"Polly wants cracker!" declared the bird, flapping his wings and doing a funny little dance on his perch.

"Be still!" commanded Miss Peckham. With her sharp little black eyes she glanced from Janice to the other woman. "This is the girl," she said.

Janice, feeling as though she was under some important scrutiny looked at the second woman in curiosity. She found her a not unpleasant looking person. She was much wrinkled, yet her cheeks were rather pink and her lips very vivid. Janice wondered if it was possible that this color was put on by hand.

The woman sat in a rocking chair with her long hands folded idly in her lap. On the hands were white "half mits"--something Janice knew were long out of fashion but which were once considered very stylish indeed.

The woman's eyes were a shallow brown color--perhaps "faded"

would be a better expression. It seemed as though she were too languid even to look with attention at any one or anything.

"This is the girl, Sophrony," Miss Peckham repeated more sharply.

"Oh, yes," murmured the strange woman, as though awakened from a brown study. "Yes. Quite a pretty little girl."

"Pretty is as pretty does," scoffed Miss Peckham. "At any rate, she's healthy. Ain't you, Janice Day?"

"Ah--oh--yes, ma'am!" stammered Janice, "I guess I am."

"Well, I don't see the doctor going to your house none," said Miss Peckham, in her snappy way. "I guess I would ha' seen him if he'd called."

"Oh, yes," agreed Janice, "you would have seen him."

"Heh?" Miss Peckham stared at the little girl sharply. But she saw that Janice was quite innocent in making her comment.

"Well," said the maiden lady, "this is Mrs. Watkins."

Considering this an introduction, Janice came forward and offered the faded looking woman her hand. Mrs. Watkins' own hand reminded Janice of a dead fish, and she was quite as glad to drop it as Mrs. Watkins seemed to be to have it dropped.

"Oh, yes," said the latter woman, "she is a pretty girl."

"Mrs. Watkins has come to see me," explained Miss Peckham. "She an' I have been friends for years and years. We used to go to school together when we were girls."

"Oh!" said Janice. But she could think of nothing else to say.

She did not understand why she was being taken into Miss Peckham's confidence.

"Yes, Sophrony Watkins and I--Sophrony Shepley was her maiden name. She married Tom Watkins--and Tom was a shiftless critter, if there ever was one."

Janice was startled. Miss Peckham seemed to be unnecessarily plain spoken. But the languid Mrs. Watkins made no comment.

"And now Sophrony has come down to doin' for herself," went on the neighborhood censor. "I sent for her to come over here.

She's been livin' in Marietteville. You tell your pa that we'll come into see him to-night after supper."

"Oh!" murmured Janice. Then she "remembered her manners," and said, smiling: "Please do, Miss Peckham. I will tell daddy you are coming."

Miss Peckham waved her hand to dismiss her young neighbor. "And if 'twas me," she said complacently to her companion, "first thing I'd do would be to cure that young one of calling her father 'daddy.' That's silly."

Even this remark did not forewarn Janice of what was coming. "I just believe," she thought, going on her way, "that that faded-out little woman is a book agent and will want to sell daddy a set of books he'll never in this world read."

But in getting dinner and tidying up the dining room and living room, Janice forgot all about Mrs. Sophronia Watkins. Janice was working very hard these days-- much harder than any girl of her age should work. The evening before she had fallen asleep over her studies, and to-day her recitations had not been quite up to the mark.

The lack of system in the housekeeping made everything harder for her, too. It was all right for daddy to help wash the dinner dishes, and even to blacken the range and the gas stove as he did on this evening, but there were dozens of things going wrong every day in the house which neither Janice nor her father could help.

There were the provision bills. Janice knew very well that the butcher took advantage of her ignorance. She was always in a hurry in the morning, running to school; and she could not stop to see meat weighed, or vegetables properly picked out and measured.

At Mr. Harriman's, the grocer's, it was not so bad. There were certain articles of established standard that she knew her mother had always ordered; but in the matter of b.u.t.ter and cheese and eggs, she realized that she often ordered the best, and got second or third quality and first-quality prices.

Had she been able to spend the time marketing she would have conserved some of daddy's money and things would have been much better on the table. Yet, with the kind of houseworkers they had had, much of the good food that was bought was spoiled in the cooking.

Daddy sometimes said: "The Lord sends the food, but the cooks don't all come from heaven, that is sure, Janice."

He was vigorously polishing the cookstove on this Wednesday evening and they were cheerfully talking and joking, when the sound of bootheels on the side porch announced the coming of visitors.

"Oh, dear me! who can that be?" whispered Janice.

"Save me, My Lady--save me!" cried daddy, appearing to be very much frightened, and dodging behind the stove. "Don't let the neighbors in until I have got rid of this blacking brush and got on my vest and coat--"

But the caller who now hammered on the door with quick knuckles was no bashful person. Mr. Day had no chance to escape from the kitchen Miss Peckham turned the k.n.o.b and walked right in.

"Come in, Sophrony," she said, over her shoulder, to the person who came behind her. "You can see well enough that this man and his gal need somebody to take hold for 'em. Come right in."

CHAPTER XII. THE FADED-OUT LADY

Janice was not as much surprised--at first as her father was by the appearance of the spinster and Mrs. Watkins. She remembered that Miss Peckham had said she would call this evening, although the girl had not expected her at the back door.

Their neighbor had managed to time her appearance at a rather inopportune moment, and when daddy rose up from behind the stove to confront the two women, in a voluminous ap.r.o.n and with a s.m.u.tch across his cheek, Janice could not entirely smother her amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Oh! Oh!" she giggled. "Good evening, Miss Peckham! This--this is Mrs. Watkins, Daddy," and she directed her father's attention to the faded-out lady. "Ahem! I am glad to see you, Miss Peckham--and Mrs. Watkins," Mr. Day said, bowing in that nice way of his that Janice so much admired. Even with a blacking brush in one hand and a can of stove polish in the other, Mr. Broxton Day was very much the gentleman.

"You find us considerably engaged in domestic work," continued Mr. Day, a smile wreathing his lips and his eyes twinkling. "And if you don't mind, I'll finish my job before giving you my full attention. Janice, take

Miss Peckham and her friend into the living room."

"Oh, no. You needn't bother," said Miss Peckham shortly.

"Here's chairs, and we can sit down. It's interesting to watch a man try to do housework, I've no doubt."

"You said something then, Miss Peckham," said Mr. Day, cheerfully, and began industriously daubing the stove covers.

"I brought Mrs. Watkins in here to see you, Mr. Day, 'cause I got your welfare and hers at heart," pursued the spinster.

That sounded rather ominous, and Mr. Day poised the dauber and stared doubtfully from his neighbor to the washed-out looking woman.

"Mrs. Watkins is a widow," went on Miss Peckham.

Mr. Day made a sympathetic sound with his lips, but fell to polishing now, making the stove covers rattle. Miss Peckham raised her voice a notch. "She's a widow, and she's seen trouble."

"We're born to it--as the sparks fly upward," observed Mr. Day, under his breath.

"Mrs. Watkins has come to an age when n.o.body can say she's flighty, I sh'd hope," continued Miss Peckham. "She's settled.