Her calico dress was faded and, in places, strained to the bursting-point, showing that it was "store-bought" and had never been fitted to Mrs. Day's bulbous figure. She wore a pair of men's slippers very much down at the heel, and pink stockings with a gaping hole in the seam at the back of one, which Janice very plainly saw as her aunt preceded her upstairs to the room the visitor was to occupy.

"I hope ye won't mind how things look," drawled Aunt 'Mira. "We ain't as up-an'-comin' as some, I do suppose. But nothin' ain't gone well with Jason late years, an' he's got some mis'ry that he can't git rid of, so's he can't work stiddy. Look out for this nex' ter the top step. The tread's broke an' I been expectin' ter be throwed from top to bottom of these stairs for weeks."

"Can't Uncle Jason fix it?" asked Janice, stepping over the broken tread.

"Wal, he ain't exactly got 'round to it yet," confessed her aunt.

"There! I do hope you like your room, Niece Janice. There's a pretty outlook from the winder."

True enough, the window overlooked the hillside and the lake. Only, had the panes been washed one could have viewed the landscape and the water so much better!

The room itself was the shabbiest bedchamber Janice Day had ever seen.

The carpet on the floor had, generations before, been one of those flowery axminsters that country people used to buy for their "poller."

Then they would pull all the shades down and shut the room tightly, for otherwise the pink roses faded completely out of the design.

This old carpet had long since been through _that_ stage of existence, however, and was now worn to the warp in spots, its design being visible only because of the ingrained grime which years of trampling had brought to it.

The paper on the walls was faded and stained. Empty places where pictures had hung for years, showed in contrast to the more faded barren districts. A framed copy of the Declaration of Independence ornamented the s.p.a.ce above the mantel. Hanging above the bed's head were those two famous chromos of "Good-Morning" and "Good-Night." A moth-eaten worsted motto and cross, "The Rock of Ages," hung above the little bureau gla.s.s.

There was, too, a torn and faded slipper for matches, and a tall gla.s.s lamp that, for some reason, reminded Janice of a skeleton. She could never look at that lamp thereafter without expecting the oil tank to become a grinning skull with a tall fool's cap (the chimney) on it, and its thin body to sprout bony arms and legs.

The furniture was decrepit and ill matched. Janice could have overlooked the shaky chair, the toppling bureau, and the scratched washstand; but the bed with only three legs, and a soap-box under the fourth corner, _did_ bring a question to the guest's lips:

"Where is the other leg, Aunty?"

"Now, I declare for't!" exclaimed Mrs. Day. "That _is_ too bad! The leg's up on the closet shelf here. Jase was calkerlatin' to put it on again, but he ain't never got 'round to it. But the box'll hold yer. It only rattles," she added, as Janice tried the security of the bedstead.

That expression, "it only rattles," the girl from Greensboro was destined to hear unnumbered times in her uncle's home. It was typical of the old Day house and its inmates. Unless a repair absolutely _must_ be made, Uncle Jason would not take a tool in his hand.

As for her Cousin Martin ("Marty" everybody called the gangling, grinning, idle ne'er-do-well of fourteen), Janice was inclined to be utterly hopeless about him from the start. If he was a specimen of the Poketown boys, she told herself, she had no desire to meet any of them.

"What do you do with yourself all day long, Marty, if you don't go to school?" she asked her cousin, at the dinner table.

"Oh, I hang around--like everybody else. Ain't nothin' doin' in Poketown."

"I should think it would be more fun to go to school."

"Not ter 'Rill Scattergood," rejoined the boy, in haste. "That old maid dunno enough to teach a cow."

Janice might have thought a cow much more difficult to teach than a boy; only she looked again into Marty's face, which plainly advertised the vacancy of his mind, and thought better of the speech that had risen to her lips.

"Marty won't go to school no more," her aunt complained, whiningly.

"'Rill Scattergood ain't got no way with him. Th' committee's been talkin' about gittin' another teacher for years; but 'Rill's sorter _sot_ there, she's had the place so long."

"There's more than a month of school yet--before the summer vacation--isn't there?" queried Janice.

"Oh, yes," sighed Mrs. Day.

"I'd love to go and get acquainted with the girls," the guest said, brightly. "Wouldn't you go with me some afternoon and introduce me to the teacher, Marty?"

"_Me?_ Ter 'Rill Scattergood? Naw!" declared the amazed Marty. "I sh'd say not!"

"Why, Marty!" exclaimed his mother. "That ain't perlite."

"Who said 'twas?" returned her hopeful son, shortly. "I ain't tryin' ter be perlite ter no _girl_. And I ain't goin' ter 'Rill Scattergood's school--never, no more!"

"Young man," commanded his father, angrily, "you hold that tongue o'

yourn. And you be perlite to your cousin, or I'll dance the dust out o'

your jacket with a hick'ry sprout, big as ye be."

Janice hastened to change the subject and tune the conversation to a more pleasant key.

"It is so pretty all over this hillside," she said. "Around Greensboro the country is flat. I think the hills are much more beautiful. And the lake is just _dear_."

"Ya-as," sighed her aunt. "Artis' folks come here an' paint this lake. I reckon it's purty; but ye sort er git used ter it after a while."

It was evidently hard for Aunt 'Mira to enthuse over anything. Marty volunteered:

"We got a waterfall on our place. Folks call it the Shower Bath. Guess a girl would think 'twas pretty."

"Oh! I'd love to see that," declared Janice, quickly.

"I'll show it to you after dinner," said Marty, of a sudden surprisingly friendly.

"You'll hoe them 'taters after dinner," cried his father, sharply.

"That's what _you'll_ do."

"Huh!" growled the sullen youth. "Yer said I was to be perlite, an' when I start in ter be, you spring them old pertaters on a feller. Huh!"

"Aw, now, Jason," interposed his mother. "Can't Marty show his cousin over the farm and hoe the 'taters afterward?"

"No, he can't!" denied Master Marty, quickly. "I ain't goin' ter work double for n.o.body. Now, that's flat!"

"Oh, we can go to the Shower Bath some other time," suggested Janice, apprehensive of starting another family squabble. "I don't know as I'd be able to hoe potatoes; but maybe there are other things I can do in the garden. I always had a big flower garden at home."

"Huh!" grunted Marty. "Flowers are only a nuisance."

"I s'pose you could weed some," sighed Aunt 'Mira. "It hurts me so to stoop."

"She'd better pick 'tater bugs," said Marty, grinning. "They've begun to come, I reckon. Hard-sh.e.l.ls, anyway."

Janice could not resist shivering at this suggestion. She did not love insects any better than do most girls. But she took Marty's suggestion in good part.

"You wait," she said. "Maybe I can do that, too. I'll weed a little, anyway. Have you a large farm, Uncle Jason?"

"It's big enough, Janice," grumbled Jason. "Does seem as though--most years--it's too big for us to manage. If Marty, here, warn't so triflin'----"

"I don't see no medals on _you_ for workin' hard," whispered the boy, loud enough for Janice to hear.

"This was a right good farm, onc't," said Aunt 'Mira. "B'fore Jason got his mis'ry we use ter have good crops. That's when we was fust married."