"So they continue to hang around the hotel sheds and the stores," pursued Janice, thoughtfully, without meaning to be critical. "Boys _will_ get together in a club, or gang. Daddy used to say they were naturally gregarious, like some birds." "Yes," said the minister, slowly. "They ought to have a nice, warm, well-lighted room where they could go, and play games, and read,--with a circulating library attached. Of course, a gymnasium would be too much to even _dream_ of, at first! Why! wouldn't that be fine? And isn't it practical? _Do_ say it is!" "I do not know whether it is practicable or not, Janice," said the minister, slowly, yet smiling at her. "But the thought is inspired. You shall have all the help I can give you. It _ought_ to be in the church----" "No. That would scare the boys away," interposed Janice, with finality. "Why, my dear? You speak as though the church was a bogey!" "Well--but--dear Mr. Middler! Just ask the boys themselves. How many of them love to go to church--even to Sunday School? I mean the boys that hang about the village stores at night." "It is so--it is so," he admitted, with a sigh. From this sprang the idea of the Poketown Free Library. It was of slow growth, and there is much more to be said about it; but Janice found her personal troubles much easier to bear when she began trying to interest the people of Poketown in the reading-room idea. And didn't Mr. Middler bear something of his own away from that visit to The Overlook--something that glowed in his heart? He preached quite a different kind of a sermon that next Sunday, and the text was one of the most helpful and _living_ in all the New Testament. Some of the older members of his congregation shook their heads over it. It was not "strong meat," they said; there was nothing to argue about! But a dozen troubled, needy members who heard the sermon, felt new hope in their hearts, and they got through the following week--trials and all!--much easier than usual. CHAPTER XVI "SHOWING" THE ELDER No millionaire library-giver had found Poketown on the map. Or else, the hard-headed and tight-fisted voters of that Green Mountain community were too sharp to allow anybody to foist upon them a granite mausoleum, the upkeep of which would mainly advertise the name of the donor. The Union Sunday School had a library; but its list of volumes was open to the same objections as are raised to many other institutions of its kind. Nor was a circulating library so much needed in Poketown as a reading and recreation room for the youth of the village. Aside from her brief talk with Mr. Middler, Janice Day advised with no adult at first as to how the establishment of the needed institution should be brought about. The girl had studied Marty, if she had had little opportunity of becoming acquainted with other specimens of the genus _boy_. She knew they were as bridle-shy as wild colts.