"If I just had a car!" she would often say, until Marty got to teasing her about it, and Nelson Haley, whenever he saw her, usually asked very sober questions about her car—if she'd had much tire trouble on her last trip, and so forth!
"You can all just laugh at me," Janice declared. "I know Daddy will send the money some time. And then, if you are not very good, and very polite, you sha'n't ride with me at all."
Aunt 'Mira was so inspired by her niece's talk of an automobile that she studied the mail-order catalogues diligently, and finally sent off for a coat and veil, together with an approved automobile mask, to be worn when she went motoring through the country with Janice!
The spring passed and summer came. The cellar walls of the new schoolhouse were laid, and then the framework went up, and finally the handsome edifice was finished upon the outside. Really, Poketown was fairly startled by the appearance of the new building. Some of the very people who had been opposed to the thing were won over by its appearance.
"Hi tunket!" exclaimed Mr. Cross Moore, "barrin' the taxes we'll haf ter pay for the next ten year, I could be glad ter see sech a handsome house in the town. An' they tell me 'at teacher has had more ter do with the plannin' of the school than the architect himself. Too bad Mr. Haley ain't goin' ter be here no longer than this term. He'd ought ter have the bossin' of the new school."
"Who says he won't?" snapped Walky Dexter, who heard the selectman's statement.
"You ax the Elder—or old Bill Jones," chortled Moore.
"Come now! what do you mean by that?" demanded Mr. Massey, in whose store the conversation took place.
"Ax 'em," said Mr. Moore again. "They've got it fixed up to fire Mr. Haley at the end of this term."
"Nothin' like bein' warned in time," said Walky Dexter. "Them old shagbarks ain't been e-lected themselves for next year, yet. They air takin' too blamed much for granted, that's what's the matter with them. July school meetin' is purty near; but mebbe we kin put a spoke in their wheel."