HOPEWELL SELLS HIS VIOLIN
Janice Day had no intention of avoiding what seemed, finally, to be a duty laid upon her. If everybody else in Polktown opposed to the sale of liquor, merely complained about it—and in a hopeless, helpless way—it was not in her disposition to do so. She was Broxton Day's own daughter and she absolutely had to do something! She was imbued with her father's spirit of helpfulness, and she believed thoroughly in his axiom: If a thing is wrong, go at it and make it right.
Of course, Janice knew very well that a young girl like herself could do little in reality about this awful thing that had stalked into Polktown. She could do nothing of her own strength to put down the liquor traffic. But she believed she might set forces in motion which, in the end, would bring about the much-desired reformation.
She had done it before. Her inspiration had touched all of Polktown and had awakened and rejuvenated the old place. She had learned that all that the majority of people needed to rank them on the active side of right, was to be made to think. She determined that Polktown should be made to think upon this subject of liquor selling.
After school she drove around by the Upper Road and branched off into a woods path that she had not dared venture into the week before. The Spring winds had done much to dry this woodroad and there were not many mud-holes to drive around before she came in sight of the squatters' cabin occupied by the family of Mr. Trimmins.
This transplanted family of Georgia "crackers" had been a good deal of a misfit in the Vermont community until Janice had found and interested herself in them. Virginia, a black-haired sprite of eleven or twelve, was the leader of the family in all things, although there were several older children. But "Jinny" was born to be a commander.
Having made a friend of the little witch of a girl, and of Buddy, who had been the baby the year before, but whose place had been usurped because of the advent of another tow-head into the family, the others of "them Trimminses," as they were spoken of in Polktown, had become Janice Day's staunch friends. Virginia and two of her sisters came regularly to the meetings of the Girls' Guild which Janice had founded; but it was a long walk to the Union Church and Janice really wondered how they ever got over the road in stormy weather.
It always puzzled Janice where so many children managed to sleep when bedtime came, unless they followed the sea law of "watch and watch." Now all the children who were at home poured out of the cabin to greet the driver of the Kremlin car. The whole family, as now arrayed before her, she had not seen since Christmas.
She had not forgotten to bring a great bag of "store cakes," of which these poor little Trimminses were inordinately fond; so most of them soon drifted away, each with a share of the goodies, leaving Janice to talk with Mrs. Trimmins and Jinny and play with Buddy and the baby.
"It's a right pretty evening, Miss Janice," said Mrs. Trimmins. "I shell be glad enough when the settled weather comes to stay. I kin git some o' these young'uns out from under foot all day long, then.