Janice Day at Poketown

by Helen Beecher Long

But it was her own money Janice spent for the papers. Whenever Daddy had written he had usually enclosed in his envelope a bank note of small denomination for Janice. The bank in Greensboro sent the board money regularly to Uncle Jason (and Aunt 'Mira got it for her own personal use, as she declared she would), but Janice always had a little in her pocket.

Had she been well supplied with cash about this time the girl would have been tempted to run away and take the train for Mexico herself. It did seem to her, when the weeks went by without a letter reaching her from her father, as though he must be wounded, and suffering, and needing her!

But she did not have sufficient money to pay her fare such a long distance.

Aunt 'Mira was a poor comforter. Yet she fortunately aided in giving Janice something else to think about just then. The girl had helped "spruce up" Aunt 'Mira long since, so that they could go to church together on Sundays. But now the good lady was in the throes of making herself a silk dress for best—a black silk. It was the thing she had longed for most, and now she could satisfy the craving for clothes that had so obsessed her.

Aunt 'Mira loved finery. Janice had to use her influence to the utmost to keep the good lady from committing the sin of getting this wonderful dress too "fancy." Left to herself, Mrs. Day would have loaded it with bead trimming and cut-steel ornaments. At first she even wanted it cut "minaret" fashion, which would have, in the end, made the poor lady look a good deal like an overgrown ballet dancer!

Janice had been glad to go to church. Always, before coming to Poketown, the girl had held a vital interest in church and church work. But here she found there was really nothing for the young people to do. They had no society, and aside from the Sunday School, a very cut-and-dried session usually, there was no special interest for the young.

Mr. Middler, the pastor, was a mild-voiced, softly stepping man, evidently fearing to give offense. Although he had been in the pastorate for several years, he seemed to have very little influence in the community. Elder Concannon and several other older members controlled the church and its policies utterly; and they frowned on any innovation.

One Sabbath, old Elder Concannon—a grizzled, heavy-eyebrowed man, with a beak-like nose and flashing black eyes—preached, and he thundered out the "Law" to his hearers as a man might use a goad on a refractory team of oxen. Mr. Middler was a faint echo of the old Elder on most occasions. He seemed afraid of taking his text from the New Testament. It was Law, not Love, that was preached at the Poketown Union Church; and although the dissertations may have been satisfactory to the older members, they did not attract the young people to service, or feed them when they did come!

Janice often wondered if the loud "Amens!" of Elder Concannon, down in the corner, were worth as much to poor little Mr. Middler as would have been a measure of vital interest shown in the church and its work by some of the young people of the community.

There was a Ladies Sewing Circle. There is always a Ladies Sewing Circle! But, somehow, the making up of barrels of cast-off clothing for unfortunate missionaries in the West, or up in Canada, or the sewing together of innumerable ill-cut garments, which must, of course, be "misfits" for the unknown infants for whom they were intended,—all this never could seem sufficient to "feed the spirit," to Janice Day's mind.