. A grand silk flag, with new
halyards and all, was finally obtained, the Congressman of the district
having been interested in the affair. And on Washington's Birthday the
Congressman himself visited the village and made an address when the
flag was raised for the first time.

Gradually, other improvements and changes had taken place in Poketown.
There was the steamboat dock. It had been falling to pieces for years.
It had originally been built by the town; but the various storekeepers
were most benefited by the wharf, for their freight came by water for
more than half of the year.

Walky Dexter started the subscription among the merchants for the dock
repairs. He subscribed a fair sum himself, too, for he was the
principal teamster in Poketown.

"But who d'you s'pose started Walky?" demanded Mr. Cross Moore,
shrewdly. "Trace it all back to one 'live wire'--that's what! If that
Day gal didn't put the idee into Walky's head for a new dock, I'll eat
my hat!"

And nobody asked Mr. Moore to try that gastronomic feat.

The selectman, himself, seemed to get into line during that winter. He
stopped sneering at Walky Dexter and for some inexplicable reason he
began agitating for better health ordinances.

There was an unreasonable warm spell in February; people in Poketown
had always had open garbage piles during the winter. From this cause
Dr. Poole, the Health Officer, declared, a diphtheria epidemic started
which caused several deaths and necessitated the closing of a part of
the school for four weeks.

Cross Moore put through a garbage-collection ordinance and a certain
farmer out of town was glad of the chance to make a daily collection,
the year around, for the value of the garbage and the small bonus the
town allowed him. If the truth were known Mr. Moore's ordinance was
copied almost word for word from the printed pamphlet of ordinances in
force in a certain town of the Middle West called Greensboro. Now, how
did the selectman obtain that pamphlet, do you suppose?

Yet Poketown, as a whole, looked about as forlorn and unsightly as it
had when Janice Day first saw it. The improvement was not general.
The malady--general neglect--had only been treated in spots.

There were still stores with their windows heaped with flyspecked
goods. The horses still gnawed the boles of the shade trees along High
Street. The flagstone sidewalks were still broken and the gutters
unsightly. High street itself was r