"Huh!" grunted Marty. "See all the work I do. Don't ye s'pose that counts none?"
Janice merely smiled quietly as she heard this conversation. Uncle Jason was up and out to work now by daybreak, like other farmers. He smoked his after-dinner pipe by the back door; but it was only one pipe. He often declared that "his wimmen folk" made such a bustle inside the kitchen after dinner that he couldn't even think. He just had to go back to work "to get shet of 'em."
The bacilli of work had taken hold of the Day family. Uncle Jason had begun to take pride in his fields and in his crops. Nobody in all Poketown, or thereabout, had such a garden as the Days this spring. Janice and Mrs. Day attended to it after it was planted. Mr. Day had bought a man-weight hoe and seeding machine, and the garden mould was so fine and free from filth that the "women folks" could use the machine with ease.
Yes, the Jason Days were more prosperous than ever before. And all their prosperity did not arise from that twenty dollars a month that came regularly for Janice's board.
"Sometimes I feel downright ashamed to take that money, Jason," Aunt 'Mira admitted to her spouse. "Janice is sech a help to me. She is jest like a darter. I shall hate to ever haf ter give her up. And some day soon, now, Broxton will be comin' home."
"Wal, don't ye worry. If Broxton is makin' money like he says he is—so's he kin give that gal a thousand dollars to throw to the birdies like she's done—why should we worry? I ain't sayin' but what she's been a lot of help to us."
"In more ways than one," whispered his wife.
"Right, by jinks!" admitted the farmer.
"Look what this old place looked like when she come!"
"She sartainly has stirred us all up."