CHAPTER XXII

AT THE SUGAR CAMP

Nelson Haley was, however, at the town meeting and spoke in favor of the new school building. Janice had a full report of it afterward from Marty, who squeezed in at the back with several of the other boys and drank in the long and tedious wrangle between the partisans in the school matter.

"And, by jinks!" the boy proclaimed, "lemme tell you, Janice, it looked like the vote was goin' ag'in us till Mr. Haley began to talk. I thought he didn't have much interest in the thing. n.o.body thought he did. I heard some of the old fellers cacklin' that 'teacher didn't favor the idee none.'

"But, say! When he got up to talk, he showed 'em. He was sitting alongside of Elder Concannon himself, and the Elder had made a mighty strong speech against increasin' taxes and burdenin' the town for years and years with a school debt.

"But, talk about argument! Mr. Haley sailed inter them old fossils, and made the fur fly, you bet!"

"Oh, Marty! Fur fly from fossils?" chuckled Janice.

"That _does_ sound like a teaser, don't it?" responded her cousin, with a grin. "Just the same, Mr. Haley made 'em all sit up and take notice.

He didn't only speak for the schoolhouse, and new methods of teaching, and a graded school; but he took up Elder Concannon's arguments and shot 'em full of holes.

"You ought to have seen the old gentleman's face when Mr. Haley proved that a better-taught generation of scholars would possess an increased earning power and so be better able to take up and pay the school bonds than the present taxpayers.

"Say! the folks cheered! When Mr. Haley sat down, the question was put and the vote went through with a rush. But Elder Concannon and Old Bill Jones, and Mr. Cross Moore, and some of the others, were as mad as they could be."

"Mad at Mr. Haley?" queried Janice, with sudden anxiety.

"You bet! But they can't take the school away from him till the end of the year, as long as he doesn't neglect his work. So Dad says, and he knows."

Janice was worried. She knew that Nelson Haley had hoped to teach the Poketown school at least two years, so as to get what he called "a stake" for law-school studies. And there were not many ungraded schools in the state that paid as well as Poketown's; for it was a large school.

The furor occasioned by the special town meeting, and the fight for the new school, pa.s.sed over. A site for the school was secured just off of High Street near the center of the town--a much handier situation for all concerned. The ground would be broken for the cellar as soon as the frost had gone.

The committee appointed at the town meeting to have charge of the building of the school were all in favor of it. There were three of them,--Mr. Ma.s.sey, the druggist, the proprietor of the Lake View Inn, and Dr. Poole, one of the two medical pract.i.tioners in the town. These three were instructed to appoint two others to act with them, and as these two appointees need not be taxpayers, one of them was Nelson Haley, who acted as secretary.

When Janice heard of this, she was delighted. She had not seen the teacher more than to say "how-de-do" since their rather warm discussion before the date of the town meeting. Now she put herself in the way of meeting him where they might have a tete-a-tete.

There were not many social affairs in Poketown for young people. Janice had attended one or two of the parties where boys and girls mingled indiscriminately and played "kissing games," then she refused all such invitations. She was not old enough to expect to be bidden to the few social gatherings held by the more lively cla.s.s of people in the town.

The church did little outside of the ladies' sewing circle to promote social intercourse in the congregation. So, although the school-teacher might have been invited to a dozen evening entertainments during that winter, Janice did not chance to meet him where they could have a "good, long talk" until the Hammett Twins gave their annual Sugar Camp party.

The two little old ladies, whom Janice had met so soon after coming to Poketown, had become staunch friends of the girl. She had been at their home on the Middletown road several times--twice to remain over night, for both Miss Blossom and Miss p.u.s.s.y enjoyed having young people about them.

They were an odd little couple, but kindly withal, and loved children desperately, as many spinster ladies do. They had never married because of the illness for many years of both their father and their mother.

Besides, the twins had never wished to be separated.

Now, at something over sixty years of age, they owned a fine farm and the most productive sugar-maple orchard in that part of the state. At sugaring time each year they invited all the young folk Walky Dexter could pack into his party wagon, to the camp not far from their house; and, as maple-sugar making was a new industry to Janice, she was not a little eager when she received her invitation from the two old ladies.

The "sugaring" was on a Sat.u.r.day, and the party met at the schoolhouse.

Some of the larger girls who had treated Janice so unpleasantly when she first visited the school were yet pupils; but they were much more friendly with the girl from Greensboro than at first. They might have been a wee bit jealous of her, however; for Nelson Haley would never treat them other than as a teacher should treat his scholars, whereas he paid marked attention to Janice whenever he was in her society.

Once he had asked permission to call upon her; but Janice had only laughed and told him that her aunt would be pleased to have him come, of course. She was not at all sure that she liked Mr. Nelson Haley well enough to allow him to confine his attentions to her! Young as she was, Janice had serious ideas about such matters.

However, she was glad to have him to talk to again on this occasion.

"I've never had a chance to tell you how proud of you I was when they told me what you did at the town meeting," Janice whispered, as they sat side by side in the party wagon.

Nelson grinned at her cheerfully. "The old Elder scarcely speaks to me,"

he said. "He's even forgotten that I can turn a Latin phrase as they used to when he went to the university."

"Oh, that is too bad! But don't you feel that you did right?"

"I'll tell you better when it comes time to engage a teacher for next year."

"Oh, dear! Maybe they'll put in a new school committee at the July school meeting. They ought to."

"The Elder and his comrades in crime have been in office for eight or ten years, I understand. They are fairly glued there, and it will take a good deal to oust them. You see, they have nothing to do with the building of the new school."

"But if that school is finished and ready for occupancy next fall, you ought to be at the head of it. It won't be fair to put you out," Janice said, with gravity.

"We'll hope for the best," and Nelson Haley laughed as usual. "But if I lose my job and have to beg my bread from door to door, I hope you will remember, Janice, that I told you so."

"You are perfectly ridiculous," declared the girl. "Aren't you ever serious two minutes at a time?"

"Pooh! what's the good of being 'solemncholly'? Take things as they come--that's _my_ motto."

Still, Janice believed that the young man was really becoming more deeply interested in the Poketown school and its problems that he was willing to admit, even to her. She had heard that the Middletown architect who was planning the school had consulted Nelson Haley several times upon important points, and that the teacher was the most active of all the five special committeemen.

They reached the sugar camp before the middle of the forenoon, although the roads at that season were very heavy. Winter had by no means departed, although a raucous-voiced jay or two had come up from the swamp and scoured the open wood as though already in search of spring quarters.

The Hammett sugar camp consisted of an open shed in which to boil the sap and an old cabin--perhaps one of the first built in these New Hampshire grants--in which dinner was to be cooked and eaten. Miss Blossom Hammett was already busy over the pots, and pans, and bake oven in the cabin; while her sister, the thin Miss p.u.s.s.y, overseered the sap-boiling operations.

It was a regular "bee", for beside the twins' hired hands, there were several of their neighbors, and the visitors from Poketown were expected to make themselves useful, too, the boys and Nelson Haley especially.

Janice joined the sap gatherers, for she was strong and liked exercise.

They carried buckets to collect the sap that had already run into the shiny two-quart cups which were used to collect it.

First an incision was made through the bark and into the wood of the tree. Into this incision was thrust a whittled plug that had a shallow gutter cut in its upper side, and notches from which the bail of the two-quart cup hung. Into the cup the sap dripped rapidly--especially about midday, when the sun was warmest.

They tapped only about a quarter of the grove belonging to the old ladies, for that numbered as many trees as could be handled at once.

Pail after pail of the thin sap was brought in and emptied into one of the two big cauldrons, under which a steady fire of hickory and beech was kept burning. Later the fire was started under the second pot, while the contents of the first one was allowed to simmer down until the sugar would "spin", when dipped up on the wooden ladle and dropped into a bowl of cold water.

The old ladies supplied a hearty and substantial dinner for the young folks to put away before the sugar was boiled enough to spin. After that, the visitors gathered about the sugar troughs like flies about mola.s.ses. The Hammett Twins were not n.i.g.g.ard souls by any manner of means; but they kept warning the girls and boys all the afternoon to "save room for supper."

In truth, the supper down at the old Hammett farmhouse, after the work of the day was over, was the princ.i.p.al event. It grew cold towards night, and that sharpened the young folks' appet.i.tes. The sap ceased running before sunset, so they trooped down from the camp, the little old ladies riding in their phaeton behind Ginger. Walky Dexter was going to drive out to the Hammett place after supper to pick up his load of young people.

But Walky was late--very late indeed. After supper the majority of the young folk, both those from Poketown and in the near neighborhood, began to play forfeit games; so Janice and Nelson Haley slipped away, bidding the kind old ladies good-night, and set out to walk home.

The distance was under five miles; there was a good path all the way despite the mud in the driveway, and there was a glorious moon. The wind had died down and, although the night air was keen, it was a perfect hour for walking.