"Just the same, Daddy, I'm sorry you came home and caught me scrubbing the floor," Janice sighed. "We were getting along without your being bothered—after a fashion."
"At your cost," he said grimly. "No; we'll hobble along somehow."
"But it's such a hobble, Daddy! It seems to me that I'm not much of a 'do something' girl or I'd manage better than I do." And Janice sighed.
"You do wonders, daughter, for a girl of your age. Maybe it is daddy who fails."
"Oh, Daddy, never!"
Janice hurried to do the things Mrs. Watkins had left undone. And so she forgot some little purchases that had to be made, until it was almost dark.
Remembering these, she put on her hat and jacket in haste, and telling her father where she was going, ran out to the street. There were the "Weeks' tribe," Junior in the lead, with most of the other children of the neighborhood, running through Love Street in a noisy and excited throng.
"What can be the matter now? A fire?" wondered Janice.
Her errand took her in an opposite direction. But she saw people standing at their gates and chatting to each other as though there was some neighborhood interest that she did not know about.
"What is the matter with everybody?" Janice asked one girl whom she met.