"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 n.o.body--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, pa.s.sed 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. n.o.body 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 cla.s.s 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 Miss 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 pa.s.sing down the aisle, knowing herself to be the center of all eyes. Miss Scattergood dismissed the cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s of younger scholars. This cla.s.s practically took all of her attention and she did not observe the four boys who carried on a warfare with "snappers" and "spitb.a.l.l.s" 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 cla.s.ses, 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 pa.s.sed 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!"

CHAPTER VI

AN AFTERNOON OF ADVENTURE

The late spring air, however, was delicious. The trees rustled pleasantly. The bees hummed and the birds twittered, and altogether there were a hundred things to charm Janice into extending her walk.

Down at the foot of a side street a bit of water gleamed like a huge turquoise. There seemed to be no dwellings at the foot of this street, and Janice, with the whole afternoon before her, felt the tingle of exploration in her blood.