"How am I different from other girls?" asked Janice, curiously.
"Wal! Most gals would wait till they was sure the young man wasn't goin' to be arrested before they ran right off to see him. But mebbe it's because you ain't got your own mother and father to tell ye diff'rent."
Janice flushed deeply at this and her eyes sparkled.
"I am sure Aunt 'Mira and Uncle Jason would have told me not to call on Nelson if they did not believe just as I do—that he is guiltless and that all his friends should show him at once that they believe in him."
"Hoity-toity! Mebbe so," said the woman, tartly. "Them Days never did have right good sense—yer uncle an' aunt, I mean. When I was a gal we wouldn't have been allowed to have so much freedom where the young fellers was consarned."
Janice was quite used to Mrs. Scattergood's sharp tongue; but it was hard to bear her strictures on this occasion.
"I hope it is not wrong for me to show my friend that I trust and believe in him," she said firmly, and nodding good-bye, turned abruptly away.
Of herself, or of what the neighbors thought of her conduct, Janice Day thought but little. She went on to Mrs. Beaseley's cottage, solely anxious on Nelson's account.
She found the widow in tears, for selfishly immured as Mrs. Beaseley was in her ten-year-old grief over the loss of her "sainted Charles," she was a dear, soft-hearted woman and had come to look upon Nelson Haley almost as her son.
"Oh, Janice Day! what ever are we going to do for him?" was her greeting, the moment the girl entered the kitchen. "If my poor, dear Charles were alive I know he would be furiously angry with Mr. Cross Moore and those other men. Oh! I cannot bear to think of how angry he would be, for Charles had a very stern temper.