Janice Day, the Young Homemaker

by Helen Beecher Long

"And the picnic on the Latham farm to which I found you did not go," interrupted daddy. "How about that, daughter?"

"Oh—oh—well, you know, Daddy, I—I—"

"What's all this stammering about, honey," asked daddy, putting his arm about his daughter.

"Daddy, Amy and I just couldn't go to that picnic. Of course, it was not given by Stella, but by all the boys and girls of our crowd, but it was on Stella's farm. And— Well, Daddy, Stella doesn't really like Amy and me just now. It's nothing—just about that dress Amy wore to Stella's party. I told you all about that. Stella promised not to tell, you know, and then she did. I'm not mad at Stella—I was, though, for a while—but she's still mad at me. She'll be all right in a little while, though, Daddy."

"I trust so, daughter. Do your best to make friends again. You will all be happier if you are on a friendly footing with your companions."

These first days of the long vacation were not really happy ones for Janice, although she tried to make believe they were. All the time she was hoping to herself that daddy would not insist on her visiting his relatives in the East.

He had not really said that he contemplated sending her willy-nilly, to Aunt Almira. Yet the girl felt that daddy believed her health called for a change. And that was not what she needed. She was sure that the air of Poketown would never in this world make her feel any happier or healthier than she felt right here at home in Greensboro.

"I just hope something will happen to keep me from going to Poketown—or anywhere else," Janice repeated, over and over again.

And then, it did happen. Nothing that she had imagined, of course.

And this happening shocked Janice Day almost as much as anything could. It came in the afternoon, when she was getting dinner for daddy. She heard the clang of a gong, and an automobile stopped before the house. She ran to the window. It was a white painted ambulance— not from the City Hospital, but a private ambulance. And two men in white uniforms were preparing to take somebody on a stretcher out of the car.