The Mission of Janice Day.

by Helen Beecher Long.

CHAPTER I

SOMETHING TROUBLES UNCLE JASON

"He don't look right and he don't sleep right," complained Aunt Almira Day, swinging to and fro ponderously in one of the porch rockers and fanning herself vigorously with a folded copy of the _Fireside Favorite_. "If it wasn't for his puttin' away jest as many victuals as usual I'd sartain sure think he was sickenin' for something."

"Oh! I hope Uncle Jason isn't going to be ill," Janice said sympathetically. "He has always seemed so rugged."

"He's rugged enough," Aunt 'Mira continued. "Don't I tell ye he's eatin'

full and plenty? But there's something on his mind--an' he won't tell me what 'tis."

"Maybe you imagine it," her niece said, pinning on her hat preparatory to leaving the old Day house on Hillside Avenue, overlooking Polktown.

"Imagine nothin'!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Aunt 'Mira with more vigor than elegance.

She was not usually snappish in her conversation. She was a fleshy, lymphatic woman, particularly moist on this unseasonably warm October day, addicted to gay colors in dress and the latest fashions as depicted in the pages of the _Fireside Favorite_, and usually not p.r.o.ne to worries of any kind.

"Imagine nothin'!" she repeated. "I've summered and wintered Jase Day for more'n twenty years; I'd ought to know him and all his ways from A to Izzard. When anything is goin' wrong with him he's allus as close-mouthed as a hard-sh.e.l.l clam with the lockjaw. I vum! I don't know what to make of him now."

"I haven't noticed much out of the way with Uncle Jason," Janice said reflectively. "Aren't you----"

"No, I ain't!" interrupted Aunt 'Mira. "I tell ye he don't sleep right.

Lays and grunts and thrashes all night long--mutterin' in his sleep and actin' right foolish. I never see the beat. I must say 't in all the years I've slept beside Jase Day he ain't been like he is now."

"Why don't you ask him what the trouble is?"

"Ask him!" said Aunt 'Mira. "Might as well ask the stone Spink they set up as a G.o.d or something down there in Egypt. Ye'd get jest as quick an answer from it as ye would from Jase Day when he wants to keep dumb.

Dumb! when he wants to say _nothin'_ he says it like a whole deef and dumb asylum."

Janice laughed. She had noticed nothing very strange about her uncle's recent manner, and believed Aunt 'Mira, little as she was given to that failing, was borrowing trouble.

The wine of autumn seemed fairly to permeate the air. It was too beautiful a day for youth to be disturbed by mere imaginary troubles.

Janice could scarcely keep from singing as she pa.s.sed down the pleasant thoroughfare. The wide-branching trees shading it showered her with brilliant leaves. Across the placid lake the distant sh.o.r.e was a bank of variegated hues. Even the frowning height on which the pre-revolutionary fortress stood had yielded to the season's magic and looked gay in burning colors of shrub and vine.

Beyond the jaws of the cove upon the sh.o.r.e of which Polktown was builded, a smart little steamboat flaunted a banner of smoke across the sky. The new _Constance Colfax_ would soon be at the Polktown dock and Janice was on her way to meet it. That is, this was her obvious purpose, as it was of many Polktown folk abroad at the hour. As yet it was the single daily excitement in which one might indulge in this little Vermont town. Soon the branch of the V. C. Railroad would be opened and then Polktown really would be in frequent touch with the outside world.

Its somnolence, its conservatism, even its cra.s.s ignorance of conditions in the great centers of industry and population, added a charm to life as it was lived in Polktown. Yet it was wide-awake regarding local affairs, and this pretty and well-dressed girl walking so blithely toward High Street had had an actual and important part in the enlivening of the lakeside community during the past few months.

It was Janice Day's earnestness, her "do something" tactics, that had carried to happy conclusion several important public movements in Polktown. Quite unconsciously at first, by precept and example, she had urged awake the long dozing community, and, once having got its eyes open, Janice Day saw to it that the town did not go to sleep again.

She loved Polktown. The Middle-West community where she was born and had lived most of her girlhood was a tender memory to Janice. Her dear mother had died there, and for several years her father and she had lived very close to each other in their mutual sorrow.

In Greenboro, however, she had had little opportunity for that development of character which contact with the world, with strangers and with new conditions, is sure to bring. She had been merely a schoolgirl at home with "daddy" before coming East to live with Uncle Jason and Aunt 'Mira. In Polktown she had found herself.

It may have been thought of this that curved her lips in the contemplative smile they wore, blossomed the roses in her cheeks, and added the sparkle to her hazel eyes as she tripped along.

To the view of many in Polktown Janice Day was pretty; but in a certain pair of eyes that beheld her to-day while yet she was a great way off, she was the embodiment of everything that was good and beautiful.

Nelson Haley, coming out of the new graded school, of which he was the very capable and unusually beloved princ.i.p.al, owned this particular pair of eyes. He hastened his steps to the corner of the cross street on which the schoolhouse stood and overtook the girl.

"Going right by without noticing me, I presume?" he said, lifting his hat, a frank smile upon his very youthful countenance.

"Of course, Nelson," she said, giving him her hand for a moment and gazing directly into his earnest eyes. That touch and look thrilled them both. Nelson dropped into step with her and they went on down the hill for several moments in a silence which, to these two who knew each other so well, suggested a more certain understanding than speech.

It was Nelson who said as they turned into High Street:

"What meaneth the smile, Janice? What is the immediate thought in that demure head of yours? Something amusing, I'm sure."

Janice laughed outright, flashing him an elfish glance. "I was thinking of something."

"Of course. Out with it," he told her. "Confession is good for the soul and removes the tantalizing element of curiosity."

"Oh, it's not a matter for the confessional. I was just remembering a certain person who arrived in this town not much more than three years ago, and how different she was then--and how different the town!--from the present."

"I acknowledge the immense change which has come over the town; but you, my dear, in your nature and character are as changeless as the hills--even as the Green Mountains of old Vermont."

"Why! I don't know whether that is a compliment or not, Nelson," she cried. "Daddy says the man who doesn't change his politics and his religious outlook in twenty years is dead. They have merely neglected to bury him."

"The fundamentals cannot change," the philosophical young schoolmaster observed. "You have developed, dear girl; but the bud that is blossoming into the flower of your womanhood was curled in the leaf of your character when you first looked at Polktown from the deck of the old _Constance Colfax_."

"Why, Nelson! that is almost poetical," she said, glancing at him again as they walked side by side toward the dock at the foot of Polktown's princ.i.p.al business thoroughfare. "And whether it is poetry or not I like it," she added, dimpling again.

"Oh, my _dear_! how different the place looked that day from what it is now. Why, it was only known as _Poketown_! And it was the pokiest, most rubbishy, lackadaisical village I ever saw. Just think of its original name being lost by years of careless p.r.o.nunciation! The people had even forgotten that sterling old patriot, Hubbard Polk, who first settled here and defied the 'Yorkers.'"

Janice laughed with a reflective note in her voice. "Why, when they cleaned up the town---- Will you _ever_ forget Polktown's first Clean-Up Day, Nelson?"

"Never," chuckled the young man. "Such a shaking up of the dry bones, both literal and metaphorical!"

"I can see," said Janice more quietly, "that Polktown has changed and developed whether I have or not. We certainly have learned----"

"To _do something_," finished Nelson with emphasis. "That's it exactly.

The teachings instilled into his daughter's mind by that really wonderful man, Mr. Broxton Day, to the end that she is always eager to begin the battle while other folk are merely talking about it, has served to put Polktown on the map."

Janice squeezed his arm, dimpling and smiling. "Dear daddy!" she mused.

"If he only could get away from business affairs and come out of distracted Mexico to spend his time here in peace and quiet."

"'Peace and quiet!'" repeated the schoolmaster. "Ask Walky Dexter what he thinks of _that_. If your father sustains the reputation his daughter has given him, Polktown would be prodded into an even more strenuous existence than that of our recent successful campaign for no license.

Walky believes, Janice, you have all the characteristics of a capsic.u.m plaster."

"Now, Nelson!"

"Fact! You ask him. You're the greatest counter-irritant that was ever applied to any dead-and-alive settlement.... 'Lo, Walky!"

The village expressman, as well known as the town pump and quite as important, drew the bony and sleepy Josephus to an abrupt stop beside the smiling pair of young people. Walky's broad, wind-blown countenance was a-grin and his eyes twinkled as he broke into speech: