"It's all nonsense! And it's just as I've said. No peace since that Day girl came to town."
Mr. Middler had the courage of his convictions for once. He said nothing more to rasp the old gentleman's feelings and prejudices; but he backed up the young people in their attempt to freshen up the old church. He mingled with them more than ever he had before; and from that contact with their young and hopeful natures he carried into his pulpit a more joyful outlook upon life. Mr. Middler was growing, along with his young people, and he really preached a sermon now and then in which there wasn't a doctrinal argument!
Not that Janice held a very important position in the young people's society. But she had belonged to one back in Greensboro, in her own beloved church, and she had helped form this Poketown organization. She would not take office in this new society, for all the time she hoped that her father's affairs would change and they might be together again.
There was never a day begun that Janice did not hope that this reunion might be consummated soon; and the desire was a part of her bedside prayer at night. She was no longer lonely, or even homesick, in Poketown. She really loved her relatives, and she knew that they loved her. She had made many friends, and her time was fairly well occupied.
But her longing for Daddy seemed to grow with the lapse of time. She wanted to see him so much that it actually hurt when she allowed herself to think about it!
"Ain't you ever goin' to be still a minute, Janice?" complained her aunt frequently. "You're hoppin' 'round all the time jest like a hen on a hot skillet, I declare for't!"
"Why, Aunt 'Mira," she told the good lady, "I couldn't possibly sit with my hands folded. I'd rather work on the treadmill than do that."
"You wait till you've worked as many years as I have—an' got as leetle for it," said Aunt 'Mira, shaking her head. "You won't be so spry," and with that she buried herself in her story paper again.
There was an improvement, however, even in Aunt 'Mira. She could not leave the "love stories" alone, and if she had a particularly exciting one, she would sit down in her chair in the middle of the kitchen floor and let the breakfast dishes go till noon.
Usually, however, she "slicked up," as she called it, after dinner, instead of spending her time on the sofa, and sometimes she and Janice went calling with their needlework, like the other ladies up and down Hillside Avenue, or had some of the neighbors in to call on them.