"No use. I hope I won't have to ask Mrs. Latham. Then there will be trouble, I fear."
The walk over the hill and down the lane, crossing the brook Gummy Carringford had once spoken of, was a pleasant walk, after all. It was not dusty, and there were shade trees part of the way. By the time Janice came to the little house which her father and she had once visited to look for Olga, she was quite cool and collected again.
But as soon as she drew near to the tenant house the girl was startled. There was not a sign of life about it. There were no wagons or farm tools about the sheds or barnyard. There were no cattle in the stable, nor pigs in the pen, nor poultry in the wired run.
"Goodness me! have the Johnsons gone, too?" cried Janice.
She hurried to the little house. There were no curtains at the windows, and she could see right through the empty house.
"That's what Stella meant!" exclaimed Janice. "Oh, the mean, mean thing! To let me walk away over here without telling me that they had gone! And now she is waiting back there to laugh at me when I return!" Janice Day did not like to be laughed at any more than other people. And she particularly shrank from facing the sarcastic Stella on this occasion.
"At least, I will make some inquiries elsewhere, first," she thought, and set forth along the public highway, on which the little house fronted, toward another dwelling that was in sight.
There were people in this house, that was sure. There were children playing in the yard and a pleasant-faced woman on the front porch, sewing and keeping an eye on the children.
She did put out a somewhat forbidding air when Janice turned in at the gate; but then she saw the girl had no bag or sample case, so she brightened up again.
"You haven't anything to sell, I guess?" the woman began, even before Janice uttered a word.