e Janice. There's a pretty
outlook from the winder."

True enough, the window overlooked the hillside and the lake. Only, had
the panes been washed one could have viewed the landscape and the water
so much better!

The room itself was the shabbiest bedchamber Janice Day had ever seen.
The carpet on the floor had, generations before, been one of those
flowery axminsters that country people used to buy for their "poller."
Then they would pull all the shades down and shut the room tightly, for
otherwise the pink roses faded completely out of the design.

This old carpet had long since been through _that_ stage of existence,
however, and was now worn to the warp in spots, its design being visible
only because of the ingrained grime which years of trampling had brought
to it.

The paper on the walls was faded and stained. Empty places where
pictures had hung for years, showed in contrast to the more faded barren
districts. A framed copy of the Declaration of Independence ornamented
the space above the mantel. Hanging above the bed's head were those two
famous chromos of "Good-Morning" and "Good-Night." A moth-eaten worsted
motto and cross, "The Rock of Ages," hung above the little bureau glass.
There was, too, a torn and faded slipper for matches, and a tall glass
lamp that, for some reason, reminded Janice of a skeleton. She could
never look at that lamp thereafter without expecting the oil tank to
become a grinning skull with a tall fool's cap (the chimney) on it, and
its thin body to sprout bony arms and legs.

The furniture was decrepit and ill matched. Janice could have overlooked
the shaky chair, the toppling bureau, and the scratched washstand; but
the bed with only three legs, and a soap-box under the fourth corner,
_did_ bring a question to the guest's lips:

"Where is the other leg, Aunty?"

"Now, I declare for't!" exclaimed Mrs. Day. "That _is_ too bad! The
leg's up on the closet shelf here. Jase was calkerlatin' to put it on
again, but he ain't never got 'round to it. But the box'll hold yer. It
only rattles," she added, as Janice tried the security of the bedstead.

That expression, "it only rattles," the girl from Greensboro was
destined to hear unnumbered times in her uncle's home. It was typical of
the old Day house and its inmates. Unless a repair absolutely _must_ be
made, Uncle Jason would not take a tool in his hand.

As for her Cousin Martin ("Marty" everybody called the gangling,
grinning, id