iddle of the kitchen floor
and let the breakfast dishes go till noon.

Usually, however, she "slicked up," as she called it, after dinner,
instead of spending her time on the sofa, and sometimes she and Janice
went calling with their needlework, like the other ladies up and down
Hillside Avenue, or had some of the neighbors in to call on them.

Aunt 'Mira had spent some of Janice's board money on the furnishings of
the house as well as in silk dresses and automobile veils. There were
new curtains at the windows; the sitting-room had a new rag carpet
woven by a neighbor; the rather worn boards of the kitchen were covered
with brightly-figured linoleum.

Inside and out there were now few "loose ends" about the old Day house.
The stair to the upper story was mended, and covered with a bright
runner. The premises about the house were kept neat and attractive,
and Mr. Day had somehow found the money to paint the house that spring,
while the stables and other outbuildings looked much neater than when
Janice had first seen them.

She and Marty had taken complete charge of the garden this year, and
the girl had inspired her cousin with some of her own love of neatness
and order. The rows of vegetables were straight; the weeds were kept
out; and they had earlier potatoes and peas for the table than anybody
else on Hillside Avenue.

The lane was, by the way, different in appearance from the untidy and
crooked street up which Janice had climbed with Uncle Jason that day of
her arrival at Poketown. The neighboring homes showed the influence of
association with the Day place.

There had been other houses painted on the street that spring. More
fences had been reset and straightened. The driveway itself had had
some attention from the town. And you couldn't have found a one-hinged
gate the entire length of the street!

As for Uncle Jason, he was really carrying on his farming in a
businesslike way. Marty was getting to be a big boy now, and he could
help more than he once had. Janice had suggested to Uncle Jason that,
as he had such good pasture at the upper end of his farm, and as the
milk supply of Poketown was but a meager one, it would pay somebody to
run a small dairy.

Mr. Day now had three cows that he proposed to winter, and was raising
one heifer calf. Such milk as the family did not use themselves the
neighbors gladly bought. Mrs. Day was doing better with her hens, too.
The wire fencing had been repair