CHAPTER XXII. SOMETHING DOES HAPPEN

"I hope something will happen so I can't go to Poketown," was the thought continually rising to the surface of the troubled pool of Janice Day's mind.

She did not know what Mrs. Carringford had said to daddy, nor how much he had been influenced by that wise woman's observations regarding this very matter. So, as the days went by, Janice continued to fear the worst.

For the very worst that could happen, Janice thought, was for her to be separated from her father and from her home. When the possibility of his having to go to Mexico was first talked about, the thought of their separation had made a very deep impression on the girl's mind. She had never recovered--how could she? --from the going away of her mother. If her father went out of her life too, it seemed to Janice as though she would be an orphan indeed.

So, without knowing anything personally about her Aunt Almira or Uncle Jason or Marty, her cousin, the girl felt that their association could in no way replace that of daddy.

"I just wish something would happen so that I couldn't go to Poketown," was repeated over and over in her thought.

"Perhaps that is wicked," Janice told herself. "But wicked, or not, it does seem as though it would just kill me to leave home."

After Mrs. Carringford had finished cleaning house, the home seemed so much better and brighter that Janice loved it more than ever. She did not want to leave Eight Hundred and Forty-five Knight Street, even for a day.

"I don't care if Arlo Junior does toll cats into our back kitchen and we entertain dancing bears and that half-crazy Delia and folks like Mrs. Watkins or Olga Cedarstrom," she said to daddy. "This is just the nicest house in all the world. Don't you think so yourself, Daddy?"

"I never expect to have so much happiness in another house as I have

had in this one, my dear," Mr. Day said. "And we will hope for more happiness here in the future. But my little girl must not try to do everything. It is all right to be a homemaker; but you must not try to do it all yourself. We must find somebody to help, regularly."

Secretly Janice was urging Mrs. Carringford to come every day to the house and keep it in that "neat as a new pin" condition in which the sweet- natured woman had left it when the extra cleaning was finished.

"But my dear child, how will my own house get along without me?

Amy cannot do it all, even if it is vacation-time."

"But, dear Mrs. Carringford, just think!" begged Janice. "Kate and Sydney are both big enough to help Amy."

"And they are a team!" sighed Mrs. Carringford.

"They'll be good. They will do a good deal for me," said Janice frankly.

"You bribe the twins."

"Oh, they are only teeny, weeny bribes, and of course children expect pay when they do things for you. Look how eagerly Gummy works for his pay," for Gummy was working every day for Mr. Harriman now, and his wages had been doubled.

"Don't let him hear you catalogue him as a child," said the boy's mother, smiling. "I must do nothing to neglect my own brood. Yet I feel that I must earn money. Gummy's wages will not even feed us. And it will last only until September. He must go back to school again then."

"Then come and see daddy," urged Janice. "You know he'll be more than glad to have you. Why, it would be just heavenly for us.

"I must think about it," said the over-urged woman. "If I could get work in a store downtown I would have more regular hours perhaps. For a home cannot be kept on an eight-hour-a-day schedule."

But Janice hoped. To do something to bring about peace and comfort for daddy and herself had been her determination for weeks. If only Mrs. Carringford could be coaxed to agree, Janice foresaw plain sailing.

This had been her hope ever since she had seen how perfectly Amy's mother kept her own poor cottage. It had been her hope when she had

first brought Mrs. Carringford and Mr. Day together. But would her hope come to fruition?

Nevertheless, she was happier now that she did not have to go to school. She had time to work out of doors in the flowerbeds and to get dainty little suppers, sometimes, for daddy.

Yet, at other times she was very tired. She showed daddy a cheerful countenance almost always. But there were occasions when Janice Day felt anything but cheerful "inside," as she expressed it.

Somehow daddy seemed to guess, however, when she was not quite herself during these sultry days, for often at breakfast he said:

"Daughter, dress yourself in your best bib and tucker and meet me at the corner of Joyce Street at four-thirty. I'll be on the Maplewood car and will save a seat for you. We will go out to the Branch Inn for supper."

Such excursions delighted Janice, especially with daddy. It made her feel positively grown up to be taken about by such a well-groomed and handsome man as Broxton Day.

And almost everywhere they went people seemed to know daddy. Even the managers and waiters at the inns and restaurants knew him, for Mr. Day often attended business conferences and luncheons with the bank's customers, at these places.

Sometimes very well dressed men came and sat down at their table and talked business with Broxton Day. They were always very kind and polite to Janice.

But whenever she heard Mexico and the Mexican mines mentioned, the girl was worried and listened attentively. She knew that those properties down beyond the Rio Grande in which her father was interested so deeply, were still in a very uncertain state. As yet dividends from her father's investment, she knew, had been very small.

She thought daddy watched her very closely at times. His keen glance seemed almost like that of a person "lying in wait" for one. That was the way Janice expressed it to herself.

She did not understand what these looks meant. Did he doubt that she was really quite as cheerful and happy as she would appear?

On her own part, after she had gone to bed, Janice Day listened often

for his step, to and fro, hour after hour, on the honeysuckle-sheltered porch. Was he thinking about the lost letters? Would neither he nor his daughter ever be able to get over--to forget-- the mementoes of dear mother, and their disappearance with Olga Cedarstrom?

Janice often cried herself to sleep thinking of this loss. But she cried quietly so that daddy should not hear her; and she was always very careful in the morning to remove all traces of tears or sleeplessness before appearing in his presence at the breakfast table.

"What's been done to-day, daughter?" was often daddy's question at night, accompanied by one of his keenly interrogating glances.

When she catalogued the day's industries sometimes he shook his head.

"But where is the fun? When do you play? What have you been doing to celebrate your freedom from the scholastic yoke?" he would demand.

"We-ell, you know, Daddy, I can't be a gadabout all the time--and with Miss Peckham watching me from behind her blinds every time I go out," and she giggled.

"Miss Peckham be eternally-- Hem! I don't suppose I can use strong language in regard to the lady who has washed her hands of us, can I?"

"Not very strong language, Daddy," she rejoined, laughing aloud now. "Well, in that case, we'll merely ignore our neighbor. That means you,

too, Janice; and you must play a little more in spite of Miss Peckham." "But, Daddy, I do play, as you call it. There was the picnic in

Emmon's Woods, and the straw ride to Clewitt--"

"And the picnic on the Latham farm to which I found you did not go," interrupted daddy. "How about that, daughter?"

"Oh--oh--well, you know, Daddy, I--I--"

"What's all this stammering about, honey," asked daddy, putting his arm about his daughter.

"Daddy, Amy and I just couldn't go to that picnic. Of course, it was not given by Stella, but by all the boys and girls of our crowd, but it was on Stella's farm. And-- Well, Daddy, Stella doesn't really like Amy and me just now. It's nothing--just about that dress Amy wore to Stella's

party. I told you all about that. Stella promised not to tell, you know, and then she did. I'm not mad at Stella--I was, though, for a while--but she's still mad at me. She'll be all right in a little while, though, Daddy."

"I trust so, daughter. Do your best to make friends again. You will all be happier if you are on a friendly footing with your companions."

These first days of the long vacation were not really happy ones for Janice, although she tried to make believe they were. All the time she was hoping to herself that daddy would not insist on her visiting his relatives in the East.

He had not really said that he contemplated sending her willy-nilly, to Aunt Almira. Yet the girl felt that daddy believed her health called for a change. And that was not what she needed. She was sure that the air of Poketown would never in this world make her feel any happier or healthier than she felt right here at home in Greensboro.

"I just hope something will happen to keep me from going to Poketown--or anywhere else," Janice repeated, over and over again.

And then, it did happen. Nothing that she had imagined, of course.

And this happening shocked Janice Day almost as much as anything could. It came in the afternoon, when she was getting dinner for daddy. She heard the clang of a gong, and an automobile stopped before the house. She ran to the window. It was a white painted ambulance-- not from the City Hospital, but a private ambulance. And two men in white uniforms were preparing to take somebody on a stretcher out of the car.

CHAPTER XXIII. THE SILVER LINING TO A VERY BLACK CLOUD

Janice dropped the mixing spoon and the dishcloth and ran out upon the side porch, and from thence down the steps and the walk to the gate. Her heart beat so that she could scarcely get her breath.

The white uniformed men were drawing the stretcher out of the ambulance, and Janice, horrified and all but breathless, suddenly saw her father sitting up on the stretcher.

"Don't be scared, Janice. Be a brave girl," he cried. "It is only my leg."

"But--but what have they done to your leg, Daddy?" she cried, wringing her hands.

One of the uniformed men laughed. It was a cheerful laugh, and he was a jolly looking man. But Janice thought it was very easy indeed for him to laugh.

"It isn't his leg--or any of his relations" she thought.

"I tell you what they have done to him," he said, taking hold of both handles at the foot of the stretcher. "They have just set a compound fracture below the knee and put it into splints. Your daddy is going to have a glass leg for some time to come, and you must take good care of it. Where shall we carry him?"

While he spoke and the other man was taking hold of the other handles of the stretcher, Mr. Day lay down again. He did not groan, but he was very white. He gave Janice's hand a strong grip, however, when she got to him.

"Pluck up your courage, dear," he said. "This is no killing matter." But now neighbors began to hurry to them. Children, of course, for

Knight Street was well supplied with them. But Mrs. Arlo Weeks and Mrs. Peckinpaw came from across the street, while Miss Peckham appeared from her cottage.

"Dear me! Was he picked up that way?" asked Mrs. Weeks, in her high, strident tone. "My Arlo had a fit once--"

"Tain't a fit," said Mrs. Peckinpaw, who was a very old woman and who never spoke to Miss Peckham because of some neighborhood squabble which had happened so long before that neither of them remembered what it was about.

"Tain't a fit," she said acidly; "for then they foam at the mouth, or drool. I never knew he had anything the matter with him, chronic."

The jolly looking man laughed. Miss Peckham on the other side of the stretcher, and without looking at the other women, asked:

"Oughtn't he be took to the hospital? There's nobody here to take care of him but that fly-away young one."

"I won't have him taken to a hospital!" cried Janice stormily. "You bring him right into the house--"

"Well, 'tain't fittin'," said Miss Peckham decidedly.

"I guess both Mr. Day and his daughter know what they want," said the cheerful looking man, decidedly. "He wanted to be brought home. Now, my little lady, where shall we put him? All ready, Bill?"

"All ready," said Bill, who had the handles at the head of the stretcher. "But what's the matter with him?" demanded Mrs. Peckinpaw again.

"Is it ketchin'?"

"He has a compound fracture of the tibia," declared the cheerful man. "Oh! My mercy!" ejaculated Mrs. Peckinpaw, shrinking away from the

stretcher. "I--I didn't kmow Mr. Day drank!"

She had evidently heard alcoholism called by so many queer sounding terms that anything she not understand she set down to that dread trouble. But Miss Peckham had run ahead into the house.

"Take him right up to his bedroom," she said commandingly to the men with the stretcher.

"Well, if that woman's goin' to take hold, they don't need me," said Mrs. Peckinpaw, snappishly, and she retained her stand upon the strictly neutral ground of the sidewalk.

Mrs. Arlo Weeks was "all of a quiver," as she herself said. She followed the men as far as the steps and there sank to a seat.

"My, my! I feel just like fainting," she murmured.

Meanwhile the two uniformed men were carrying Mr. Day into the house.

"Right up here!" cried Miss Peckham from the stairway.

"No," said Mr. Day, "put me on the couch in the living room. Fix it, Janice."

At this Janice awoke from her apathy. She rushed in ahead and fixed the pillows on the couch, and got a warm cover to put over him.

"I'm to be laid up some weeks," Mr. Day said courageously. "I don't want to be put upstairs where I don't know a thing about what's going on in the house. I'll stay downstairs."

"That couch ought to be made up like a bed for you, Mr. Day," said the cheerful man, as Janice dropped down the back which made it into a bed- lounge.

"Do that later," said Mr. Day. "Here! Where's Mrs. Weeks?"

Janice ran to call her. Miss Peckham was descending the stairs, her nose in the air. She seemed offended that she could not rule the proceedings.

"Mrs. Weeks," said Janice to the woman from across the street, "will you come in? Father wants to speak to you."

"I--I don't know as my legs will carry me," sighed Mrs. Weeks. "Have they put him to bed? Has he got his clo'es off?"

"He just wishes to speak to you," explained Janice. "Right in here."

She led the way into the living room. Miss Peckham was still "sniffing" in the doorway. The two ambulance men were preparing to depart.

"When Arlo Weeks comes home from business, tell him I want to see him," said Mr. Day to the woman. "He'll help me off with my clothes and get me into bed here. I shall be all right."

He spoke quite cheerfully now, and even Janice was recovering her self-possession.

"Oh, well, I'll telI him," murmured Mrs. Weeks. "I'm sick o' shock, myself. But we have to sacrifice when our neighbors needs us. Yes, Mr. Day, I'll send Arlo over."

She trailed out after the two men. Mrs. Peckham sniffed after her, too.

"Well," the spinster said, "I can make him some broth. He'll need nourishing victuals. And he ain't been gettin' anything of late, I guess, but what that child's messed up."

She departed kitchenward. Janice and daddy looked at each other hopelessly. Then together, and in chorus, they murmured:

"But I thought she had washed her hands of us!"

"I don't want broth," grumbled Broxton Day, after a minute. "I want my dinner. What have you got that's good, Janice?"

"Stew--lamb stew. Nice," she groaned. "And plenty of vegetables like you like."

"'Like you like' is almost as good as the stew will be," chuckled her father faintly. "We must get that woman out of the house, Janice. She

will be an Old Man of the Sea."

"No, no!" giggled the girl. "An 'Old Maid of the Sea,' you mean." "Maybe I do. But how to get rid of her--"

"I know! Wait!" Janice dashed out of the room and out of the house.

A crowd of children was still at the gate.

"Arlo Junior!" she called into the dusk, "Come here! I want you."

"You want my pa. He ain't home yet," said Junior, drawing near slowly.

"I want you to do an errand for me," said Janice hastily. "Come here-

-close. I'll tell you. Your mother won't mind." "All right," said Junior, offering an attentive ear. "You know where Gummy Carringford lives?" "Course I do."

"Well, you run there, and see his mother; and you tell her--"

Janice in whispers told the boy just what to say to Mrs. Carringford, and he repeated it before he darted off on the errand. Arlo Junior was a great boy to play tricks, but he would not play them at such a time as this.

Janice went back to her father's side and left Miss Peckham, whom she heard moving about the kitchen, strictly alone. Daddy told her all about the accident.

It seemed, when he came down the stairs from the Chamber of Commerce, where he had gone on an errand, a scrubwoman had left a cake of soap on the next to the top step."

"Of course, it was just my luck to find it for her," said Broxton Day, with rather a grim laugh. "Maybe she wanted that soap. But I did not. I kicked right up, Janice, and it is a wonder I did not break my back as well as my leg."

"Oh, Daddy!"

"I landed so hard at the bottom of the flight that I was unconscious for a few minutes. Luckily Dr. Bowles, the surgeon, has offices in that very building. They picked me up and carried me to him and he fixed up the leg. It will be as good as new, he says, after a while."

"Oh, dear, Daddy! you might have been killed," cried Janice, suddenly sobbing.

"Well, it's all over now--but the shouting," muttered Mr. Day, his face suddenly contorted with pain. "Don't fuss, my dear. This is something that can be mended, I am sure. Don't give way to tears."

"Oh, but, Daddy! I know! I know!" sobbed the girl, hiding her face in his shoulder. "But something did happen--and I--I wished for it!"

"Wished for me to break my leg?" gasped daddy.

"Oh, no! Oh, no! But I wished something would happen so that I would not have to go to live at Poketown this summer. And--now-- something--has--happened."

"Quite true, my dear," said Mr. Day, after a moment's silence. "You got your wish. But as usual, you did not get it just as you wished it. Still, the very blackest cloud has its silver lining."

Janice could not imagine a silver lining to this cloud --not just at that moment. She only realized that daddy was suffering from an accident that it did seem her wish had brought to him. It was a very serious and disturbing thought for the girl

Janice did not want to go out into the kitchen to see what Miss Peckham was about. She had left the tender breast and shoulder of lamb for the stew simmering on the back of the stove, and the vegetables were all ready to put in it. What the spinster would do toward making broth Janice did not know. And daddy did not want broth.

Just now, however, the girl felt too much disturbed to entertain an argument with Miss Martha Peckham. Things would have to go on as they would, until--

Suddenly Janice heard voices in the kitchen-- Miss Peckham's high- pitched voice and another. Janice saw that her father was quiet and did not notice, so she got up from his side and stole to the kitchen door to listen.

"Well, ma'am? exclaimed Miss Peckham, don't see as it's any more of your business than 'tis mine. I'm makin' this gruel--"

"And I will finish preparing the dinner, if you do not mind, Miss Peckham," said the soft voice Mrs. Carringford. "I see that Janice has it almost ready. Do you think, Miss Peckham, that a man with a broken leg needs gruel?"

"Well, I couldn't find nothing to make broth out of--"

"Or broth?" pursued Mrs. Carringford. "I know Mr. Day's appetite, and I do not believe that broken leg

has made it any the less hearty."

"Seems to me you know a good deal!" snapped Miss Peckham. "Specially about this kitchen."

"You know, I have been working here for some time," Mrs. Carringford said. "Thank you, Miss Peckham. You need not stay. If there is anything we need you for, I will let you know. Good-night."

The spinster banged out at the kitchen door without even coming into the front part of the house.

"Not even to 'wash her hands of us' again!" giggled Janice, who ran out into the kitchen with a cry of joy.

"Oh, Mrs. Carringford!" she said, throwing her arms about the woman's neck, "have you really come to stay?"

"I guess I shall have to, my dear. Daytimes, anyway," said Amy's mother, kissing her. "You'd soon go to rack and ruin here with the neighbors coming in and littering everything up. Yes, tell your father I will accept the offer he made me. And now, we'll have dinner just as soon as possible. How is he?"

"He says he is all right," gasped Janice, catching her breath. "And he says there is always a silver lining to the very blackest cloud. Now I know he's right. You are the silver lining to this cloud, Mrs. Carringford-- you really, truly are!"