Janice Day Part 39

It _did_ seem too bad that one could not spend one's own money without everybody trying to talk one out of it!

Not every one, however! Nelson Haley never said a word to discourage the girl's generosity. But, beginning with Hopewell Drugg himself, almost everybody else had something to say against it.

"I can never in this world pay you back, Miss Janice," said the storekeeper, faintly, after the girl had told him her plans fully.

"Who wants you to? I am giving it to Lottie," Janice declared. "Would you refuse to let her take it from me, when it means a new life to Lottie? You can't be so cruel!"

"Had you _ought_ to do it, dear Janice?" asked Miss 'Rill, herself. "It seems too much for one person to do----"

"You're going to pay your own expenses, aren't you?" demanded Janice.

"Why should you do _that_? Just because you love Lottie, isn't it?"

"Ye-es," admitted the other, but with a little blush.

"Well, let _me_ show some love for her, too."

"Good Land o' Goshen!" cried old Mrs. Scattergood. "Somebody ought to take and shake you, Janice Day! I don't see what your folks can be thinking of. All that money just thrown away--for like enough the man can't help the poor little thing at all. It is wicked!"

"We sha'n't pay for the operation if it is not successful. That is the agreement Dr. Sharpless always makes," said Janice, firmly. "But, oh! I hope he _is_ successful, and that the money will do him a lot of good."

"I declare for't! you are the strangest child!" muttered Mrs.

Scattergood. "I thought you was one o' these new-fas.h.i.+oned gals when I first seen ye--all for excitement, and fas.h.i.+ons, and things like that.

I've been wonderfully mistaken in you, Janice Day."

Oddly enough the old lady made small objection to her daughter's going to Boston with the child. "Anyhow," she grumbled to Janice, "she won't be runnin' into Hopewell's all the time if she ain't here."

"There will be no need of _that_, mother, if little Lottie is away,"

Miss 'Rill said, gently.

At home----Ah! that is where Janice had the greatest opposition to meet.

"I declare to goodness!" snarled Marty Day. "If you ain't the very craziest girl there ever was, Janice! Givin' all that good money away!

And goin' without that buzz-wagon you've been talking about so long!"

"Well, I've only been _talking_ about it, Marty," laughed Janice. "I couldn't really believe it was coming true----"

"And it ain't come true, it seems," snapped her cousin.

"No-o. Not exactly. But I had the surprise of getting Daddy's check, and it was just _dear_ of him to send me such a lot of money."

"What do you suppose Broxton will say, girl, when he learns how you've frittered that thousand dollars away?" demanded Uncle Jason, sternly.

"He'll never say a word--in objection," she cried. "You can read right here in his letter how I am to use the money in just any way I please--and no questions asked!"

"But you've talked so much about your automobile, deary," said Aunt 'Mira, faintly. "Ain't you most disappointed to death, child?"

"Oh, no, Aunty," returned Janice, cheerfully. "You know, I could be just awfully selfish, _in my mind!_ But when it came to running about the country in an automobile, with poor Lottie blind and helpless because of my selfishness----No, no! I could not have done it."

"I don't suppose you could, child," sighed the large lady, shaking her head. "But whatever am I goin' to do with that auto coat and them veils I bought? They don't seem jest the thing to wear out, jogging behind old Sam and Lightfoot."

However, Mr. Day had a chance to trade the two old farm horses off that spring for a handsome pair of sorrels. They were good work horses as well as drivers. An old double-seated buckboard which had been under one of the Day sheds for a decade, was hauled out and repaired, painted and varnished, new cus.h.i.+ons made, and on occasion the family went to drive about the country.

"For it does seem," Mrs. Day, with wondering satisfaction, more than once declared, "it does seem as though your Pa, Marty, has a whole lot more time to gad abeout now than he use ter--yet we're gettin' along better. I don't understand it."

"Huh!" grunted Marty. "See all the work _I_ do. Don't ye s'pose that counts none?"

Janice merely smiled quietly as she heard this conversation. Uncle Jason was up and out to work now by daybreak, like other farmers. He smoked his after-dinner pipe by the back door; but it was only one pipe. He often declared that "his wimmen folk" made such a bustle inside the kitchen after dinner that he couldn't even think. He just _had_ to go back to work "to get shet of 'em."

The bacilli of _work_ had taken hold of the Day family. Uncle Jason had begun to take pride in his fields and in his crops. n.o.body in all Poketown, or thereabout, had such a garden as the Days this spring.

Janice and Mrs. Day attended to it after it was planted. Mr. Day had bought a man-weight hoe and seeding machine, and the garden mould was so fine and free from filth that the "women folks" could use the machine with ease.

Yes, the Jason Days were more prosperous than ever before. And all their prosperity did not arise from that twenty dollars a month that came regularly for Janice's board.

"Sometimes I feel downright ashamed to take that money, Jason," Aunt 'Mira admitted to her spouse. "Janice is sech a help to me. She is jest like a darter. I shall hate to ever haf ter give her up. And some day soon, now, Broxton will be comin' home."

"Wal, don't ye worry. If Broxton is makin' money like he says he is--so's he kin give that gal a thousand dollars to throw to the birdies like she's done--why should we worry? I ain't sayin' but what she's been a lot of help to us."

"In more ways than one," whispered his wife.

"Right, by jinks!" admitted the farmer.

"Look what this old place looked like when she come!"

"She sartainly has stirred us all up."

"An' look at Marty!"

"I got to give her credit," admitted Mr. Day. "She's made a man of Marty. Done more for him than the school done."

"But it was her started him to goin' to school ag'in."

"So I tell ye," agreed Mr. Day again. "Janice is at the bottom of everything good that's happened in Poketown for two years. I dunno as people realize it; but I'm proud of her!"

"Then, I tell you what, Jason. I'm going to save the board money for her," declared Aunt 'Mira, with a little catch in her breath. "You won't mind? Marty'll have the place an' all you kin save, when we are gone; but that dear little thing----Givin' her money to that blind child, and all----"

Mrs. Day broke down and "sniveled." At least, that is what her husband would have called it under some circ.u.mstances, and crying did not beautify Mrs. Day's fat face. But for some reason the old man came close to her and put his arms about her bulbous shoulders.

"There, there, 'Mira! don't you cry about it. You sartainly have got a good heart. An' I won't say nothin' agin' your savin' for the gal.

Mebbe she'll need your savin's, too. Broxton Day is too free-handed, and he'll have his ups and downs again, p'r'aps. Anyhow, whatever you say is right, _is_ right, 'Mira," and he kissed her suddenly in a shamed faced sort of way, and then hurried out.

The good woman sat there in her kitchen, with s.h.i.+ning eyes, blus.h.i.+ng like a girl. She touched tenderly her wet cheek where her husband had laid his lips.

"He--he wouldn't ha' done that two year ago, I don't believe!" she murmured.

She picked up the ever-present story paper; but her mind was not attuned to imaginary romance that morning. And there were the breakfast dishes waiting----

She went about her work briskly, and singing. Somehow it seemed as though _real_ romance had come into the old Day house, and into Aunt 'Mira's life!

The weeks rolled on toward summer. A fortnight after little Lottie and Miss 'Rill had gone to Boston a letter came from the specialist to Hopewell Drugg. The operation on the child's eyes had been performed almost as soon as she had arrived at the sanitarium; now he could announce that it was successful. Lottie could see and, barring some accident, would be a bright-eyed girl and woman.