on the upper deck, forward. Janice secured a campstool and sat down
near the rail to look off over the water.

The officious man in the blue cap on the dock had shouted "All aboard!"
the moment the passengers left the cars of the little narrow-gauge
railroad, on which the girl had been riding for more than two hours;
but it was some minutes before the wheezy old steamer got under way.

Janice was interested in everything she saw--even in the clumsy warping
off of the _Constance Colfax_, when her hawsers were finally released.

"Goodness me!" thought the girl, chuckling "what a ridiculous old tub
it is! How different everything East here is from Greensboro. There!
we're really off!"

The water hissed and splashed, as the wheels of the steamer began to
turn rheumatically. The walking-beam heaved up and down with many a
painful creak.

"Why! _that_ place is real pretty--when you look at it from the lake,"
murmured Janice, looking back at the little landing. "I wonder if
Poketown will be like it?"

She looked about her, half tempted to ask a question of somebody.
There was but a single passenger near her--a little, old lady in an
old-fashioned black mantilla with jet trimming, and wearing black lace
half-mitts and a little bonnet that had been so long out of date that
it was almost in the mode again.

She was seated with her back against the cabin house, and when the
steamer rolled a little the ball of knitting-cotton, which she had
taken out of her deep, bead-bespangled bag, bounced out of her lap and
rolled across the deck almost to the feet of Janice.

Up the girl jumped and secured the runaway ball, winding the cotton as
she approached the old lady, who peered up at her, her head on one side
and her eyes sparkling, like an inquisitive bird.

"Thank ye, child," she said, briskly. "I ain't as spry as I use ter
be, an' ye done me a favor. I guess I don't know ye, do I?"

"I don't believe you do, Ma'am," agreed Janice, smiling, and although
she could not be called "pretty" in the sense in which the term is
usually written, when Janice smiled her determined, and rather
intellectual face became very attractive.

"You don't belong in these parts?" pursued the old lady.

"Oh, no, Ma'am. I come from Greensboro," and the girl named the middle
western state in which her home was situated.

"Do tell! You come a long distance, don't ye?" exclaimed her
fellow-passenger. "You're one of these new-fashioned gals