ictures 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, idle ne'er-do-well of fourteen), Janice was inclined to be
utterly hopeless about him from the start. If he was a specimen of the
Poketown boys, she told herself, she had no desire to meet any of them.

"What do you do with yourself all day long, Marty, if you don't go to
school?" she asked her cousin, at the dinner table.

"Oh, I hang around--like everybody else. Ain't nothin' doin' in
Poketown."

"I should think it would be more fun to go to school."

"Not ter 'Rill Scattergood," rejoined the boy, in haste. "That old
maid dunno enough to teach a cow."

Janice might have thought a cow much more difficult to teach than a
boy; only she looked again into Marty's face, which plainly advertised
the vacancy of his mind, and thought better of the speech that had
risen to her lips.

"Marty won't go to school no more," her aunt comp