Earlier than usual the carpets went out on the lines, the curtains at chamber and sitting-room windows were renewed, there was a smell of soap and water in every entry, as one pushed the door open, and altogether Poketown was generally turned out of doors, aired, dusted, and brought back again into thoroughly clean rooms.
The old Day house had its "ridding up;" too. Janice gave her aunt considerable help; but Mrs. Day was not the slovenly housekeeper she had been when first the girl had come to Poketown. Even Uncle Jason kept himself more neatly than ever before. And he went to the barber's at frequent intervals.
Janice once went down to the dock to see the Constance Colfax come in. There was the usual crowd of loafers waiting for the boat—all perched along the stringpiece of the wharf.
"But I declare!" thought Janice, her eyes dancing, "somebody certainly has 'slicked 'em up,' as Mrs. Scattergood would say. Whoever would believe it! Walky has got a new shirt on—and straw cuffs, too—and a necktie! My goodness me! And the hotel keeper really looks as though his wife cared a little about his appearance. And Ben Hutchins wears whole boots now, and has washed his face, and had a shave.
"I must admit they don't look so much like a delegation from the poorfarm as they did the day I came in on the Constance Colfax. There has been a change in Poketown—there most certainly has been a change!" and the girl laughed delightedly.
It was marked everywhere. It even seemed to Janice as though people whom she met on the street stepped quicker than they once had!
Janice knew she had given her own folks—Uncle Jason, and Aunt 'Mira, and Cousin Marty—a push or two in the right direction. She had helped Hopewell Drugg, too; and maybe she had instigated the waking up of several other people. But not for a moment did she realize—healthy, thoughtless girl that she was—how much Poketown owed to her on Clean-Up Day.
That was one great occasion in the old town. Although the selectmen had allowed two days in which the farmers' wagons were to cart away the rubbish for the householders, the removal men had hard work to fill their contract.
Some curbs were piled shoulder high with boxes of ashes, old bedsprings, broken furniture, decayed mattresses, yard rakings, unsightly pots and pans hidden away for decades in mouldy cellars—debris of so many kinds that it would be impossible to catalogue it!
For two days, also, hundreds of rubbish fires burned, and the taint of the smoke seemed to saturate every part of Poketown. Janice declared that all the food on the supper table at the Day house seemed to have been "slightly scorched."