ly clean rooms.

The old Day house had its "ridding up;" too. Janice gave her aunt
considerable help; but Mrs. Day was not the slovenly housekeeper she
had been when first the girl had come to Poketown. Even Uncle Jason
kept himself more neatly than ever before. And he went to the barber's
at frequent intervals.

Janice once went down to the dock to see the _Constance Colfax_ come
in. There was the usual crowd of loafers waiting for the boat--all
perched along the stringpiece of the wharf.

"But I declare!" thought Janice, her eyes dancing, "somebody certainly
_has_ 'slicked 'em up,' as Mrs. Scattergood would say. Whoever would
believe it! Walky has got a new shirt on--and straw cuffs, too--and a
necktie! My goodness me! And the hotel keeper really looks as though
his wife cared a little about his appearance. And Ben Hutchins wears
whole boots now, and has washed his face, and had a shave.

"I must admit they don't look so much like a delegation from the
poorfarm as they did the day I came in on the _Constance Colfax_.
There has been a change in Poketown--there most certainly _has_ been a
change!" and the girl laughed delightedly.

It was marked everywhere. It even seemed to Janice as though people
whom she met on the street stepped quicker than they once had!

Janice knew she had given her own folks--Uncle Jason, and Aunt 'Mira,
and Cousin Marty--a push or two in the right direction. She had helped
Hopewell Drugg, too; and maybe she had instigated the waking up of
several other people. But not for a moment did she realize--healthy,
thoughtless girl that she was--how much Poketown owed to her on
Clean-Up Day.

That was one great occasion in the old town. Although the selectmen
had allowed two days in which the farmers' wagons were to cart away the
rubbish for the householders, the removal men had hard work to fill
their contract.

Some curbs were piled shoulder high with boxes of ashes, old
bedsprings, broken furniture, decayed mattresses, yard rakings,
unsightly pots and pans hidden away for decades in mouldy
cellars--debris of so many kinds that it would be impossible to
catalogue it!

For two days, also, hundreds of rubbish fires burned, and the taint of
the smoke seemed to saturate every part of Poketown. Janice declared
that all the food on the supper table at the Day house seemed to have
been "slightly scorched."

"By jinks!" declared Marty, gobbling his supper with an appetite that
nev