Why, didn't you see it?" was the surprised answer.

"Maybe I did, only I didn't know what it was," laughed Janice.

"A dancing bear. A great, big, brown fellow. You never saw the like," said her acquaintance.

"Well," thought Janice, "we cannot hire a dancing bear to do our housework, that is sure. So I don't believe he interests me."

She did the errand and hastened home, for daddy and she had not yet had supper. She ran in at the side door, and as she did so she heard voices in the kitchen. She halted, listening; for one of the voices she recognized as Miss Peckham's and it was high-pitched and angry.

"I wash my hands of you both--I can tell you that? exclaimed the spinster from next door. "I don't know why I should have put myself out to help you, Broxton Day, in any case."

"I do not see why you should," Daddy replied rapidly. "Yet I believe you meant well, and I thank you."

"'Meant well'?" sniffed the visitor. "I don't know what that's got to do with it. I gave you both--both Sophrony and you--the chance of your lives. And neither of you appreciate it. I wash my hands of you .

Janice pushed open the door quietly and stepped in, closing it after her. Miss Peckham, with flas.h.i.+ng black eyes and more color in her face than usual, had drawn herself up commandingly in the middle of the kitchen floor and was staring at Mr. Day angrily.

"There's that gal!" exclaimed the spinster. "She's the one to blame."

"I a.s.sure you to the contrary, Janice was doing her best to hide Mrs. Watkins' shortcomings from me," said Mr. Day, smiling warmly at his daughter.

"It don't matter. 'Twas over her you and Sophrony quarreled.

You admit it."

"I certainly do not admit that I quarreled with Mrs. Watkins," he said firmly. "She evidently took offense

at what I said to her, and she left. Now she cannot come back.

Under no circ.u.mstances would I consider it."

"Well, I wash my hands of you both!" exclaimed Miss Peckham again, and she turned sharply toward the back door--the door opposite the one by which Janice had just entered.

The matter of was.h.i.+ng her hands seemed important, if only a figure of speech. She repeated it angrily as she jerked open the kitchen door. And then she uttered a strange, squeaking cry that startled Janice and her father before they caught sight of what had caused the woman's fright.

Miss Peckham seemed transfixed with terror. She threw up her hands stiffly and toppled over backward. She fell just as though she had not a joint in her body, and she fell so hard that her feet sprang up into the air when her shoulders and the back of her head struck the floor.

Standing upright, framed by the doorframe, was a huge, s.h.a.ggy, ragged looking bear, and he was snuffling and whining as bears do when they want something. Really the bear was begging, but none of those in the kitchen for a moment realized that fact.

Mr. Day grabbed the poker. Janice squealed and hid behind him.

But her single affrighted cry was all the sound Miss Peckham made. She really had collapsed in what Janice thought was a faint.

Before Mr. Day could attack the creature, a whining voice from the darkness behind the bear said:

"Bread-b.u.t.ter, please, Signore--Signora. Pietro no bite. He gooda bear. Give supper, please. Pietro lika bread-b.u.t.ter."