_ CHAPTER IV. MORE TROUBLES THAN ONE
Janice dreaded to have this new houseworker look into that back kitchen and see its condition. What Olga had done with the soft coal ammunition was enough to make Delia depart before she had even taken up her new duties.
Yet Janice shrank from cleaning the room herself. She had a lot of home work to do for school, and she would have to show the new girl, too, just where everything was kept and what was expected of her.
Fortunately the dinner-getting would be a simple matter. There was a roast already prepared for the oven, potatoes and another vegetable, and a salad. The latter were in the house. Olga had been no dessert maker, but there were canned pears in the refrigerator and some baker's cake (Daddy called it "sweetened sawdust") in the cupboard.
The girl would have to be told about these things. Fortunately they had not begun to use the summer kitchen as yet. It was true that Olga had only the day before cleaned the place, as well as she knew how, in preparation for the approaching warm weather.
But to put things to rights in that room again, and to remove all traces of the bombardment of the cats, would take half a day or more. And Janice Day shrank from the use of the scrubbing brush and strong soda-water.
She decided that the back kitchen could not be cleaned this afternoon. She put on her bungalow apron and took the salad from the icebox where it had lain on the ice in a cheesecloth bag. She usually prepared the salad herself, for daddy was fond of it and most of the itinerant help they had had considered "grass only fit for horses and cows."
She was decanting the oil, drop by drop, into the salad dressing when Delia appeared in the kitchen. There was one good point about the giantess; her face and hands looked as though they were familiar with soap and water. She had removed the ruffled monstrosity and had put on a more simple frock. It did not serve to make her look less ungainly; but nevertheless it, likewise, was clean.
"Are you doing the cooking?" asked the new incumbent, her weak, squeaky voice quite above high C. "An' do I help you?"
"I am fixing the salad because my father likes it prepared in a certain way. I will show you what, else there is to do, Delia."
Janice spoke in rather a grown-up way because she had had so much experience with a class of houseworkers only too willing to take advantage of her youth and inexperience.
"Isn't that nice!" sighed Delia, with her rather, foolish smile.
Janice wondered whether the woman was making fun of her, or if she was quite as silly as she appeared. But if Delia would only do the work and do it half-way right, Janice told herself she did not care if Delia was actually an idiot. At least the new girl seemed good-natured.
And she was not all thumbs! But Janice stuffed the end of a kitchen towel into her mouth more than once to stifle her giggles when she chanced to think Of how daddy would look when he caught his first glimpse of the gigantic Delia.
When the vegetables were peeled and on the stove, and the roast was cooking in the covered roaster, Janice led Delia through the lower part of the house. She tried to explain what there was to do on the morrow when Delia would be alone all day, with daddy at business and herself at school.
"Yes, ma'am," said Delia, after each item was explained. "And then what do I do?"
Her vacant face advertised to all beholders that she promptly forgot what she was told. One particular formula for work drove the previously explained item immediately out of Delia's head.
"Isn't it a nice house?" was her final whistling comment as they came back to the kitchen. "And where does this door lead?"
She opened the back kitchen door. She stared at the coal-littered floor, at the streaked and smutted walls, at the overturned chairs and a broken flower-pot or two that had come to ruin during the bombardment.
"Sure! whativer struck the place?" asked Delia in her high, squeaking voice. "What happened?"
Janice told her. Delia shook her head and slowly closed the door--slowly but firmly. "If folks will hire them Swedes, 'tis all they can expect," was her comment.
There was a finality to this that was uncanny. Janice became sure, right then and there, that Mrs. Bridget Burns would never clear up the wreck Olga Cedarstrom had made of the back kitchen. The girl wished with all her heart that she had boxed Arlo Junior's ears harder.
Miss Peckham, her sharp chin hung upon the top rail of the boundary fence, called Janice just before daddy came home. As the Day house was on the corner of Love Street, Miss Peckham was the nearest neighbor.
She was a weazened little woman, with very sharp black eyes, who had assumed the censorship of the neighborhood years before. Living alone with her cats and Ambrose, her parrot, Miss Peckham rigidly adhered to the harshest precepts of spinsterhood.
Even Janice could understand that Miss Peckham considered daddy not at all fit to bring up, or have the sole care of, a daughter, and that Mr. Broxton Day was not to be altogether trusted.
Miss Peckham's nature overflowed with tenderness toward animals, and it was regarding one of her pets she now called to Janice about.
"You haven't seen him, have you, Janice? You haven't seen my Sam?"
"Your Sam?" murmured Janice, rather non-plussed for the moment. "You don't mean the dog you bought of the butcher, do you, Miss Peckham?"
"No, indeed. That's Cicero. But Sam, the cat. He's got black and yellow on him, Janice. You've seen him, I know."
And suddenly Janice remembered that she had seen him. He had been one of those cats tolled into the back kitchen by Arlo Junior. Worse than all, Sam was the cat Olga Cedarstrom had hurt with a lump of coal. She remembered that he was the last to escape when she opened the kitchen door, dragging his injured leg behind him.
How could Janice tell her of this awful thing that had happened to Sam? The poor cat had probably dragged himself off into some secret place to lick his wounds --to die, perhaps.
"You've seen him! I know you have, Janice Day," cried the shrewd maiden lady. "What have you done to poor Sam?"
"Why, Miss Peckham! I haven't done a thing to him," declared Janice
Miss Peckham, however, had read the girl's face aright. She saw that Janice knew something about the missing cat.
"You tell me what you know!" she stormed, her clawlike hands shaking the top rail of the fence. "I wouldn't trust none of you young ones in this neighborhood. You are always up to some capers."
"But really, honestly, I haven't done a thing to your Sam," Janice said, shrinking from telling all she knew about the injured animal.
"You know where he is?" Miss Peckham accused.
"Oh, I don't, either."
"When did you see him last?" probed the other, sharply.
"This--this morning."
"What time this morning?" "Before breakfast. Early," gasped Janice, wondering what she would say next.
"Humph! Something funny about the way you answer," said the suspicious spinster. "where was Sam when you saw him that early?"
"Running across our back yard," Janice gasped, telling the exact truth--but no more.
"Ha!" exploded the other, "What made him run?"
After all, Janice Day did not want to "tell on" Arlo Junior. Arlo Junior was the child of all others in the neighborhood whom Miss Peckham carried on guerrilla warfare with. She had threatened to go to the police station and have Arlo Junior locked up the very next time he crossed her path in a mischievous way.
Janice knew that Miss Peckham was a very active member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and if she knew that Arlo Junior had been in any way connected with Sam's injury, she would be all the more bitter toward the young rascal.
And really, after all, it was Olga Cedarstrom who had hurt the cat. But to tell Miss Peckham that, and how it all came about, would do little to pacify the spinster. So Janice kept silent. It seemed to her that she had gone about as far in the path of deceit as she could go.
"You saw him running; what made him run?" repeated Miss Peckham.
"He--he was frightened, I guess, Miss Peckham. There were other cats. It was early this morning before anybody else was up around here. The cats all ran out of our yard."
"And I warrant you'd done something to make 'em run," declared the tart-tongued neighbor. "Oh, I know all you young ones around here. You ain't no better than the rest of 'em, Janice Day."
"Oh, Miss Peckham!" murmured the girl.
"And if I find out that you done something outrageous to those cats--to my Sam, 'specially--it'll be the sorriest day of your life. Now, you see if 'tisn't!"
She turned and flounced into her house. Janice came slowly back to the kitchen door where she found the new houseworker frankly listening.
"Guess she's a sharper, ain't she?" squeaked the woman. "Well, I won't tell her 'bout the cats in the back kitchen. But o' course, if folks will hire them Swede--" _