"Oh, dear me!" thought Janice, "how nice it would be if our kitchen—and our whole house—were like this. How delighted Daddy would be."
But there was something else she did not at first see. She had to get acquainted with all the younger Carringfords. She must talk with Mrs. Carringford. Gummy came in after washing his hands and rubbing his shoes clean on the doormat to talk to the caller. Then Amy carried Janice off upstairs to her own tiny room under the eaves.
There was no carpet on the stairs. The matting on the floor of Amy's room was much worn. There was nothing really pretty in the room. Janice suddenly realized that this spelled "poverty."
Yet it was cheerful and speckless, and there were pictures of a kind, and little home-made ornaments and a few books.
The window curtains were of the cheapest, but they were looped back gracefully. There was a workbox and stand that Gummy had made for Amy, for the brother was handy with tools.
Altogether there was something about the room, and about the ugly little house as well, that Janice Day realized she did not have at home. She had had it once; but it was not present now in the Day house. In the Carringford dwelling the magic wand of a true homemaker had touched it all.
The two girls chatted for almost an hour. It was mostly about school matters and their friends and the teachers. Amy talked, too, about friends in Napsburg, where the Carringfords had lived before moving to Greensboro. Janice was adroit in keeping the conversation on rather general topics, and did not allow the question of Stella's party to come to the fore and never once did she speak of what any of the girls would wear on that occasion.
The time to leave came, and then Janice felt she should enter the wedge which would afterwards gain for her the desired end.
"You'll go to Stella's party, won't you?" asked Janice as she prepared to go home.
"Oh, I don't know. I'll see," Amy hurriedly said.