"Oh, but, Daddy, those are all such little things!" sighed
Janice.
Janice thought things were going pretty well after that. They were so glad to have their house saved from destruction, and so proud of Gummy, that everybody seemed all right. But there was trouble coming, and one afternoon Amy brought it to the Day house.
Amy, in tears, came to see her mother. Janice chanced to be in the kitchen when she entered from the Love Street gate. Amy had in tow a curly-haired dapper little man who looked too oily to be honest, and with little gimlet eyes that seemed to bore right through one.
"Oh, Mother!" gasped Amy, "this—this man's come to take our house away from us!"
"What is this now?" exclaimed Mrs. Carringford, in as much surprise as fear.
"Yes, he has. He said so. He's got papers, and all," sobbed
Amy.
"Ahem! the young lady puts it very crassly indeed," said the curly-haired man. "You, I presume, are Mrs. Josephine Carringford," he went on, reading from a paper.
"Yes."
"I am serving you in the suit of Mrs. Alice G. Blayne, of Croydon, Michigan, my client, to recover a certain parcel of property situated on Mullen Lane and now occupied by you and your family, Mrs. Carringford," said the man glibly, and thrusting a paper into the woman's hand.
"But I bought my home through Mr. Abel Strout, of Napsburg," gasped Mrs. Carringford. She did not recognize Jamison, the farm hand, in the transaction at all. She now felt that man was but Abel Strout's tool.