With the light breeze fluttering the little crinkles of hair between her hat and her brow, and an expression of bright expectancy upon her face, Janice was worth looking at a second time. So Mrs. Scattergood thought, as she glanced up now and again from her knitting.
"Poketown—Poketown," the girl murmured to herself, trying to spy out the land ahead as the Constance Colfax floundered on. "Oh! I hope Daddy's remembrance of it is all wrong now. I hope it will belie its name."
"What's that, child?" put in the sharp voice of her neighbor.
"Why—why—if it is poky I know I shall just die of homesickness for
Greensboro," confessed Janice. "How could the early settlers of these
'New Hampshire Grants' ever dare give such a homely name to a
village?"
"Pshaw!" ejaculated Mrs. Scattergood. "What's a name? Prob'bly some man named Poke settled there fust. Or pokeberries grew mighty common there. People weren't so fanciful about names in them days. Why! my son-in-law lives right now in a place in York State called 'Skunk's Hollow' and the city folks that's movin' in there is tryin' to git the post office to change the name to 'Posy Bloom.' No 'countin' for tastes in names. My poor mother called me Mahala Ann—an' me too leetle to fight back. But I made up my mind when I was a mighty leetle gal that if ever I had a baby I'd call it sumthin' pretty. An' I done the right thing by all my children.
"Now here's 'Rill," pursued Mrs. Scattergood, waxing communicative. "Her full name's Amarilla—Amarilla Scattergood. Don't you think that's purty yourself, now?"
Janice politely agreed. But she quickly swung the conversation back to
Poketown.
"I suppose, if mills had been built there, or the summer boarders had discovered Poketown, its name would have been changed, too. And you haven't been up there for twelve years?"
"No, child. But that ain't long. Ain't much happens in twelve years back East here."
Janice sighed again; but suddenly she jumped from her stool excitedly, crying: "Oh! what place is that?"