The other girls were silent for the moment. Janice Day's scornful question was too pointed to be ignored. Stella broke out again in anger, her voice high and shrill:

"I don't care! So there! She is a dowdy little thing, and she had no business to come to my party, anyway."

"Stella," said the older girl grimly, "you're making yourself awfully ridiculous. And worse. You can't keep a secret. And you don't keep your word. I guess there will be more than Amy Carringford who will be sorry that they ever went to your old party. Now, stop yelling. Here comes Miss Marble."

The flare-up was only the beginning of a very unhappy time at school for Amy Carringford. Nor could Janice escape being unhappy, too, with her new friend.

That Stella was unable to raise any cabal against Janice and Amy, but quite the contrary, made the situation only a degree more bearable for the two friends. Although the other girls did not join Stella Latham in mourning the poor girl who lived in Mullen Lane, the latter felt deeply the fact that she was considered different from her schoolmates.

"Oh, I wish mother would let me go to work," Amy sighed, on more than one occasion, and to Janice's sympathetic ear. "I declare!

I'd go out as a servant in somebody's home, if mother would let me. We need the money so."

"Goodness! Don't say such things," pleaded Janice. "We need a servant right now, bad enough. But you would not want to come and scrub and sweep and wash and iron even for daddy and me--you know you wouldn't."

"I don't care. Mother says she must go to work somewhere. I'll then have to come to school on part time only. Somebody must look after the twins and Edna May."

"Oh, Amy! what will your mother do?"

"She doesn't know. She has tried to get work to do at home. But all the sewing machine work she can obtain is so heavy. And so poorly paid! What do you suppose she gets for st.i.tching those great, heavy motorman's coats--putting them all together except making b.u.t.tonholes and sewing on b.u.t.tons, which is done in the factory?"

"I have no idea," said Janice.

"Thir-ty-sev-en-cents!" exclaimed Amy, tragically. "Think of it!

And they almost kill her, they are so heavy to handle."

"Oh, my dear! I wouldn't let her do them."

"I guess we wouldn't--Gummy and I--if we could help it," sobbed Amy. "But something must be done by the Carringford family to help out. When Mr. Strout comes over from Napsburg next week he will make us pay off something on that mortgage, or turn us out of the house --such as it is."

"Dear Amy, I wish I could do something for you," sighed Janice.

She said nothing more than that at the time. But that very evening she did not at once open her schoolbooks when she and her father sat down finally in the living room, the supper dishes washed and put away and the kitchen swept.

They had remained without any help since the departure of Mrs.

Sophronia Watkins. Mr. Day had gone every day to the intelligence offices and brought back the most discouraging reports.

"But, Daddy, isn't there any person in the whole of Greensboro or in the county any more who has to work for her living?" asked Janice.

"That man, Murphy, at whose office I engaged Delia, says that there are no good houseworkers any more. He says the girls who come to him for situations are all 'specialists,'" said daddy, gloomily enough.

"Special dunces, I guess," Janice rejoined rather tartly, "if Delia was a sample."

"But she wasn't," said daddy, with a smile. "At any rate, he tells me he has good cooks, and good chambermaids, and good laundresses; but he has no combinations of those trades."

"Oh!"

"Girls do not like to go out to service in families where 'general housework' is expected. It seems," he added grimly, "that to get good help we should engage two or three girls, and then have a lady, like Mrs. Watkins, to superintend."

"I guess we'll have to give up and go to boarding, then," sighed Janice. "Only I am sure I should just detest a boarding house, Daddy."

"I am afraid we should both dislike such a life as that. Your dear mother gave us too good and comfortable a home."

"But we ought to be used to the discomforts of housekeeping by this time," said Janice. "But, oh, Daddy! There are other folks who have worse times than we do."

"So I believe," he agreed, nodding, as he unfolded his paper.

"Wait, Daddy?' she begged. "I want to tell you."

"About other people's troubles?" he asked, with a quizzical smile.

"Yes, I do. It's about the Carringfords."

"Ah-ha! You were saying once that they were in trouble over their home, were you not? I looked that place up. A fellow named Strout--"

"And he's so mean!" declared Janice with vigor.

"Yes. That seems to be his middle name," agreed her father quietly. "I am afraid Mrs. Carringford got into the hands of a sharper when she undertook to buy that cottage in Mullen Lane of Abel Strout."

"Oh, dear, Daddy! isn't there any way of helping them out of their trouble?" Janice asked disappointedly.

"I cannot tell that until I know all the particulars."

"Oh! Let me tell you--"

"Do you know them, my dear?" he asked, interrupting her.

"Well, I know some of them," she confessed, with less vehemence.

"I think you had better ask Mrs. Carringford to come to see me.

If she will tell me about it, I may be able to advise her, at least. I know Strout is a sharper."

"Oh, my dear! That is so good of you," Janice cried. "I'll tell her."

"She can bring her papers here, instead of to the bank," added Mr. Day on second thought. "Perhaps she will like that better.

Any evening that she chooses, my dear."

Janice could scarcely wait until the next day to tell her friend, Amy what her father had said.

CHAPTER XX. STELLA KEEPS ONE SECRET

It was on this evening, too, that Daddy told Janice he had made a point of seeing and talking with Johnson, Mr. Latham's tenant.

The man had a small account in the Farmers and Merchants Bank, for, like most of his nation, "Yon Yonson," as his wife had called him, was a frugal man.

"He came into the bank and I inquired about the girl who visited his wife and who broke Mrs. Latham's cutgla.s.s dish," said Mr.

Day. "Johnson says he knows little about the girl--not even where she lives, or really who she is. Only he told me her last name was not Cedarstrom."

"So that, I fear," added Mr. Day, shaking his head, "is another lost trail. It does seem that the mystery of the disappearance of our treasure-box, Janice, is likely to remain a mystery.