Scanned by Aaron Cannon <cannona@fireantproductions.com>
Janice Day, The Young Homemaker
by Helen Beecher Long
CHAPTER I. WHEN MOTHER WAS A GIRL
"Why, that is Arlo Junior. What can he be doing out of doors so early? And look at those cats following him. Did you ever!" Janice Day stared wonderingly from her front bedroom window at the boy crossing the street in the dim pre-dawn light, with a cat and three half-grown kittens gamboling about him. Occasionally Arlo Junior would shake something out of a paper to the ground and the cats would immediately roll and frolic and slap playfully at one another, acting as the girl had never seen cats act before.
The pleasantly situated cottage belonging to Mr. Broxton Day stood almost directly across the way from the Arlo Weeks' place on Knight Street. Therefore Janice often said that, "the days and nights and weeks are very close together!"
Knight Street, as level as the palm of one's hand, led straight into Greensboro, where it crossed Market and Hammond Streets, making the Six Corners—actually the heart of the business district of this thriving mid-western town.
The Day cottage was a mile and a half from the Six Corners and the Farmers & Merchants Bank in which Mr. Broxton Day held an important salaried position. Besides his house and his situation in the bank, Mr. Day considered another of his possessions very important indeed, although he did not list it when he made out his tax return.
This that he so highly valued possessed the very brightest hazel eyes in the world, wore a wealth of free brown hair in two plaits over her shoulders, and was of a slender figure without bordering upon that unfortunate "skinniness" which nature abhors as she does a vacuum.
Janice possessed, also, even teeth that flashed when she smiled (and she smiled often), a pink and white complexion that the sun was bound to freckle if she was not careful, and a cheerful, demure expression of countenance that went a long way toward making her good to look upon, if not actually good looking.