"Why—Mrs. Beasely—do you believe there is anything so bad that it can't be helped?" queried Janice, slowly and thoughtfully. It was the first time her voice had been heard amid the general clatter, since she had come to sit down. Her nimble fingers were just as busy as any other ten in the room; but her tongue had been idle.
"They say it's never too late to mend," quote 'Rill Scattergood; "but I am afraid that Mr. Miner, and Mr. Jones, and some of the rest of the storekeepers are too old to mend—or be mended!"
"Ain't you right, now, Amarilla!" sniffed her mother.
"'Tain't only the storekeepers," declared Mrs. Petrie, taking up the tale again. "How many of us—us housekeepers, I mean—insist upon having things as clean as they should be right around our own back doors?"
"Wa-al," groaned Aunt 'Mira, "it takes suthin' like an airthquake to start some of the men-folks——"
"Why wait for them?" interposed the demure Janice again, knowing that her aunt would not object if she interrupted her. "Can't we do something ourselves?"
"I'd like to know what you'd do?" exclaimed the helpless Mrs. Middler.
"Why, we could have a regular 'Clean-Up Day' in Poketown, same as they do in other places."
"Good Land o' Goshen!" ejaculated Mrs. Scattergood. "What's that, I'd like to know, Janice Day? You do have the greatest idees! I never heard of no 'Clean-Up Day' in Skunk's Holler."
"Perhaps they didn't need any there," laughed Janice, for she was used to the old lady's sharp tongue and did not mind it.