"Goodness, Janice! you'll pa.s.s, of course. Anybody as bright and quick as you are!"

"It's awfully nice of you to say that. But my recitations have gone off like anything lately and I really am afraid of these exams."

Amy tried to comfort her friend, but with little success.

Then there were many outside pleasures, and Janice, in a happier mood this time, remarked that school really did interfere with the real business of life--such as the picnics that the beautiful spring days made so thoroughly pleasurable.

"Dear me, I'd like to go to a picnic every day," she sighed happily to Amy one Sat.u.r.day afternoon, after jolly hours spent with the boys and girls of her circle of closest friends in the woods, now white with dogwood.

Some of the girls were going away for a part of the summer vacation. But Janice would not admit that she even contemplated such a change.

Stella Latham was one of those who expected to migrate. She was going to some relatives who had a summer place on the sh.o.r.e of one of the Great Lakes, and she talked a good deal about it.

But she did not talk to Janice. All she said in the latter's hearing was something that only puzzled and annoyed Daddy's daughter. "I guess if somebody who thinks she is so smart only knew what I know about that Swedish girl, Olga, she'd give her very eyes to have me tell her--so now!"

"I don't even know what she means," confessed Janice, wearily, to Amy.

"She just means to be mean--that's all!" said the practical Amy.

CHAPTER XXII. SOMETHING DOES HAPPEN

"I hope something will happen so I can't go to Poketown," was the thought continually rising to the surface of the troubled pool of Janice Day's mind.

She did not know what Mrs. Carringford had said to daddy, nor how much he had been influenced by that wise woman's observations regarding this very matter. So, as the days went by, Janice continued to fear the worst.

For the very worst that could happen, Janice thought, was for her to be separated from her father and from her home. When the possibility of his having to go to Mexico was first talked about, the thought of their separation had made a very deep impression on the girl's mind. She had never recovered--how could she?

--from the going away of her mother. If her father went out of her life too, it seemed to Janice as though she would be an orphan indeed.

So, without knowing anything personally about her Aunt Almira or Uncle Jason or Marty, her cousin, the girl felt that their a.s.sociation could in no way replace that of daddy.

"I just wish something would happen so that I couldn't go to Poketown," was repeated over and over in her thought.

"Perhaps that is wicked," Janice told herself. "But wicked, or not, it does seem as though it would just kill me to leave home."

After Mrs. Carringford had finished cleaning house, the home seemed so much better and brighter that Janice loved it more than ever. She did not want to leave Eight Hundred and Forty-five Knight Street, even for a day.

"I don't care if Arlo Junior does toll cats into our back kitchen and we entertain dancing bears and that half-crazy Delia and folks like Mrs. Watkins or Olga Cedarstrom," she said to daddy.

"This is just the nicest house in all the world. Don't you think so yourself, Daddy?"

"I never expect to have so much happiness in another house as I have had in this one, my dear," Mr. Day said. "And we will hope for more happiness here in the future. But my little girl must not try to do everything. It is all right to be a homemaker; but you must not try to do it all yourself. We must find somebody to help, regularly."

Secretly Janice was urging Mrs. Carringford to come every day to the house and keep it in that "neat as a new pin" condition in which the sweet-natured woman had left it when the extra cleaning was finished.

"But my dear child, how will my own house get along without me?

Amy cannot do it all, even if it is vacation-time."

"But, dear Mrs. Carringford, just think!" begged Janice. "Kate and Sydney are both big enough to help Amy."

"And they are a team!" sighed Mrs. Carringford.

"They'll be good. They will do a good deal for me," said Janice frankly.

"You bribe the twins."

"Oh, they are only teeny, weeny bribes, and of course children expect pay when they do things for you. Look how eagerly Gummy works for his pay," for Gummy was working every day for Mr.

Harriman now, and his wages had been doubled.

"Don't let him hear you catalogue him as a child," said the boy's mother, smiling. "I must do nothing to neglect my own brood.

Yet I feel that I must earn money. Gummy's wages will not even feed us. And it will last only until September. He must go back to school again then."

"Then come and see daddy," urged Janice. "You know he'll be more than glad to have you. Why, it would be just heavenly for us.

"I must think about it," said the over-urged woman. "If I could get work in a store downtown I would have more regular hours perhaps. For a home cannot be kept on an eight-hour-a-day schedule."

But Janice hoped. To do something to bring about peace and comfort for daddy and herself had been her determination for weeks. If only Mrs. Carringford could be coaxed to agree, Janice foresaw plain sailing.

This had been her hope ever since she had seen how perfectly Amy's mother kept her own poor cottage. It had been her hope when she had first brought Mrs. Carringford and Mr. Day together.

But would her hope come to fruition?

Nevertheless, she was happier now that she did not have to go to school. She had time to work out of doors in the flowerbeds and to get dainty little suppers, sometimes, for daddy.

Yet, at other times she was very tired. She showed daddy a cheerful countenance almost always. But there were occasions when Janice Day felt anything but cheerful "inside," as she expressed it.

Somehow daddy seemed to guess, however, when she was not quite herself during these sultry days, for often at breakfast he said:

"Daughter, dress yourself in your best bib and tucker and meet me at the corner of Joyce Street at four-thirty. I'll be on the Maplewood car and will save a seat for you. We will go out to the Branch Inn for supper."

Such excursions delighted Janice, especially with daddy. It made her feel positively grown up to be taken about by such a well-groomed and handsome man as Broxton Day.

And almost everywhere they went people seemed to know daddy.

Even the managers and waiters at the inns and restaurants knew him, for Mr. Day often attended business conferences and luncheons with the bank's customers, at these places.

Sometimes very well dressed men came and sat down at their table and talked business with Broxton Day. They were always very kind and polite to Janice.

But whenever she heard Mexico and the Mexican mines mentioned, the girl was worried and listened attentively. She knew that those properties down beyond the Rio Grande in which her father was interested so deeply, were still in a very uncertain state.

As yet dividends from her father's investment, she knew, had been very small.

She thought daddy watched her very closely at times. His keen glance seemed almost like that of a person "lying in wait" for one. That was the way Janice expressed it to herself.

She did not understand what these looks meant. Did he doubt that she was really quite as cheerful and happy as she would appear?

On her own part, after she had gone to bed, Janice Day listened often for his step, to and fro, hour after hour, on the honeysuckle-sheltered porch. Was he thinking about the lost letters? Would neither he nor his daughter ever be able to get over--to forget-- the mementoes of dear mother, and their disappearance with Olga Cedarstrom?

Janice often cried herself to sleep thinking of this loss. But she cried quietly so that daddy should not hear her; and she was always very careful in the morning to remove all traces of tears or sleeplessness before appearing in his presence at the breakfast table.

"What's been done to-day, daughter?" was often daddy's question at night, accompanied by one of his keenly interrogating glances.