_ CHAPTER XI. MRS. WATKINS
Although it was probable that most of the Day's neighbors felt more or less curiosity, if not interest, in their domestic misfortunes, it was only Miss Peckham who seemed to keep really close observation, in season and out, of all that went on in and about the Day house.
Janice could have wished that the spinster would give more of her attention to her cats and Ambrose, the parrot, and less to neighborhood affairs. For the child knew that not even a peddler came to the door that the sharp-visaged woman behind her bowed blinds did watch to see what Janice did.
"She watches every move I make, Daddy," complained the girl one day. "I don't see why she cares who comes to see me. She's the meanest thing--"
"Now, Janice, dear!"
"I don't care, Daddy, just this once! Why, this afternoon three of the girls were here, and after they left Miss Peckham called me over to the fence and asked me when the Beemans were going to Canada.
"The Beemans talk of going there before long, but are not certain about it; and Annette told the rest of us girls all about it as a great secret. Miss Peckham
deliberately listened at her window, and then, because she couldn't hear all we said, she tried to make me tell her the whole story. Now, isn't that mean?"
"Oh, well, Janice--"
"You wouldn't listen like that, Daddy Day, and you wouldn't let me, so there!"
"Maybe not, Janice. But then, you know, we do many things that Miss Peckham does not approve of--many things that she would not think of doing."
"Now, Daddy, you are joking! You know you are!"
"Maybe so--half way. But then we are responsible for ourselves, and not for Miss Peckham. But I am sorry, daughter, that she troubles you. Perhaps," he added more lightly, "we shall get things on a more satisfactory basis here before long, and then Miss Peckham will not think it necessary to look after us so much."
"You know better than that, Daddy Day. Miss Peckham will look after us till we are hundreds of years old," answered Janice. But now she spoke with a smile on her lips.
The disappointment of the coming and going of Bridget Burns made both father and daughter shrink from trying another houseworker unless she appeared more than ordinarily promising. So for a day or two daddy went personally to the agencies and looked the prospective workers over. His reports to Janice were not hopeful.
"Oh, dear me, Daddy!" Janice sighed, "I do wish I could do it all. Maybe I ought only to go to school part time--"
"No, my dear. We will scrabble along as best we can. You must not neglect the studies."
"At any rate," she exclaimed, "it will soon be vacation time. I can do ever so much more in the house then."
"Nor do I believe that is a good plan," her father said, shaking his head. "The best thing that could happen to you would be for you to go away for a change. I have a good mind to send you back East. Your Aunt Almira--"
"Oh, Daddy! Never! You don't mean it?" cried the girl.
"Why, you'll like your Aunt Almira. Of course, Jase Day is not such an up-and-coming chap as one might wish; but he is a good sort, at that. And there is your cousin, Marty."
"But I don't know any of them," sighed Janice. "And I don't want to leave you."
"But if we cannot get any help--"
"I'll get along. What would you do in this house alone if I went away?" she demanded.
"I'd shut it up and go down to the Laurel House to board."
"Oh, that's awful!"
"No. I get my lunch there now. It's not very bad," said Broxton Day, smiling.
"I mean it's awful to think of shutting up our home for the summer. You haven't got to go away to Mexico, have you, Daddy?" she queried with sudden suspicion.
"Well, my dear, it may be necessary," he confessed.
"And you'd send me away to Vermont while you were gone?"
"I don't know what else to do--if the necessity arises. Jase Day is my half-brother--the only living relative I have. Your mother's people are all scattered. I wouldn't know what else to do with you, my dear."
"Mercy!" she sighed, winking back the tears, "it sounds as though I--I were what you call a 'liability' in your bank business. Isn't that it? Why, Daddy! I want to be an 'asset,' not a 'liability.'"
"Bless you, my dear, you are! A great, big asset!" he laughed. "But you must not neglect the necessary preparation for life which your studies give you. Nor must I let you overwork. Have patience--and hope. Perhaps we shall be able to find a really good housekeeper, after all."
When, on Wednesday afternoons Janice came home from school, she saw Miss Peckham beckoning to her from her front porch, the girl had no suspicion that the maiden lady was about to interfere in her and daddy's affairs. No, indeed!
"Now I wonder what she wants!" murmured Janice, going reluctantly toward the Peckham house. "And she's got company, too."
The spinster was sitting on her porch behind the honeysuckle vines, with her sewing table and the big parrot, Ambrose, chained to his perch beside her. There was, too, a second woman on the porch.
"Good afternoon, Miss Peckham," Janice said, swinging her books as she came up the walk from Miss Peckham's gate. "Hello, Polly!"
"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 butter 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 knob 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." _