_ CHAPTER XIX. A FLARE-UP
At school the first of that week there was little talked about, of course, save the glories of Stella's party. No girl in the grammar grade had ever celebrated her birthday with such magnificence. The commendation she heard on all sides made Stella very proud.
Because so many of the girls tried to show her their appreciation of the nice time they had had at the Latham farm, Stella began to feel quite puffed up. She considered herself to be the most important person in her grade, at least, if not in the whole school.
It was a privilege to be taken up by the Latham car after school and set down at one's door; and Stella distributed such favors with no lack of shrewdness. She meant such rides to bring her popularity. Janice had often been the recipient of these kindnesses, and as she had told her father, it did delight her to ride in an automobile.
But since she had become so friendly with Amy Carringford, Janice had frequently walked home with her, or Amy had accompanied her to the Day house after school.
Stella was shallow enough when it came to displaying her own friendship for another girl; but suddenly it struck the farmer's daughter that a girl who had once been much in her company was showing a preference for somebody else.
"That Janice Day is sly," she muttered to herself, passing Janice and Amy as they wended their chattering way homeward. "She thinks I don't notice what she's doing. I'll give it to her to-morrow, see if I don't!"
This threat she proceeded to put into practice. And it came most unexpectedly both to Janice and Amy.
Janice, of course, was perfectly innocent and quite unsuspicious of any attack, and Amy did not dream that Stella did not like her. Had not the farmer's daughter invited Amy to her party? In fact Amy was liked by almost everybody, teachers and pupils included.
In arithmetic Stella always was dull, and on this particular morning she was more than ordinarily careless in recitation. Miss Marble gave her a sharp word and propounded the same question to Amy Carringford. The latter returned the correct answer, and then gave the red-faced Stella a deprecatory smile.
"Don't you grin at me, you pauper!" hissed Stella, and so loudly that several of the girls near by heard her words.
Even Miss Marble took notice of Stella's speech, although she could not overhear what she said.
"No communicating during recitations, Stella," she said sharply.
Amy had paled to her very lips and the tears sprang to her eyes. Janice was too far away to understand; but she was interested--she could not fail to be.
None who heard the unkind remark of Stella Latham but felt sorry that one of their mates should be so rude and ungracious.
"Of course, we all know Amy Carringford is poor--just as poor as poverty," one of them said at recess. "But that is no reason for telling her so!"
This girl was quite energetic in saying this--and more--to the offending Stella.
"Just because you ride in an automobile, and your father owns a farm, you need not think that you are better than anybody else in our class--for you're not, Stella Latham! Amy Carringford is every whit as good as you are."
"Is that so?" snapped Stella. "She's a poverty stricken thing. She hasn't got a decent thing to wear--"
"What nonsense, Stella," drawled another and older girl, shrugging her shoulders. "I noticed particularly the other night. Amy had as pretty a frock on as anybody at your party."
"Yes! And where did she get it?" flared out Stella.
"Her mother made it, I fancy," said the same girl, laughing.
"That dress was given her by Janice Day. Amy couldn't have come to my party otherwise--so now! You just ask Janice if what I say isn't so," cried Stella, stamping her foot.
"I don't believe it," said the first speaker shortly.
"So I'm a story-teller, am I?" almost shrieked Stella. "You just ask Janice."
Just then Janice strolled into the room where the girls were gathered at this lunch hour. Amy, of course, had run home for her lunch--and run home in tears, Janice knew. The latter knew that Stella was the cause of Amy's trouble, but up to this point she had not discovered the exact reason for the flare-up.
"You think I don't tell the truth," pursued Stella, in a loud and angry voice. "I suppose you'll believe what Janice Day says. You just ask her who gave that nasty Amy Carringford the dress she wore to my party."
Janice stopped stock still for a moment. Her schoolmate's statement was like a blow in the face. Mean of disposition as she knew Stella Latham to be, she had not thought the girl would tell the secret of Amy's pretty dress.
After the ban of silence Janice had put upon the farmer's daughter, and the latter's promise to obey that mandate and tell nobody about the pink and white frock, this deliberate breaking of Stella's word astounded Janice Day. Her face flushed, then paled, and she looked as though she were the person guilty of the outrage, rather than Stella.
"What nonsense!" exclaimed the older girl, but looking at Janice curiously. "Why put it on Janice, Stella? You are saying something you do not know anything about."
"Oh! I don't?" exclaimed the farmer's daughter. "You just ask Janice, I tell you."
"Do your own asking," said another. "Janice doesn't look very pleasant," and she laughed.
"You tell 'em!" commanded Stella, starting toward Janice threateningly. "Didn't you give Amy that dress so she could come to my party? Didn't you?"
Janice had begun to recover her confidence--and her good sense, too. She could not deny the accusation; but she determined to put Stella before her fellow schoolmates in just the right light.
"I do not know that it is a crime for one girl to help another," Janice said quietly, and still very pale. "If I did what Stella claims I did, it was nothing shameful I am sure--either for Amy or for me."
"Of course it wasn't!" murmured one of the other girls.
"Bully for you, Janice!" said another, in commendation.
"It really was only our business--Amy's and mine. But Stella knew about it. In fact, Stella came to me about Amy in the first place. She wanted to invite Amy and she feared--so she said--that Amy would not have a party dress. I undertook to find her one, and hard enough time I had getting Amy and her mother to agree to use the dress.
"But that," said Janice scornfully, "is a purely personal matter between them and me. I want to ask you girls, though, what you think of a person who, after having given her word to keep the matter a secret, deliberately taunts Amy with the fact that she took the dress from me? That is what I want to know."
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 stitching those great, heavy motorman's coats--putting them all together except making buttonholes and sewing on buttons, 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. _