A belated bird, winging its way homeward, called shrilly. The breeze sobbed in the nearby treetops, 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!"
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.
"Find Jase jest a mite leisurely, don't ye?" pursued the gossipy Dexter. "I bet a cooky he ain't much like the folks where you come from?"
"I couldn't give an opinion so soon," said Janice, shyly, not sure that she liked this fat man any more for the scorn in which he held his neighbors.