"Why, my dear? You speak as though the church was a bogey!"

"Well--but--dear Mr. Middler! Just ask the boys themselves. How many of them love to go to church--even to Sunday School? I mean the boys that hang about the village stores at night."

"It is so--it is so," he admitted, with a sigh.

From this sprang the idea of the Poketown Free Library. It was of slow growth, and there is much more to be said about it; but Janice found her personal troubles much easier to bear when she began trying to interest the people of Poketown in the reading-room idea.

And didn't Mr. Middler bear something of his own away from that visit to The Overlook--something that glowed in his heart? He preached quite a different kind of a sermon that next Sunday, and the text was one of the most helpful and _living_ in all the New Testament.

Some of the older members of his congregation shook their heads over it.

It was not "strong meat," they said; there was nothing to argue about!

But a dozen troubled, needy members who heard the sermon, felt new hope in their hearts, and they got through the following week--trials and all!--much easier than usual.

CHAPTER XVI

"SHOWING" THE ELDER

No millionaire library-giver had found Poketown on the map. Or else, the hard-headed and tight-fisted voters of that Green Mountain community were too sharp to allow anybody to foist upon them a granite mausoleum, the upkeep of which would mainly advertise the name of the donor.

The Union Sunday School had a library; but its list of volumes was open to the same objections as are raised to many other inst.i.tutions of its kind. Nor was a circulating library so much needed in Poketown as a reading and recreation room for the youth of the village.

Aside from her brief talk with Mr. Middler, Janice Day advised with no adult at first as to how the establishment of the needed inst.i.tution should be brought about.

The girl had studied Marty, if she had had little opportunity of becoming acquainted with other specimens of the genus _boy_. She knew they were as bridle-shy as wild colts.

The idea of the club-room for reading and games must seem to come from the boys themselves. It must appear that they accepted adult aid perforce, but with the distinct understanding that the room was _theirs_ and that there was not to be too much oversight or control by the supporting members of the inst.i.tution.

The scheme was not at all original with Janice. The nucleus of many a successful free library and village club has been a similar idea.

"Marty, why don't you and your chums have a place of your own where you can read and play checkers these cold nights? I hear Josiah Pringle has chased you out of his shop again."

"Ya-as--mean old hunks!"

"But didn't somebody spoil a whole nest of whips for him by pouring liquid glue over the snappers?"

"Well! that was only one feller. An' Pringle put us all out," complained the boy, but grinning, too.

"You wouldn't have let that boy do such a thing in your own club-room--now, would you?"

"Huh! how'd we ever git a club-room, Janice? We had Poley Haskin's father's barn one't; but when we tried to heat it with a three-legged cookstove, Poley's old man put us out in a hurry."

"Oh, I mean a real _nice_ place," said the wily Janice. "Not a place to smoke those nasty cigarettes in, and carry on; but a real reading-room, with books, and papers, and games, and all that."

"Oh, that would be fine! But where'd we get that kind of a place in Poketown?" queried Marty.

That was the start of it.

There was an empty store on High Street next to the drug store. It was a big room which could be easily heated by a pot stove and a few lengths of stovepipe. It was owned by the drug-store man, and had been empty a long time. He asked six dollars a month rent for it.

It was just about this time that Janice learned she possessed powers of persuasive eloquence. The druggist was the first person she "tackled" in her campaign.

"It's a secret, Mr. Ma.s.sey," she told him; "but some of the boys want a reading-room, and some of the rest of us are anxious to help them get it. Only it mustn't be talked of at first, or it will be all spoiled.

You know how 'fraid boys are that there is going to be a trap set for them."

"Ain't that so?" chuckled the druggist.

"And we want your empty room next door."

"Wa-al--I dunno!" returned the man, finding the matter suddenly serious, when it was brought so close home to him.

"Of course, we expect to pay for it. Only we'd like to have you cut the rent in two for the first three months," said Janice, quickly.

"Say! that might be all right," the druggist observed, more briskly.

"But I don't know about all these harum-scarums collecting around this corner. I have been glad heretofore that they have hung around Pringle's, or Joe Henderson's, or the hotel, instead of up here. They've been up to all sorts of mischief."

"If they don't behave reasonably they'll lose the reading-room. Of course that will be understood," said Janice.

"You can't trust some of 'em," growled the druggist. "Never!"

"We'll make those who want the reading-room make the mischievous ones behave," laughed Janice.

"Well," agreed the druggist, "we'll try it. Three dollars a month for three months; then six dollars. I can afford no more."

"So much for so much!" whispered Janice, when she came away from the store. "At least, it's a beginning."

But it was a very small beginning, as she soon began to realize. She had no money to give toward the project herself, and it was very hard to beg from some people, even for a good cause.

There was needed at least one long table and two small ones, as well as some sort of a desk for whoever had charge of the room; and shelves for the books, and lamps, and a stove, and chairs, beside curtains at the windows. These simple furnishings would do to begin with. But how to get any, or all, of these was the problem.

Janice went to several people able to help in the project, before she said anything more to Marty. Some of these people encouraged her; some shook their heads pessimistically over the idea.

She wished Elder Concannon to agree to pay the rent of the room for the first three months. It would be but nine dollars, and the old gentleman could easily do it. Since closing his pastorate of the Union Church, years before, Mr. Concannon had become (for Poketown) a rich man. He had invested a small legacy received about that time in abandoned marble quarries and sugar-maple orchards. Both quarries and orchards had taken on a new lease of life, and had enriched the shrewd old minister.

But Elder Concannon let go of a dollar no more easily now than when he had been dependent upon a four-hundred-dollar salary and a donation party twice a year.

It was not altogether parsimony that made the old gentleman "hem and haw" over Janice Day's proposal. Naturally, an innovation of any kind would have made him shy, but especially one calculated to yield any pleasure to the boys of Poketown.

"I don't dispute but you may mean all right, Miss Day," he said, shaking his bristling head at her. "But there's no good in those young scamps--no good at all. You would waste your time trying to benefit them. They would turn your reading-room into a bear garden."

"You do not _know_ that, sir," said Janice, boldly. "Let us try them."

"You are very young, Miss Day," said the Elder, stiffly. "You should yield more easily to the opinions of your elders."

"Why?" demanded the girl, quickly, but smiling. "We young ones have got to learn through our own experiences, haven't we? When _you_ were young, sir, you had to learn at first hand--isn't that so? You would not accept the opinions of the older men as infallible. Now, did you, sir?"