Janice Day, the Young Homemaker

by Helen Beecher Long

With the treasure-box in her hand, she opened her bedroom door and crossed the hall to the storeroom. The window of this room was over the back porch. She heard a step on the porch flooring. The door of the summer kitchen was seldom locked. Was Arlo Junior down there?

That boy was constantly getting into trouble with the neighbors.
There was a regular feud between Olga Cedarstrom and Arlo Junior.
Olga had chased him half a block only the other day, threatening
him with a broom.

And the cats! Here they came from all directions—over the back yard fences and from the barn. Fat cats, lean cats, shabby "ash-barrel" cats, and pet cats with ribbons and collars. Amazedly, Janice Day owned to herself that she had never seen so many cats gathered in a more or less harmonious group before.

Instead of fighting or "mauling," they approached the back porch of the Day house as though on pleasure bent. Was that Arlo Junior giggling down there?

She put down the treasure-box and tried to open the window. But the sash stuck. She distinctly heard the door below close and footsteps receding from the porch.

Wishing to make sure that it was Arlo Junior who had been below, the girl ran back to her bedroom. Yes! there he was scuttling across the street in evident haste to get under cover.

"Now, isn't that odd?" murmured Janice. Suddenly a sound floated up from below—an echoing wail that seemed wrenched from the very soul of a tortured cat. The cry reverberated through the house in a most eerie fashion.

Fortunately her father slept in the front of the house and there was a closed door between the front and the back halls on both floors. But Janice heard Olga's big, flat feet land upon the floor almost instantly. That feline wail had evidently brought the Swedish girl out of her dreams, all standing.

That sound sent Janice out of the room on a run. She must reach the seat of trouble before Olga got to the place! Otherwise, the trouble was bound to increase and become—what? Even Janice's imagination, trained, as it was, by the succession of incompetent and unwilling kitchen helpers, could not picture that.

Before Janice Day could reach the hall, Olga was padding down the stairs to the kitchen. From the rear arose increasing howls. The cats may have mysteriously gathered in apparent amity; but so many of them shut up in that outer kitchen with no escape could not possibly dwell for long in harmony.