"No. Never mind 'em now. I'll wash the hull kit an' bilin' of 'em up after supper. No use in takin' two bites to a cherry," she added, referring to the dishes in the sink. Janice climbed the stairs to her room, carefully stepping over the broken tread. There was water in her pitcher, and she made her simple toilet, putting on a fresh frock. Then she sat down in the rocker by the window. Every time she swung to and fro the loose rocker clicked and rattled. The red light that heralded the departure of the sun behind the wooded hills across the lake seemed to make the room and its mismated furnishings uglier than before. The girl turned her back upon it with almost a sob, and gazed out upon the terraced hillside and the lake, the latter already darkening. The shadows on the farther shore were heavy, but here and there a point of sudden light showed a farmhouse. A belated bird, winging its way homeward, called shrilly. The breeze sobbed in the nearby tree-tops, and then died suddenly. Such a lonely, homesick feeling possessed Janice Day as she had never imagined before! She was away off here in the East, while Daddy's train was still flying westward with him, down towards that war-ruffled Mexico. And she was obliged to stay here--in this ugly old house--with these shiftless people----. "Oh, dear Daddy! I wish you could be here right now," the girl half sobbed. "I wish you could see this place--and the folks here! I know what _you'd_ say, Daddy; I know just what you'd say about it all!" CHAPTER V 'RILL SCATTERGOOD AND HER SCHOOL With the elasticity of Youth, however, Janice opened her eyes the following morning on a new world. Certainly the outlook from her window was glorious; therefore her faith in life itself--and in Poketown and her relatives--was renewed as she gazed out upon the beautiful picture fresh-painted by the fingers of Dawn. All out-of-doors beckoned Janice. She hurriedly made her toilet, crept down the squeaking stairs, and softly let herself out, for nobody else was astir about the old Day house. The promise of the morning from the window was kept in full. Janice could not walk sedately--she fairly skipped. Out of the sagging gate and up the winding lane she went, her feet twinkling over the dew-wet sod, a song on her lips, her eyes as bright as the stars which Dawn had smothered when she tiptoed over the eastern hills. And then at a corner of a cross-lane above her uncle's house, Janice came upon the only other person in Poketown astir as early as herself--Walkworthy Dexter, who led Josephus, the heavy harness clanking about the horse's ribs. "Ah-ha! I see there's a new _day_," chuckled Mr. Dexter, his pale blue eyes twinkling. "And how do you find your Uncle Jase? Not what you'd call a fidgety man, eh? He ain't never stirred up about nothing, Jase Day ain't. What d'ye think?" Janice didn't know just what to think--or, to say, either.