_ CHAPTER XXX. WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN EXPECTED
It took several days for Janice to understand thoroughly just what it meant to have Mammy Blanche in the house. Of course, Mrs. Carringford had been perfectly capable; yet she felt that she must ask Janice or Mr. Day once in a while about things.
Not Mammy Blanche! She knew what to do, and how to do it, and just what "the white folks" wanted. She remembered just as perfectly how Mr. Day liked things on the table, and what he was fond of, and even how he wanted his bed made, as though she had only been absent from the house a week instead of ten years.
"Why, bress your heart, honey," she said to Janice, "Ah come into dis here house when it was fust built. Ah cleaned it wid mah own han's. Ah put up de fust curtains at de windahs. Ah knowed where everything was in dem days. "But Ah spec' now you's had so many no-count folks in de house fixin' fo' you dat Ah can't find a bressed thing. Dars's dat old walnut wardrobe up in de sto'room. It come from de Avion place, it did. Ah bet de cobwebs ain't been swep' off de top o' dat wardrobe since yo' poor mamma died." "It was too tall for Mrs. Carringford or me to reach it," admitted Janice.
"Well, Ah's gwine to give dis place one fine over-haulin; come dis fall," went on Mammy Blanche. "Ah'll fix dem cobwebs."
It proved to be unnecessary for Janice to worry about the housekeeping in any particular. But she had not lost another worry, and in spite of all the wonderful things that had happened, and the interesting matters that were continually cropping up, the lost treasure-box containing the mementoes of her mother was continually fretting her mind.
The opening of school was drawing near, and Janice began to take exciting little "peeps" between the covers of textbooks. She loved study, and daddy had been insistent this summer that she should let lessons strictly alone.
She had plenty of time to sit in the kitchen while Mammy Blanche was at work there, listening to wonderful tales of her mother's childhood, and of the "doin's" on the Avion plantation on the other shore of the Ohio River.
"All gone now, chile," sighed Mammy Blanche. "Somebody else livin' in the Avion home."
But better than all, Janice, the homemaker learned many new and interesting things about housekeeping. Mammy Blanche had a "sleight," as she called it, in doing housework, and Janice might well copy her methods.
Amy came often to see her, of course; and Gummy was at the house almost every day with orders from the store. One Saturday morning, while Janice was sweeping the porch, she saw Gummy driving toward the house almost as madly as he had the day the chimney caught fire.
"Why, Gummy!" she cried, running out to meet him as he drew up the horse at the curb, "what is the matter?"
"You'd never guess!" shouted the boy. "What do you suppose? I just saw that pickle-girl in Olga-town."
"What? gasped Janice.
"I--I mean I've seen that Pickletown in Olga--Oh, jicksy!. Do you know what I mean, Janice Day?"
"Yes! Yes!" she cried. "You've seen Olga."
"Then jump right in here and I'll drive you to her," said the boy, without running the risk of another lapsus linguae.
Without waiting even for a hat, and throwing her broom back over the fence, Janice scrambled in. But when Gummy started the horse she said to him:
"Don't think you are driving in a chariot race. You'll kill Mr. Harriman's poor old nag. Drive slower, Gummy. She won't get away, will she?"
"No. I think she's been living in that house some time. But I never go there for orders, and I never happened to see her before."
"Where is it?"
"Away down by the canal," said Gummy.
"Oh! Then it is a long way off."
"Yes."
"What will Mr. Harriman say?"
"There are not many orders this morning. And this is important, Janice."
"I guess it is," agreed the girl, her face pale but her eyes sparkling with excitement.
They did not say much after that until they came in sight of the house by the canal. Oh, if it should be Olga! Janice began to tremble. Should she have gone to daddy first about it?
But daddy was still on crutches and was not fit to come out in this delivery wagon, that was sure.
What should she say to Olga if it were she? Ought she to stop and ask a policeman to go with them to the house? And yet it was a fact that she absolutely did not know for sure whether Olga had taken the treasure-box or not.
Suddenly she uttered a little exclamation. Gummy glanced ahead, too.
"Yes," he said, "that's the woman. That's the one I saw that night at Stella Latham's.
"It--it is Olga Cedarstrom," murmured Janice. Gummy drew the old horse to a stop. Janice leaped down. The Swedish woman turned and looked into Janice's blazing countenance. Her own dull face lit up and she actually smiled.
"Vell!" she exclaimed, "iss it Janice Day? I bane glad to see you. Iss your fader well?"
"Oh, Olga!" gasped Janice.
"Huh? What iss it the matter?"
"We have looked everywhere for you!"
"For me? Why for me? I don't vork no more. I keep house for my hoosban'," and Olga smiled broadly.
"You--you are married to Mr. Sangreen?" asked Janice doubtfully.
"I bane married right avay when I left you. We go to his folks--dey leev up in Michigan. He try vork dere and I coom back on a veesit to Yon Yonson's wife. He vork for Misder Latham."
"Yes, I know!" cried Janice, anxiously.
"Now Willie bane coom back to his old yob at de pickle vorks. And how is you? You look fine."
"Oh, Olga, we have been dreadfully worried. When-- when you went away from our house did you see a little box--like a jewel box? I left it on your trunk in the storeroom."
"On my troonk?" repeated the woman. "Where it stood in de storeroom?"
"Oh, yes!" cried Janice clasping her hands.
It had suddenly impressed her that beyond any doubt, Olga was not a thief. Whatever had happened to the treasure-box, Olga did not knowingly have it in her possession. "I remember de leetle box. Yes! You t'ink I take it?"
"We haven't been able to find it since you left, Olga," cried Janice.
"Huh! I saw it. But--Here! This boy will drive us back mit him to your house?"
"Oh, yes, Olga!" cried Janice, with a glance at Gummy, who nodded.
"I'll go mit you," said the woman, and immediately she climbed to the high seat." Janice followed her. Gummy turned the horse about and away they went on the return journey.
On the way Janice thought it best to say nothing more about the lost treasure-box; but she told Olga of how she had tried to trace her through the Johnsons.
"My bad look!" cried Olga. "I break a dish by that Latham woman's house and she vant me to pay for it. Huh! People ought not to use such spensive dishes. Me, I use common chinnyware in my house."
When they arrived at the house on Knight Street, Olga jumped briskly down and followed Janice inside. Gummy called after them that he would wait. He was so excited and interested himself that he could not leave until the mystery was cleared up;
"Ve go oop to dot storeroom," declared Olga and proceeded to do so, with Janice trembling and hoping beside her.
Once in the room the woman seized a strong chair, climbed upon it, and, being tall herself, she could reach over the carved strip of woodwork on the front of the wardrobe to the space that lay behind. In a moment she brought something forth covered with dust and cobwebs that caused Janice to utter a shriek of delight. "That iss it, yes?" said Olga. "I be mad mit you dot morning I leaf here. The box was on my troonk and when Willie come up the stairs for it, I grab de box and pitch it up hyar. I don't know you vant it, Janice-- and your fader."
"Well," sighed Broxton Day, when he heard the good news and had the treasure-box in his hands, "'All's well that ends well.' But what a peck of trouble that Swedish girl made us!"
"No, no I" exclaimed Janice warmly. "I did it. It was my fault. I was the careless one, or the box would not have been where she could see it. But I am awfully glad, Daddy, that Olga proved not to be a thief."
Daddy showed her the tiny spring in the bottom of the box which, when released, enabled him to lift up the thin partition. He removed the thin packet of letters, and put them in a leather case, placing the case into the wall safe.
"I know where they are now, my dear. Do what you will with the other keepsakes and the treasure-box itself. I cannot tell you how glad I am to get these letters back."
But Janice thought she did know something about that.
"That Mexican mine business is not likely to cause us any more trouble until spring, anyway," said daddy one night at dinner.
"Oh, Daddy! then won't you have to go down there?" Janice cried.
"Not likely. Fact is, there is a big fight on in the mining country, and the mines have got to shut down. But the government promises us that we shall be able to open up again next spring. We might as well sit tight and hold on, as I tell them. I'm sorry that so much of our funds are tied up in the business, however. Politics below the Rio Grande are 'mighty onsartain,' as Brother Jase would say."
"Now that Mammy Blanche is here with us, I would not have to go to Poketown, even if you did go to Mexico, Daddy. Would I?"
"M-mm! Well, that's hard telling," he replied, with twinkling eyes. "Let's not cross that bridge till we come to it."
So Janice saw nothing but a cheerful vista before her --with school coming soon, pleasure in study, plenty of fun between times, and such a fortunate state of affairs at Eight Hundred and Forty-five Knight Street that she did not have to worry about daddy's comfort or her own at all.
Mrs. Carringford had had no easy time of it with the shyster lawyer and the others who were making trouble for her over her property. But in the end her own lawyer triumphed; and then the mortgage on the place was cleared off, much to the satisfaction of both the Carringfords and the Days.
"It does seem," said Janice with an ecstatic sigh, to Amy Carringford one day when both girls had their sewing on the porch, "that everything always does turn out for the best for us Days."
"Humph!" returned Amy, threading her needle, "I guess they wouldn't turn out so 'right' if you and your father didn't do something to turn 'em out."
And, perhaps, that was so, too.
[THE END]
Helen Beecher Long's Book: Janice Day the Young Homemaker
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