"What's _that_? Well, I dunno. I'm wonderin' myself just where she'll break out next!"

CHAPTER XVII

CHRISTMAS NEWS

It bade fair to be an old-fashioned northern New England winter. Janice Day had never seen anything like this in the prairie country from which she had come.

There three or four big storms, the traces of which soon melted, had been considered a "hard" winter. Here in Poketown the hillside was made white before Thanksgiving, and then one snow after another sifted down upon the mountains. Tree branches in the forest broke under the weight of snow. Sometimes she lay awake in the night and heard the frost burst great trees as though a stick of dynamite had been set off inside them.

The lake ice became so thick that the steamboat could no longer make her trips. Walky Dexter became mail carrier and brought the mail from Middletown every other day.

Janice found the time not at all tedious in its flight. There really was so much to do!

As for real _fun_--winter sports had been little more than a name to the girl from the Middle West before this winter. The boys had got their bob-sleds out before Thanksgiving. Toboggans were not popular in Poketown, for the coasting-places were too rough. At first Janice was really afraid to join the hilarious parties of boys and girls on some of the slides.

Marty, however, owned a big sled, and she did not want her cousin to lose his good opinion of her. He had declared that she was almost as good as a boy, and Janice successfully hid from him her fear of the sport that really is a royal one.

A favorite slide of the Poketown young people was from the head of the street on which Hopewell Drugg's store was located, down the hill, past the decayed dock on which Janice had first seen little Lottie Drugg, and on across the frozen inlet to the wooded point in which Lottie declared the echo dwelt.

When the whole lake froze solidly, the course of the sleds was continued across its level surface as far as the momentum from the hill would carry the bobs. There was skating here, too; and many were the moonlight nights on which a regular carnival was held at the foot of these hilly streets.

Walky Dexter owned a great sledge, too, and when he attached two span of horses to this, and the roads were even half broken, he could drive parties of Poketown young people all over the county, on moonlight sleigh-rides. Janice was invited to go on several of these, and she did so. Her heart was not always attuned to the hilarity of her companions; but she did not allow herself to become morose, or sad, in public.

Yet the gnawing worriment about her father was in her mind continually.

It was an effort for her to be lively and cheerful when the fate of Mr.

Broxton Day was so uncertain.

Her more thoughtful comrades realized the girl's secret feelings. She was treated with more consideration by the rough boys who were Marty's mates, than were the other girls.

"Say, that Janice girl is all right!" one rough fellow said to Marty Day. "I see her scouring the papers in the readin'-room the other night, and she was lookin' for some news of her father, of course."

"I reckon so," Marty answered. "We don't know nothing about what's become of him. They stand 'em up against a wall down there in Mexico and shoot 'em just for fun--so Walky Dexter says. Dad says he never expects to hear of Uncle Brocky alive ag'in."

"And yet that girl keeps up her pluck! She's all right," declared the other. "Gee! suppose she should come smack upon the story of her father's death some night there in the readin'-room? Wouldn't that be tough?"

From this conversation sprang the idea of a sort of Brotherhood of Defense (in lieu of a better t.i.tle) among the boys who used the reading-room whose existence Janice Day's initiative had established.

Whoever got the papers from the mail and spread them on the file in the reading-room, first examined the columns carefully for any mention of the execution of prisoners by either belligerent party in Mexico; especially was the news searched for any mention of the lost Mr. Day.

Sometimes, when the news story suggested one of these horrible executions, the whole paper was "lost in the mail." At least, when it was inquired for, that was the stock reply. The boys made sure that Janice should never see such blood-chilling accounts of Mexican activities.

It drew toward Christmas. Janice had another sorrow, of which she never said a word. Her spending money was nearly gone. She saw the bottom of her narrow purse just as the season of giving approached!

There were so many things she wanted to do for all her friends, both in Poketown and back at Greensboro. Some few little things she had made, for her fingers were both nimble and dexterous. But "homemade" presents would not do for Uncle Jason, Aunt 'Mira, Marty, and a dozen other people towards whom she felt kindly.

She had begun to worry, too, about what would finally happen to her if her father never came back! How long would the bank continue to pay her board to Uncle Jason? And how was she to get clothes, and other necessary things?

In the midst of these mental tribulations came a letter from the Greensboro bank, addressed to Janice herself. In it was the cashier's check for twenty-five dollars, and a brief note from the official himself, stating that Mr. Day, before ever he had separated from his daughter, had looked forward to her Christmas shopping and instructed the bank to send on the fifteenth of December this sum for her personal use.

"Dear, dear Daddy! He forgot nothing," sobbed Janice, when she read this note, and kissed the check which seemed to have come warm from her father's hand. "Whatever shall I do all through my life long without him, if he never comes back?"

Christmas Eve came. The clouds had been gathering above the higher peaks of the Green Mountains all day, and, as evening dropped, the snow began falling.

Janice and Marty went down town together after supper. Even Poketown showed some special light and life at this season. Dusty store windows were rejuvenated; candles, and trees, and tinsel, and wreathes blossomed all along High Street. Janice was proud to know that the brightest windows, and the most tastefully dressed, were Hopewell Drugg's. And in the middle of the biggest window of Drugg's store was a beautiful wax doll, which she and Miss 'Rill had themselves dressed. On Christmas morning that doll was to be found by Lottie Drugg, fast asleep with its head on the blind child's own pillow!

Janice had to run around just to take a last peek at the window and the doll, while Marty went to the post office for the evening mail. Papers and magazines were due in that mail for the reading-room; and, despite the fact that the snow was falling more heavily every minute, there would be some of the "regulars" in the reading-room, glad to see the papers.

Janice had turned her own subscription for the New York daily over to the reading-room a.s.sociation; and when she wanted to read the New York paper herself, she went to the files to look at it. Weeks had pa.s.sed now since there had been anything printed about that district in Chihuahua where her father's mine was located.

Coming back, down the hill from Drugg's, Janice saw that Marty had not gone at once into the reading-room and lit the lamps. Her cousin was standing in the light of the drug-store window, a bundle of papers and magazines under his arm, and one paper spread before his eyes. He seemed to be reading eagerly.

"Hey, Marty! come on in and read! It's awful cold out here!" she shouted to him, shaking the latch of the reading-room door with her mittened hand.

Marty, roused, looked up guiltily, and thrust the quickly folded paper into the breast of his jacket. "Aw, I'm comin'," he said.

But when he came to open the door Janice noticed that he seemed to fumble the key greatly, and he kept his face turned from her gaze.

"What's the matter, Marty?" she asked, lightly.

"Matter? Ain't nothin' the matter," grunted the boy.

"Why, Marty! you're crying!" gasped Janice, suddenly.

"Ain't neither!" growled the boy, wiping his rough coat sleeve across his eyes. "Snow's blowed in 'em."

"That's more than snow, Marty," was Janice's confident remark.

"Huh!" snorted Marty. "Girls allus know so much!"

He seemed to have suddenly acquired "a grouch." So Janice went cheerily about the room, singing softly to herself, and lighting the lamps.

n.o.body else had arrived, for it was still early in the evening.

Marty stole softly to the stove. The fire had been banked, and the room was quite chilly. He rattled the dampers, opened them, and then, with a side glance at his cousin, pulled the paper from within the breast of his jacket and thrust it in upon the black coals before he closed the stove door.

"Where's the New York paper, Marty?" Janice was asking, as she arranged the Montpelier and the Albany papers on their files.

"Didn't come," grunted Marty, and picked up the empty coal hod. "I got to git some coal," he added, and dashed outside into the snow.

Instantly the girl hastened across the room. She jerked the stove door open. There lay the folded paper, just beginning to brown in the heat of the generating gas. She s.n.a.t.c.hed it from the fire and, hearing the outer door opened again, thrust the paper inside her blouse.

It wasn't Marty, but was one of the other boys. She did not understand why her cousin should have told her an untruth about the New York paper.

But she did not want an open rupture with him here and now--and before other people.

"I'm going right home," she said to Marty, when he came back with the replenished coal hod. "It's snowing real hard."

"Sure. There won't be many of the fellows around to-night, anyway. Peter here will stay all evening and lock up--if Mr. Haley don't come. Won't you, Pete?"