_ CHAPTER XXVII. INFORMATION THAT IS TOO LATE
During the days immediately succeeding the fire and the Carringford's poignant trouble, Janice Day had a mental problem to solve which occupied her thoughts a good part of the time.
Daddy's broken leg was getting along nicely. With the aid of crutches he could get around very well indeed. He had even gone down to the bank in an automobile.
So Janice did not have to give him quite the close care and attention that she previously had. Daddy declared she was making a mollycoddle of him, anyway--that she babied him too much.
She had more freedom of action, therefore, and now she proceeded to put a certain plan she had made into effect. Janice had not forgotten what Bertha Warring had said regarding the information Stella Latham had hidden from her, Janice, at the time school closed.
Could it be that, after all was said and done, the Olga who had broken Mrs. Latham's dish was the same Olga that had run away with the Day's treasure-box? Was it Olga Cedarstrom, with her name changed, and Stella had known it to be so, all the time?
Really, when Janice thought of this she felt exceedingly angry with Stella. She had intended, after Stella had acted so meanly toward Amy Carringford, to let the farmer's daughter strictly alone in the future. She would have as little to do with her as it was possible, considering that she had to go to school with her. That was at first. Then her anger had cooled. Now it was aflame again.
But if Stella knew positively that the Swedish girl who had visited Mrs. Johnson had been married, and therefore her name was no longer Cedarstrom, Janice was determined to find it out. Unpleasant as might be to ask Stella, Janice would do just this.
She knew Stella had returned from her visit to the lake shore resort. Janice had seen her flying past in the Latham car more than once within the week. Janice could not stop her at such times; she could not expect Stella to put herself out at all to give her any information. So she set forth one August morning to trudge through the heat and dust out to the Latham farm. There was no interurban car that would take her near there; and how she did wish daddy could afford an automobile!
Indeed, just as she turned up the road leading to the door of the Latham house a motor-car turned, too, into the road, powdering Janice with dust. The latter saw the malicious smile of Stella Latham, driving the car herself, as the farmer's daughter looked back over her shoulder at the pedestrian.
Janice kept grimly on; nor would she show Stella that she was hurt or ruffled in temper. Stella waited on the porch for her schoolmate to approach. A man came to take the car around to the garage.
"Well, what do you want?" asked Stella, when Janice came within hearing. "Are you begging more old clothes for that protegee of yours, Amy Carringford?"
"I have come on my own business, Stella," said Janice gently. "It is something that I want to know, and you can tell me."
Stella was smiling broadly; but it was by no means a pleasant smile. She was spiteful. She had found since coming back from her summer vacation that the girls had not forgotten her behavior toward Amy Carringford and some of them still resented it. She was nowhere near as popular as she had been; and even her father's motorcar could not regain the friendship of many of her schoolmates whom she wished to be chums with.
Stella laid all this to "that sly Janice Day." She dared not so speak of Janice before her mother; for Mrs. Latham liked Janice. Just now, however, Stella's mother was not at home, and she felt free treat Janice in any way she chose.
"Of course, you expect me to tell you everything you want to know, Janice Day," said Stella. "But I don't know why I should."
"You will tell me, won't you, Stella, if you really know that the Swedish girl who broke your mother's dish is the same girl who used to work for daddy and me?"
"Why should I?"
"Because it is the right thing to do, isn't it? You do not know what it means to us if we can find that girl--"
"And why should I care?" snapped Stella "You never did anything for me, Janice Day."
"I think I tried to--at least once," her schoolmate said mildly.
"Nothing of the kind! You did something for Amy Carringford--the pauper! You were spoons with her then, and you wanted to get her to my party. You begged an invitation for her and then dressed her up. like a freak so she could come, and--"
"That is not so, Stella," Janice interrupted with some spirit. "But I want to talk about Olga, not about Amy."
"Go along with your old Olga!" cried the other angrily. "I wouldn't tell you anything about her if I knew."
"I shall go to Mrs. Johnson again then. And if Mrs. Johnson is not willing to tell me, I shall come back and see your mother."
"Oh! you will?" sneered Stella. "So you think the Johnsons will tell you about Olga's last name do you?"
"I will ask them."
"Good luck to you!" jeered Stella, as Janice went on through the Latham's yard. "You can ask anybody you like, but you'll get nothing out of me I assure you!"
Janice made no further reply. She was hurt to the quick, for she did not believe she deserved any such treatment from her schoolmate. And it did, too, worry Janice Day when she knew she had an enemy.
"Friends are so much nicer to make than enemies," was one of daddy's sayings; and his little daughter always bore that fact in mind when in contact with her schoolmates.
But really, one could do nothing with Stella Latham, once that subborn person had made up her mind to be "mad." Stella gloried in showing all the perversity with which she was cursed; so Janice sighed and gave it up.
"No use. I hope I won't have to ask Mrs. Latham. Then there will be trouble, I fear."
The walk over the hill and down the lane, crossing the brook Gummy Carringford had once spoken of, was a pleasant walk, after all. It was not dusty, and there were shade trees part of the way. By the time Janice came to the little house which her father and she had once visited to look for Olga, she was quite cool and collected again.
But as soon as she drew near to the tenant house the girl was startled. There was not a sign of life about it. There were no wagons or farm tools about the sheds or barnyard. There were no cattle in the stable, nor pigs in the pen, nor poultry in the wired run.
"Goodness me! have the Johnsons gone, too?" cried Janice.
She hurried to the little house. There were no curtains at the windows, and she could see right through the empty house.
"That's what Stella meant!" exclaimed Janice. "Oh, the mean, mean thing! To let me walk away over here without telling me that they had gone! And now she is waiting back there to laugh at me when I return!" Janice Day did not like to be laughed at any more than other people. And she particularly shrank from facing the sarcastic Stella on this occasion.
"At least, I will make some inquiries elsewhere, first," she thought, and set forth along the public highway, on which the little house fronted, toward another dwelling that was in sight.
There were people in this house, that was sure. There were children playing in the yard and a pleasant-faced woman on the front porch, sewing and keeping an eye on the children.
She did put out a somewhat forbidding air when Janice turned in at the gate; but then she saw the girl had no bag or sample case, so she brightened up again.
"You haven't anything to sell, I guess?" the woman began, even before Janice uttered a word.
"Oh, no," answered the girl.
"Come up and sit down," said the woman. Then she added: "Dear me, you are only a little girl. It's hot walking. Will you have a drink of water?"
"No, thank you. I got a drink at the well back there," and Janice pointed at the tenant house on Mr. Latham's place.
"Oh, yes; Latham's cottage."
"The Johnsons used to live there, did they not? asked the caller.
"Swedes--yes," said the woman.
"I was looking for them."
"But goodness, you're not a Swede!" exclaimed the woman.
"Oh, no," laughed Janice. "But I wanted to see them about a friend of theirs--a girl who used to work for us."
"Oh! I thought you couldn't be a foreigner," said the woman. "Well," she added, "I'm afraid you'll have to go a long way to find out anything from the Johnsons."
"You don't mean--"
"I mean they've left the country," said the woman.
"Left this part of the country?"
"They have gone back to Sweden," said Janice's informant, nodding over her sewing. "Yes. They had a stroke of luck. Mrs. Johnson told me herself in her broken talk. Near's I could find out her grandfather had died and left her a bit of property, and she and her family were going back to the place they came from ten years ago, to attend to it. Lucky folks, some of them foreigners. I don't see for the life of me why they ever leave their homes and come over here, when they've got money and land comin' to them at home."
The woman talked on, even faster than Miss Peckham was wont to talk. But her volubility gave Janice a chance to recover her self-possession. She saw quite clearly that her errand had come to naught. Even if the Lathams positively knew the missing Olga had been named Cedarstrom before her marriage they probably did not know where Olga now was.
The people who were the more likely to know, these Johnsons, had gone back to their native land. Janice wondered, despairingly, if Olga had gone back to Sweden too.
But the girl was able to hide her trouble from this new acquaintance. The woman was glad to have her stay-- and talk. Rather, the hostess did the talking. It was evident that she got little chance for conversation, living as she did on this rather lonely road.
Janice planned what she would do, however, while she listened. Rather than go back and perhaps have another quarrel with Stella, she decided she would go home and tell her father what she had found out. He might write to Mrs. Latham for information--if the farmer's wife had any--regarding Olga.
At least, it was one sure thing, that such information as Janice had obtained was much too late. An ocean separated her now from the Johnsons, Olga's friends. _