red was a
dead-and-alive, do-nothing place, and its beauty, for Janice Day, faded
before she was halfway up the hill to her uncle's house.

CHAPTER III

"IT JEST RATTLES"

Almira Day was a good-hearted woman. It was not in her to treat her
husband's niece otherwise than kindly, despite her threat to the
contrary when Jason left the old Day house to meet Janice at the
steamboat dock.

She stood smiling in the doorway--a large, pink, lymphatic woman, as
shapeless as a half-filled meal-sack with a string tied around its
middle, quite as untidy as her husband in dress, but with clean skin
and a wholesome look.

Her calico dress was faded and, in places, strained to the
bursting-point, showing that it was "store-bought" and had never been
fitted to Mrs. Day's bulbous figure. She wore a pair of men's slippers
very much down at the heel, and pink stockings with a gaping hole in
the seam at the back of one, which Janice very plainly saw as her aunt
preceded her upstairs to the room the visitor was to occupy.

"I hope ye won't mind how things look," drawled Aunt 'Mira. "We ain't
as up-an'-comin' as some, I do suppose. But nothin' ain't gone well
with Jason late years, an' he's got some mis'ry that he can't git rid
of, so's he can't work stiddy. Look out for this nex' ter the top
step. The tread's broke an' I been expectin' ter be throwed from top
to bottom of these stairs for weeks."

"Can't Uncle Jason fix it?" asked Janice, stepping over the broken
tread.

"Wal, he ain't exactly got 'round to it yet," confessed her aunt.
"There! I do hope you like your room, Niece 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
p