up there for twelve years?"

"No, child. But that ain't long. Ain't much happens in twelve years back
East here."

Janice sighed again; but suddenly she jumped from her stool excitedly,
crying: "Oh! what place is _that_?"

She pointed far ahead. Around a rocky headland the view of a pleasant
cove had just opened. The green and blue-ribbed hills rose behind the
cove; the water lay sparkling in it. There was a vividly white church
with a heaven-pointing spire right among the big green trees.

A brown ribbon of main thoroughfare wound up from the wharf, but was
soon lost under the shade of the great trees that interlaced their
branches above it--branches which were now lush with the late spring
growth of leaves. Here and there a cottage, or larger dwelling,
appeared, most of them originally white like the church, but many shabby
from the action of wind and weather.

Over all, the warm sun spread a mantle. In the distance this bright
mantle softened the rigid lines of the old-fashioned houses, and of the
ledges and buttresses of the hills themselves.

Old Mrs. Scattergood stood up, too, looking through her steel-bowed
glasses.

"I declare for't!" she said, "that's Poketown itself! That's the spire
of the Union Church you see. We'll git there in an hour."

Janice did not sit down again just then, nor did she reply. She rested
both trimly-gloved hands on the rail and gazed upon the scene.

"Why, it's beautiful!" she breathed at last "And _that_ is Poketown!"

CHAPTER II

POKETOWN

Some ancient dwellings have the dignity of "homestead" resting upon them
like a benediction; others are aureoled by the name of "manor." The
original Day in Poketown had built a shingled, gable-ended cottage upon
the side-hill which had now, for numberless years, been called "the old
Day house"--nothing more.

"Jason! You Jase! I'd give a cent if you'd mend this pump," complained
Mrs. Almira Day. "Go git me a pail of water from Mis' Dickerson's and
ask how's her rhoumatism this mawnin'. Come on, now! I can't wash the
breakfas' dishes till I hev some water."

The grizzled, lanky man who had been sitting comfortably on a bench in
the sun, sucking on a corncob pipe and gazing off across the lake, never
even turned his head as he asked:

"Where's Marty?"

"The goodness only knows! Ye know he ain't never here when ye want him."

"Why didn't ye tell him about the water at breakfas' time?"

"Would _that_ have done any good?"