The Mission of Janice Day Part 10

"So it is! so it is!" laughed Lottie gayly, for these queer little imaginings and fancies were part of her very nature. Then she grew grave once more. "You 'member how I went to look for it that time, and it snowed so hard, and Mr. Nelson Haley came to find me? He found me, but I never did find out just where that echo lived. I was 'most afraid it had gone for good, but it was there yet the last time I was down here."

While she was speaking the car ran down to the sh.o.r.e of Pine Cove at a beautiful but rather retired spot with an old fish-house and disused wharf in the foreground and, across the placid pool, the sheltering arm of Pine Point, thickly grown with tall pines. Against the wall of the pine wood Lottie's voice echoed back to her with almost uncanny distinctness as she stood in her old place on the wharf.

"He-a! he-a! he-a!" she shouted shrilly and sweetly; and back to her came the prompt echo:

"'E-a! 'e-a! 'e-a!"

"See! he's there yet," she cried, turning to Janice. "Come up here, Janice, and see if he'll answer you. Mr. Haley says there are echoes everywhere; but I don't believe there is a single one as nice as mine."

Janice came, laughing. "What shall I say to your friend?" she asked.

"Oh! you must not call what I do, of course. You shout somebody's name--somebody you love," the child advised.

Instantly Janice opened her lips and expelled toward the wooded point: "Nelson!"

"'Elson!" shot back the echo.

"Of course," cried Lottie, dancing up and down in her satisfaction. "He knows Mr. Haley. But shout somebody's name he doesn't know."

"Here comes Mr. Thomas Drew's sloop, Lottie," Janice said as the big sailing vessel on which she had several times sailed on fis.h.i.+ng excursions shot into the cove before a favoring wind.

"Oh! how pretty!" cried the little girl. "And what a big sail. He's going to drop anchor where he usually does--see!"

The sloop swept majestically between the old wharf and the pine wood where the echo "lived."

"Now, Janice!" urged Lottie, "shout again. Call a name my echo doesn't know."

And Janice, still smiling, cried aloud:

"Daddy! Daddy!"

No repet.i.tion of the call came back from the wall of pine wood. Lottie seized her friend's hand almost in fear.

"Oh! he doesn't answer! He doesn't know your father, Janice Day." Then, awestruck, she put a question that stabbed Janice to the quick: "Do--do you suppose anything real _bad_ has happened to your father 'way down there in Mexico?"

Afterwards, Janice realized that the big sail of the sloop, flattened as it crossed between the wharf and the distant wood, had caught her voice and held it, echoless. Nevertheless the odd occurrence engendered in her heart a fear of impending peril. She began to worry again about Broxton Day. She counted the days that must elapse before she could possibly hear from her father in reply to the letter she had written about her Uncle Jason's difficulties.

The Day homestead on Hillside Avenue no longer housed a happy and contented family. It grew very difficult for Janice, even, to be cheerful. And Marty positively seemed to have lost his whistle. Janice tried her best to don a sprightly air; but she observed her uncle and aunt and Marty sometimes whispering together and watching her; and this made her feel uncomfortable.

"Daddy" usually wrote his beloved daughter a weekly letter. Sometimes it was delayed a day or so because the ore train was delayed out of Alderdice to San Cristoval. So, when the expected letter did not arrive with the maximum of speed Janice was patient.

"I just won't let that old echo foolishness get on my nerves," she told herself firmly. "I am not superst.i.tious--I won't be!"

It was hard to raise the spirits of the family; but the greater the effort she put forth to that end the more she, herself, was helped. She could not really understand what kept those about her so downhearted.

The bank people seemed willing to give Uncle Jason all the leeway possible in settling the affairs of the absconded Tom Hotchkiss. Janice had no idea her relatives were hiding a secret from her, and all of them felt it the very hardest task they had ever undertaken.

Of course, in the general news from Mexico Mr. Day's plight caused little comment in the daily press. Mexican troubles had continued for so long that the American public considered it an old story. Mr. Day was only one of hundreds of courageous Americans who felt as though they must stay by their business in the embattled country, despite Was.h.i.+ngton's warning to them to get out of the danger zone.

And now, it seemed, Janice's father had paid the toll for heeding his own venturesome spirit. All the information Nelson, Mr. Middler, and Uncle Jason had been able to gather from all sources pointed to the truth of the first report of the situation in the Companos District.

Mr. Day was wounded; and so sorely that his escaping laborers could not take him away from the mine when they were driven forth by the insurrectos. This was the final news Janice's friends had obtained from the Border, and now they did not know what to do next. Successfully keeping the story of her father's peril from the girl was not enough.

How to reach and bring Mr. Day out of Mexico was a problem that balked Janice's friends. Indeed, even to communicate with the wounded man was impossible. It was reported that, although San Cristoval had been retaken by the troops of the de facto government of Mexico, the Alderdice and other mines in the Companos District were in the hands of the rebel party.

Janice began to miss Nelson Haley's frequent calls. He had been coming to the Day house several evenings during the week of late; and although he offered the perfectly sound excuse of extra school work, the girl missed him. To tell the truth Nelson shrank from being in Janice's company. He had turned coward! Although he was the first to suggest keeping Mr. Broxton Day's peril secret from his daughter, now Nelson feared all the time that in some way the truth would come to the surface. The conspirators walked upon a volcano that might at any moment break out and overwhelm them. And what would Janice do or say, when this eruption occurred? That query troubled the schoolmaster a great deal.

Naturally of a perfectly frank nature, the situation was bound to irk his mind ceaselessly. Marty and his parents feared a sudden revelation of the truth, too; so that every knock on the kitchen door during an evening gave each of the three a sharp and distinct shock.

One evening Marty heard somebody drive into the yard after supper and he ran hurriedly to open the porch door. He was always expecting to have to head off some person not in the secret who would appear with the news of Mr. Broxton Day's state.

"Who is it, Marty?" shrilled his equally anxious mother at the crack of the door.

"Hi tunket!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the boy, "'tlooks like--why, it is! It's Elder Concannon. What's he want here?"

"Never you mind. Go out and hitch his horse in the shelter, and tell him to come right in," ordered Aunt 'Mira. "Dear me! where's your manners, Marty Day?"

"Well, _he's_ safe enough," muttered Marty, starting for the shed.

CHAPTER VIII

LOTTIE SEEKS A FRIEND

Elder Concannon came in apparently in a cheerful mood. He was not a frequent caller at the Day house; he never had been, indeed. But he liked to play a game of checkers with Janice, whom he considered quite a scientific player for a young person.

"I drove around by Brother Middler's on an errand--church business,"

explained the elder; "but he wasn't at home. Gone over to Bowling to marry a couple."

"Who air they?" asked Aunt 'Mira, at once interested.

"Every married woman is deeply int'rested in ev'ry other woman's marriage," Uncle Jason declared. "Havin' got one poor man inter captivity she's hopin' all her sisters'll have as good luck. Who _is_ the poor feller that's got to do penance for his sins, Elder?"

"I don't see but you are both equally int'rested, Brother Day," chuckled the elder. "It's Sam Holder and Susie Pickberry."

"Another of them Pickberry gals gittin' merried, eh?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Aunt 'Mira.

"Well, there are a lot of them to get married," the elder said. "All the Pickberrys had big families."

"And none of 'em much good," growled Uncle Jason.

"That may be," agreed the elder. "It does seem as though 'bout the only command in the Scriptures that any of 'em knew, was that one about 'increase and multiply and fill the earth.' And they are given to marrying young," pursued the elder reflectively. "This Sue is a bouncing big gal; but she's barely sixteen year old."

"Hardly sixteen!" exclaimed Janice.

"Cricky!" was Marty's comment, he having come in after blanketing the elder's colt. "You're getting to be an old maid, Janice, 'cordin' to that. You'd better stir about and look yourself up a husband 'fore they put you on the shelf."

Janice looked into his freckled face reflectively. "I've sometimes thought it was too bad they won't let first cousins marry, Marty," she said.