"'It was verbally understood,' said mother.

"'That don't mean nothin' in business,' said Strout. 'I might tell you the moon was made o' green cheese, but I wouldn't guarantee it. Talk's one thing; a written guarantee is another.

That mortgage is writ for a year, and the year is up.'

"Oh!" exclaimed Gummy hotly, "I could have hit him for speaking so mean to my mother."

"I don't blame you," Janice said sympathetically. "But never mind. Tell the rest."

"Why, all mother could say was what your father told' her to say.

She said: 'You said when you were here several weeks ago that you would let me pay off some of the princ.i.p.al and let the mortgage stand.'

"'How much?' he snapped at her--just like a hungry dog at a bone, you know," continued Gummy.

"'I will spare fifty dollars,' said mother.

"'Fifty fiddlestrings!' shouted Strout. 'Won't hear to it!

Won't listen to it!'

"But already, you see," chuckled Gummy, "mother had pushed the interest money toward him across the table. He grabbed it. He couldn't keep his hands off real money, I guess--his own or anybody else's."

"Oh, Gummy!" murmured Amy.

"Well, didn't he just act so?" cried the boy. "Why, he counted that interest money just as hungrily! And he folded it and put it in his wallet."

"You tell it just as it was," sighed Amy. "Of course I do. Well, mother said: 'You can give me my receipt for that, Mr. Strout, if you don't mind.' And then he did go off the handle!" chortled Gummy. "You see, he had tricked himself."

"How was that, Gummy?" Janice asked wonderingly.

"He made mother pay interest on the note six months in advance.

When he accepted that interest he--what do you call it?--Oh! He tacitly renewed the note, which runs what they call concurrently with the mortgage. So the mortgage is good for another year."

"Oh! Is that what daddy told your mother to do?" cried Janice.

"Now I understand." exclaimed the delighted Gummy.

"Oh! Daddy didn't mean it as a trick--"

"Not a tricky trick," explained Gummy volubly. "Of course not.

But mother just let Mr. Strout trick himself. When he saw what he had done he tried to hand the money back; but mother said:

"'Oh, no, sir!, You can give me the written receipt or not, just as you please. Both of these children'-- that's Amy and me--'saw me give you the money and know its purpose. Their testimony is good in court.

You have refused any payment on the princ.i.p.al of the mortgage; but you have accepted interest for the ensuing six months. You have therefore renewed the note for a year, as it is written for a year.'

"Oh, wasn't Strout mad!" chuckled Gummy.

"And I was proud of mamma," added Amy.

"You bet! Strout said to mother: 'Somebody's been talking to you--I can see that.'

"'Yes, they have,' she told him. 'And somebody who knows you very well, Mr. Strout.' Meaning your father, Janice, of course.

"'So you think you will hold on to this shack and make something on it, do you?' he remarked.

"'At least,' mother answered, 'I hope to keep it for a shelter for my children and not lose what I have put in it.'

"'Well,' said he, in such a nasty tone! 'You just wait!' And then he stamped out of the house."

"Oh, but I am afraid of him," sighed Amy. "He spoke so threateningly."

"Yes, Momsy and Amy think he has something up his sleeve," said Gummy, carelessly. "But I think Abel Strout is licked, thanks to Mr. Day."

Janice was very careful to repeat the particulars of this scene Gummy had so vividly related to her father in the evening.

"Maybe he has something 'up his sleeve,' as Gummy says," Janice observed. "Can that be possible, do you think, Daddy?"

"Well, it is hard to say. Now that I have gone into this thing for Mrs. Carringford, I suppose I might go a little deeper. Do you know if she had the t.i.tle to that property searched before she bought it?"

"I'll ask her, Daddy."

"Don't ask in a way to frighten her," advised Mr. Day, on second thought. "It may be all right. Just ask her who looked up the t.i.tle. Tell her I will have the money ready for her to take up Strout's mortgage when it becomes due next time; but that meanwhile I shall have to have the t.i.tle searched if that was not done before."

"Oh, Daddy! do you believe there could be some--some--"

"Some flaw in it?" asked her father, supplying the word that Janice had heard but could not remember.

"Yes."

"There might be. This is an old part of Greensboro, and some of the old t.i.tles conflicted."

"But then Mrs. Carringford would not have to lose, would she?

Wouldn't Mr. Strout have to give her back her money?"

"Perhaps not. Not if he could prove that he knew nothing about the flaw in the t.i.tle. Or rather, not if Mrs. Carringford could not prove that Strout did know his t.i.tle was fraudulent.

Besides, the place might have been sold for taxes some time.

That would invalidate the t.i.tle in this state, unless the original owner, or his heirs, who owed the taxes, had quitclaimed."

"Dear me, Daddy Day? she cried, "it sounds awfully complicated."

"It is, for little girls. But we will see what we shall see,"

which to say the least, was not a very comforting statement.

Janice had found a colored woman who lived at the end of Love Street to take the washing home each week and who did it very satisfactorily. But the woman had small children and so could not go out to work.

Besides, such women as they had hired to come in to work by the day had been very unsatisfactory. n.o.body seemed to take any interest in the work.

"Why," Janice thought, "we haven't even cleaned house properly this spring. And here it is June--and school almost closing!"

It was a fact that the last few days of the spring term were at hand. Janice was so busy that she did not know what to do. When she went to see Mrs. Carringford to ask her the question Daddy had told her to put, she broke down and cried, telling Amy's mother how bad she felt about the house.