"I mean it's awful to think of shutting up our home for the summer. You haven't got to go away to Mexico, have you, Daddy?" she queried with sudden suspicion.
"Well, my dear, it may be necessary," he confessed.
"And you'd send me away to Vermont while you were gone?"
"I don't know what else to do—if the necessity arises. Jase Day is my half-brother—the only living relative I have. Your mother's people are all scattered. I wouldn't know what else to do with you, my dear."
"Mercy!" she sighed, winking back the tears, "it sounds as though
I—I were what you call a 'liability' in your bank business.
Isn't that it? Why, Daddy! I want to be an 'asset,' not a
'liability.'"
"Bless you, my dear, you are! A great, big asset!" he laughed. "But you must not neglect the necessary preparation for life which your studies give you. Nor must I let you overwork. Have patience—and hope. Perhaps we shall be able to find a really good housekeeper, after all."
When, on Wednesday afternoons Janice came home from school, she saw Miss Peckham beckoning to her from her front porch, the girl had no suspicion that the maiden lady was about to interfere in her and daddy's affairs. No, indeed!
"Now I wonder what she wants!" murmured Janice, going reluctantly toward the Peckham house. "And she's got company, too."
The spinster was sitting on her porch behind the honeysuckle vines, with her sewing table and the big parrot, Ambrose, chained to his perch beside her. There was, too, a second woman on the porch.
"Good afternoon, Miss Peckham," Janice said, swinging her books as she came up the walk from Miss Peckham's gate. "Hello, Polly!"