, divided into active and honorary members. The boys, as
active members, themselves contributed twenty-five cents per month each,
towards its support. Tables for games were set up. A goodly number of
books appeared on the shelves. From Greensboro a huge packing-case of
half-worn books was sent; Janice's friends at home had responded
liberally.

Files of daily and weekly papers were established and magazines of the
more popular kind were subscribed for. Nelson Haley gave several
evenings each week to work as librarian, and to keep a general
oversight of the boys. To tell the truth, he did this more because
Janice asked him to than from personal interest in the institution; but
he did it.

Slowly the more pessimistic of the townspeople began to show interest in
the reading-room. Mr. Middler openly expressed his approval of the
institution. Mr. Massey, the druggist, reported that the boys behaved
themselves "beyond belief!"

At length, even old Elder Concannon appeared unexpectedly in the
reading-room one night to see what was going on. He came to criticise
and remained to play a game of "draughts," as he called them, with Marty
Day himself!

"Them young scalawags, Elder," declared Massey, when the old gentleman
dropped into the drug store afterward. "Them young scalawags are
certainly surprising _me_. They behaved themselves more like human
bein's than I ever knowed 'em to before. An' it's a nice, neat, warm
room, too, ain't it, now?"

"Ahem! It appears to be," admitted Elder Concannon, and not so
grudgingly as might have been expected. "But where's that young girl who
had so much to do with it at first--where's that Day girl?"

"Why, pshaw, Elder! _she_ don't have nothing to do with the
reading-room," and the druggist's eyes twinkled. "Don't you know that
she only _starts_ things in this town? She sets folks up in the business
of 'doing for themselves'. Then she goes along about her own business.

"What's _that_? Well, I dunno. I'm wonderin' myself just where she'll
break out next!"

CHAPTER XVII

CHRISTMAS NEWS

It bade fair to be an old-fashioned northern New England winter. Janice
Day had never seen anything like this in the prairie country from which
she had come.

There three or four big storms, the traces of which soon melted, had
been considered a "hard" winter. Here in Poketown the hillside was made
white before Thanksgiving, and then one snow after another sifted down
upon the mountains.