all!"

CHAPTER V.

'RILL SCATTERGOOD AND HER SCHOOL.

With the elasticity of Youth, however, Janice opened her eyes the
following morning on a new world. Certainly the outlook from her window
was glorious; therefore her faith in life itself--and in Poketown and
her relatives--was renewed as she gazed out upon the beautiful picture
fresh-painted by the fingers of Dawn.

All out-of-doors beckoned Janice. She hurriedly made her toilet, crept
down the squeaking stairs, and softly let herself out, for nobody else
was astir about the old Day house.

The promise of the morning from the window was kept in full. Janice
could not walk sedately--she fairly skipped. Out of the sagging gate and
up the winding lane she went, her feet twinkling over the dew-wet sod, a
song on her lips, her eyes as bright as the stars which Dawn had
smothered when she tiptoed over the eastern hills.

And then at a corner of a cross-lane above her uncle's house, Janice
came upon the only other person in Poketown astir as early as
herself--Walkworthy Dexter, who led Josephus, the heavy harness clanking
about the horse's ribs.

"Ah-ha! I see there's a new _day_," chuckled Mr. Dexter, his pale blue
eyes twinkling. "And how do you find your Uncle Jase? Not what you'd
call a fidgety man, eh? He ain't never stirred up about nothing, Jase
Day ain't. What d'ye think?"

Janice didn't know just what _to_ think--or, to say, either.

"Find Jase jest a mite leisurely, don't ye?" pursued the gossipy Dexter.
"I bet a cooky he ain't much like the folks where you come from?"

"I couldn't give an opinion so soon," said Janice, shyly, not sure that
she liked this fat man any more for the scorn in which he held his
neighbors.

"There speaks the true Day--slow but sure," laughed Dexter, and went his
way without further comment, leading the bony Josephus.

But the morning was quite spoiled for Janice. She wondered if her
uncle's townsfolks all held Walkworthy Dexter's opinion of the Day
family? It hurt her pride to be classed with people who were so
shiftless that they were a byword in the community.

She went back to the house when she saw the smoke curling out of the
chimney below her. Aunt 'Mira was shuffling around the kitchen in slow
preparation for the morning meal. Mr. Day was pounding on the stairs
with a stick of stove-wood, in an endeavor to awaken Marty.

"That boy sleeps like the dead," he complained. "Marty! Marty!" he
shouted up the st