Scanned by Aaron Cannon <cannona@fireantproductions.com>
Janice Day, The Young Homemaker
by Helen Beecher Long
"Why, that is Arlo Junior. What can he be doing out of doors soearly? And look at those cats following him. Did you ever!"Janice Day stared wonderingly from her front bedroom window atthe boy crossing the street in the dim pre-dawn light, with a catand three half-grown kittens gamboling about him. OccasionallyArlo Junior would shake something out of a paper to the groundand the cats would immediately roll and frolic and slap playfullyat one another, acting as the girl had never seen cats actbefore.
The pleasantly situated cottage belonging to Mr. Broxton Daystood almost directly across the way from the Arlo Weeks' placeon Knight Street. Therefore Janice often said that, "the daysand nights and weeks are very close together!"
Knight Street, as level as the palm of one's hand, led straightinto Greensboro, where it crossed Market and Hammond Streets,making the Six Corners—actually the heart of the businessdistrict of this thriving mid-western town.
The Day cottage was a mile and a half from the Six Corners andthe Farmers & Merchants Bank in which Mr. Broxton Day held animportant salaried position. Besides his house and his situationin the bank, Mr. Day considered another of his possessions veryimportant indeed, although he did not list it when he made outhis tax return.
This that he so highly valued possessed the very brightest hazeleyes in the world, wore a wealth of free brown hair in two plaitsover her shoulders, and was of a slender figure without borderingupon that unfortunate "skinniness" which nature abhors as shedoes a vacuum.
Janice possessed, also, even teeth that flashed when she smiled(and she smiled often), a pink and white complexion that the sunwas bound to freckle if she was not careful, and a cheerful,demure expression of countenance that went a long way towardmaking her good to look upon, if not actually good looking.
In a spick and span blue-checked bungalow apron, she stood at herwindow just as Dawn swept a brush of partially-hued color acrossthe eastern horizon. Having had it in her mind when she went tobed the night before to arise early, she had of course awakenedlong before it was really time to get up to make sure that daddy,for once, got a proper breakfast.
For the Days, father and daughter, were dependent on hiredservice, and such service in the form of Olga Cedarstrom wasabout as incapable and stupid as fate had yet produced.
Having caught the first glimpse of that mischievous youngster,Arlo Weeks, Junior, with the cats, Janice raised her windowsoftly as far as the lower sash would go, to peer out at thestrange procession. The boy and the cats entered the Day's sidegate and disappeared around the comer of the kitchen ell.
"Now! what can that rascal be about? If he does anything tobother Olga there will be trouble. And everything here goescrossways enough now, without Arlo Junior adding to it, Ideclare!"
Janice could very clearly remember when the cottage had been areal home instead of "just a place to stay"; for her mother hadbeen dead only a year. The experiences of that year had beentrying, both for the sorrowing widower and the girl who had beenher mother's close companion and confidant.
Janice was old enough and well trained enough in domestic affairsto have kept house very nicely for her father. But she had to goto school, of course; an ed