"Oh, Marty, that's dreadful!" and Janice sighed. "It's just wicked!
Polktown's been a sleepy place, but it's never been wicked before."
Her cousin looked at her admiringly. "Hi jinks, Janice! I bet you got it in your mind to stir things up again. I can see it in your eyes. You give Polktown its first clean-up day, and you've shook up the dry bones in general all over the shop. There's going to be something doing, I reckon, that'll make 'em all set up and take notice."
"You talk as though I were one of these awful female reformers the funny papers tell about," Janice said, with a little laugh. "You see nothing in my eyes, Marty, unless it's tears for poor little Sophie Narnay."
The cousins arrived at the old Day house and entered the grass-grown yard. It was an old-fashioned, homely place, a rambling farmhouse up to which the village had climbed. There was plenty of shade, lush grass beneath the trees, with crocuses and other Spring flowers peeping from the beds about the front porch, and sweet peas already breaking the soil at the side porch and pump-bench.
A smiling, cushiony woman met Janice at the door, while Marty went whistling barnward, having the chores to do. Aunt 'Mira nowadays usually had a smile for everybody, but for Janice always.
"Your uncle's home, Janice," she said, "and he brought the mail."
"Oh!" cried the girl, with a quick intake of breath. "A letter from daddy?"
"Wal—I dunno," said the fleshy woman. "I reckon it must be. Yet it don't look just like Brocky Day's hand of write. See—here 'tis. It's from Mexico, anyway."
The girl seized the letter with a gasp. "It—it's the same stationery he uses," she said, with a note of thankfulness. "I—I guess it's all right. I'll run right up and read it."
She flew upstairs to her little room—her room that looked out upon the beautiful lake. She could never bring herself to read over a letter from her father first in the presence of the rest of the family. She sat down without removing her hat and gloves, pulled a tiny hairpin from the wavy lock above her ear and slit the thin, rice-paper envelope. Two enclosures were shaken out into her lap.