"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--débris 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 never seemed to lag. "I bet I burned three wagon-loads of stuff 'sides what I set outside on the street for 'em to take away. No use talkin', Dad, you got ter build a new pen and yard for the shoats." "Whuffor?" demanded his father, eyeing him slowly. "'Cause the old boards and rails was so rotten that I jest burned 'em up," declared his son. "You know folks could see it from the street, an' it looked untidy." "Wa-al," drawled Uncle Jason, with only half a sigh. Janice could scarcely keep from clapping her hands, this so delighted her. She compared this with some of the conversation at the Day table soon after the time she had arrived in Poketown! CHAPTER XXVIII "NO ODOR OF GASOLINE!" During the winter now passed, Janice had watched the progress of the new school under Nelson Haley's administration with growing confidence in that young man. Nelson was advancing, as well as his pupils and the school discipline. Educators from other towns in the state--even in neighboring states--had come to visit Poketown's school. Janice could not help having a thrill of pride when she learned of these visitations and the appreciation shown by other educators of Nelson Haley's work. She did not so often see the young man in a situation where they could talk these wonders over; for Nelson was very, very busy and gave both his days and evenings to the work he had set for himself the fall before.