At night, after she was supposed to be in bed and sound asleep, the girl heard him walking back and forth the length of the living room; or, sometimes, now that the weather was so mild, he tramped up and down the front porch until very, very late.
There was surely some trouble on his mind that he did not care to confide to his little daughter. Broxton Day sighed more often than had been his wont even during those hard, hard days immediately following the death of Janice's mother. His hearty laugh was not so spontaneous nor heard as often as before.
Janice could not speak about this change in her father. She believed she knew why he was so grave and why some of his nights were sleepless.
Broxton Day had loved his wife with a passionate devotion. He must miss her presence more and more as the days went on. In spite of all the companionship Janice could give him, the man's existence was a lonely one.
"And, too, her heart told her that she had been the unwitting cause of this new burden which had come upon daddy's mind. Those letters which Janice had never seen—the presence of which she had not even suspected in the secret compartment of the lost treasure-box—had been Broxton Day's most precious possession. Janice had lost them! Her carelessness had given the angry Olga the opportunity to take the box away with her.
The letters had been written at a time when Janice's father and mother were very close together in spirit, if not in actual contact. Even Janice could understand that Laura Day must have revealed her very soul to her husband in those epistles.
Oh, if she could only bring them back!
So sorrow began to be entertained in the Day house on Knight Street, as a continual guest. It did seem, too, that Janice could do very little to relieve her father of any of the embarrassments of their situation. She
worked as hard as she could before she went to school and after she came home, but she could not begin to do all that was needed to be done. And she was so tired sometimes after supper that she fell asleep over her homework.
Their meals became, too, a mere round of bacon-and-egg breakfasts and delicatessen suppers. Shop-cooked meats and potato salads were on the bill of fare too often to tempt the appetite of either Mr. Day or his daughter, and the latter began to depend a good deal upon "baker's stuff" for her lunch.