With the elasticity of Youth, however, Janice opened her eyes the following morning on a new world. Certainly the outlook from her window was glorious; therefore her faith in life itself—and in Poketown and her relatives—was renewed as she gazed out upon the beautiful picture fresh-painted by the fingers of Dawn.

All out-of-doors beckoned Janice. She hurriedly made her toilet, crept down the squeaking stairs, and softly let herself out, for nobody else was astir about the old Day house.

The promise of the morning from the window was kept in full. Janice could not walk sedately—she fairly skipped. Out of the sagging gate and up the winding lane she went, her feet twinkling over the dew-wet sod, a song on her lips, her eyes as bright as the stars which Dawn had smothered when she tiptoed over the eastern hills.

And then at a corner of a cross-lane above her uncle's house, Janice came upon the only other person in Poketown astir as early as herself—Walkworthy Dexter, who led Josephus, the heavy harness clanking about the horse's ribs.

"Ah-ha! I see there's a new day," chuckled Mr. Dexter, his pale blue eyes twinkling. "And how do you find your Uncle Jase? Not what you'd call a fidgety man, eh? He ain't never stirred up about nothing, Jase Day ain't. What d'ye think?"

Janice didn't know just what to think—or, to say, either.

"Find Jase jest a mite leisurely, don't ye?" pursued the gossipy Dexter. "I bet a cooky he ain't much like the folks where you come from?"

"I couldn't give an opinion so soon," said Janice, shyly, not sure that she liked this fat man any more for the scorn in which he held his neighbors.

"There speaks the true Day—slow but sure," laughed Dexter, and went his way without further comment, leading the bony Josephus.

But the morning was quite spoiled for Janice. She wondered if her uncle's townsfolks all held Walkworthy Dexter's opinion of the Day family? It hurt her pride to be classed with people who were so shiftless that they were a byword in the community.

She went back to the house when she saw the smoke curling out of the chimney below her. Aunt 'Mira was shuffling around the kitchen in slow preparation for the morning meal. Mr. Day was pounding on the stairs with a stick of stove-wood, in an endeavor to awaken Marty.

"That boy sleeps like the dead," he complained. "Marty! Marty!" he shouted up the stairs, "your marm is waitin' for you to git her a pail of water."

Then he started for the stable to feed the stock, without waiting to see if his young hopeful was coming down, or not.

"I declare for't!" Aunt 'Mira sighed; "I'm allus bein' put back for water. I do wish Jason would mend that pump."

Janice took the empty pail quietly and departed for the neighbor's premises. It was an old-fashioned sweep-and-bucket well at the Dickerson's, but Janice managed it. The pail of water was heavy, however, and she had to change hands several times on her way up the hill. Marty came yawning to the door just as his cousin appeared.

He grinned. "You kin git up an' do that ev'ry morning, if ye want to,
Janice," he said. "I won't be jealous if ye do."

"Ye'd oughter be ashamed, Marty," whined his mother, from the kitchen, "seein' a gal do yer work for ye."

"Who made it my work any more'n it's Dad's work?" growled Marty. "And she didn't have ter do it if she didn't want to."

Janice did her best to keep to a cheerful tone. "I didn't mind going, Aunty," she said. "And we'll get breakfast so much quicker. I'm hungry."

She endeavored to be cheerful and chatty at the breakfast table. But the very air her relatives breathed seemed to feed their spleen. Mr. Day insisted upon Marty's finishing the hoeing of the potatoes, and it took almost a pitched battle to get the boy started.

Mrs. Day was inclined, after all, to "take sides" with her son against his father, so the smoke of battle was not entirely dissipated when Marty had flung himself out of the house to attack the weeds.

"Ef you'd do a few things yourself when they'd oughter be done, p'r'aps the boy'd take example of ye," said Mrs. Day, bitterly.

Her husband reached for his pipe—that never-failing comforter—and made no reply.

"Ev'rythin' about the house is goin' to rack an' ruin," pursued the lady, slopping a little water into the dishpan. "No woman never had to put up with all I hafter put up with—not even Job's wife! There! all the water's gone ag'in. I do wish you'd mend that pump, Jason."

But Jason had departed, and only a faint smell of tobacco smoke trailed him across the yard.

Janice tried to help her aunt—and that was not difficult. Almira Day was no rigid disciplinarian when it came to housekeeping. By her own confession she frequently satisfied her housewifely conscience by giving things "a lick and a promise." And anybody who would help her could make beds and "rid up" as best pleased themselves. Aunt 'Mira was no housekeeping tyrant—by no means! Consequently she did not interfere with anything her niece did about the house.

The upstairs work was done and the sitting room brushed and set to rights much earlier than was the Day custom. When Janice had done this she came back to the kitchen, to find her aunt sitting in a creaky rocker in the middle of the unswept floor and with the dishes only half washed, deep in a cheap weekly story paper.

"Why! how smart you be, child! All done? Wa-al, ye see, I gotter wait for Jason, or Marty, to git me a pail o' water. They ain't neither of 'em been down to the house yit—an' I might's well rest now as any time."

It was this way all day long. Aunt Almira was never properly through her work. Things were always "in a clutter." She did not find time from morning till night (to hear her tell it) to "clean herself up like other wimmen."

Janice helped in the garden again; but Marty was grumpy, and as soon as the last row of potatoes was hoed he disappeared until supper time. Uncle Jason was marking a field for corn planting. A harness strap broke and he was an hour fixing it, while old Lightfoot dragged the rickety marker into the fence corner and patiently cropped the weeds. Later a neighbor leaned on the fence, and Uncle Jason gossiped for another hour.

The girl saw that none of the neighboring housewives came to call on Aunt 'Mira. In the afternoon she saw several of them exchanging calls up and down the lane; but they were in fresh print dresses and carried their needlework, or the like, in their hands, while Aunt 'Mira was still "down at the heel" and in her faded calico.

Janice was getting very lonely and homesick. Every hour made the separation from her father seem harder to bear. And she had scarcely spoken to a soul save the Days and Walky Dexter since her arrival in Poketown. Friday noon came, and at dinner Janice desperately broached the subject of 'Rill Scattergood's school again.

"I'd love to visit it," she said. "Maybe I'd get acquainted with some of the girls. I might even attend for the remainder of the term."

"Huh!" scoffed Marty. "That old maid can't teach ye nothin'."

"But it would be something to do," exclaimed Janice, with vigor.

"My goodness me, child!" drawled Aunt Almira. "Can't you be content to jest let things go along easy?"

"Yer must want sumthin' ter do mighty bad, ter want ter go ter 'Rill
Scattergood's school," was again Marty's scornful comment.

"Just the same I'm going," declared Janice. "It's not far, is it?"

"Right up at the edge of town," said her uncle. "They built it there ter git the young'uns out o' the way. Hard on some of 'em in bad weather, it's sech a long walk. Some o' these here flighty folks has been talkin' up a new buildin' an' a new teacher; but taxes is high enough as they be, I tell 'em!"

"'Rill Scattergood ain't no sort er teacher," said Mrs. Day. "She didn't have no sort er control over Marty."

"Huh!" grunted that young man, "she couldn't teach nothin' ter nobody—that ol' maid."

"But 'most of the girls and boys of Poketown go to school to her, don't they?" asked Janice.

"Them whose folks can't send 'em to the Middleboro Academy," admitted her aunt.

"Then I'm going up to get acquainted after dinner," announced Janice. "I—I had so many friends in Greensboro—so many, many girls at school—and some of the boys were real nice—and the teachers—and other folks. Oh, dear! I expect it's Daddy I miss most of all, and if I don't pretty soon find something to do—something to take a real interest in—I'll never be able to stand having him 'way down there in Mexico and me up here, not knowing what's happening to him!"

The girl's voice broke and the tears stood in her eyes. Her earnestness made even Marty silent for the moment. Aunt Almira leaned over and patted her hand.

"You go on to the school, if ye think ye got to. I'd go with ye an' introduce ye ter 'Rill Scattergood if I didn't have so much to do. It does seem as though I allus was behindhand with my work."

A little later, when Janice, in her neat summer frock and beribboned shade-hat, passed down Hillside Avenue, she was conscious of a good many people staring at her—more now than when she had come up the hill with her uncle several days before.

Here and there some attempts had been made to grow flowers in the yards, or to keep neat borders and rake the walks. But for the most part Hillside Avenue displayed a forlorn nakedness to the eye that made Janice more than ever homesick for Greensboro.

The schoolbell had ceased ringing before she turned into High Street and began to ascend the hill again, so there were no young folks in sight.

Higher up the main street of Poketown there were few stores, but the dwellings were no more attractive. Nobody seemed to take any pride in this naturally beautiful old town.

Janice realized that she was a mark for all idle eyes. Strangers were not plentiful in Poketown.

She came at length in sight of the school. It was set in the middle of a square, ugly, unfenced yard, without a tree before it or a blooming bush or vine against its dull red walls. The sun beat upon it hotly, and it did seem as though the builders must have intended to make school as hateful as possible to the girls and boys who attended.

The windows and doors were open, and a hum came from within like that of a swarming hive of bees. Janice went quietly to the nearest door, mounted the steps, and looked in.

She had by chance come to the girls' entrance. The scholars' backs were toward her and Janice could look her fill without being observed.

There was a small class reciting before the teacher's desk—droning away in a sleepy fashion. The older scholars, sitting in the rear of the room, were mainly busy about their own private affairs; few seemed to be conning their lessons.

Several girls were busily braiding the plaits of the girls in front of them. Two, with very red faces and sparkling eyes, were undeniably quarreling, and whispering bitter denunciations of each other, to the amusement of their immediate neighbors. One girl had a bag of candy which she was circulating among her particular friends. Another had raised the covers of her geography like a screen, and was busily engaged in writing a letter behind it, on robin's-egg-blue paper.

At the far end of the room the teacher, Miss Scattergood, sat at her flat-topped desk. "That old maid," as Marty had called her, was not at all the sort of a person—in appearance, at least—that Janice expected her to be. Somehow, a spinster lady who had taught school—and such a school as Poketown's—for twenty years, should have fitted the well-known specifications of the old-time "New England schoolmarm." But Amarilla Scattergood did not.

She was a little, light-haired, pink-cheeked lady, with more than a few claims to personal attractiveness yet left. She had her mother's birdlike tilt to her head when she spoke, her eyes were still bright, and her complexion good.

These facts were visible to Janice even from the doorway.

When she knocked lightly upon the door-frame, Miss Scattergood looked up and saw her. A little hush fell upon the school, too, and Janice was aware that both girls and boys were turning about in their seats to look at her.

"Come in," said Mics Scattergood. "Scholars, attention! Eyes forward!"

She might as well have spoken to the wind that breathed at the open window and fluttered the papers upon her desk. The older scholars paid the little school-mistress no attention whatsoever.

Janice felt some little confusion in passing down the aisle, knowing herself to be the center of all eyes. Miss Scattergood dismissed the class before her briefly, and offered Janice a chair on the platform.

"I guess you're Jason Day's niece," said the teacher, pleasantly, taking her visitor's hand. "Mother was telling me about you."

"Yes, Miss Scattergood," Janice replied. "I am Janice Day, and when you have time I'd love to have you examine me and see where I belong in your school."

"You—you are too far advanced for our school," said the little teacher, with some hesitation and a flush that was almost painful. "Especially if you came from a place where the schools are graded as in the city."

"Greensboro has good schools," Janice said, "I was in my junior year at high."

"Oh, dear me!" Miss Scattergood cried, hastily. "We don't have any such system here, of course. The committee doesn't demand it of me. I have to teach the little folks as well as the big. We go as far as our books go—that is all."

She placed several text-books before Janice. It was plain that she was not a little afraid of her visitor, for Janice was much different from the staring, "pig-tailed" misses occupying the back seats of the Poketown school.

Janice was hungry for young companionship, and she liked little Miss Scattergood, despite the uncontradicted fact that "she didn't have no way with her."

While she conned the text-books the school-mistress had placed before her, Janice watched proceedings with interest. She had never even heard of an ungraded country school before, much less seen one. The older pupils, both girls and boys, seemed to be a law unto themselves; Miss Scattergood had little control over them.

The teacher called another class of younger scholars. This class practically took all of her attention and she did not observe the four boys who carried on a warfare with "snappers" and "spitballs" in the back seats; of the predatory campaign of the lanky, white-haired youth who slid from seat to seat of the smaller boys, capturing tops, marbles, and other small possessions dear to childish hearts, threatening by gesture and writhing lips a "slaughter of the innocents" if one of them dared "tell teacher."

Few of the older boys were studying, and none of the bigger girls. The latter were too much interested in Janice. Looking them over, there was not one of these Poketown girls to whom Janice felt herself attracted. Some of them giggled as they caught her eye; others whispered together with the visitor as the evident subject of their secret observations; and one girl, seeing that Janice was looking at her, actually stuck out her tongue—a pink flag of scorn and defiance!

Janice believed that in English, history and mathematics she might improve by reciting with Miss Scattergood's classes, and she told the little teacher so.

"You'll be welcome, I'm sure," said the school-mistress, nervously. "Are you coming Monday? That's nice," and she shook hands with her as the visitor arose.

Janice passed down the girls' aisle again, trying to pick out at least one of the occupants of the old-fashioned benches who would look as though she might be chummy and nice; but there was not one.

"Dear me—dear me!" murmured Janice, when she was outside and stood a moment to look back at the ugly, red schoolhouse. "It—'it jest rattles'—that's what it does; like everything about Uncle Jason's, and like everything about the whole town. That school swings on one hinge like the gates on Hillside Avenue.

"Oh, dear me! Poketown is just dreadful—it's dreadful!"