"Don't you torment Janice now, Marty," cried his mother. "I hope he is all right, Janice. Is it writ in his own hand, Marty?"
"I dunno," said the plaguesome boy, looking at the address covertly. "It is postmarked 'Juarez'."
"Oh, yes! oh, yes!" cried Janice. "He would send it down there to be mailed. So he said. Mail service up in Chihuahua is so uncertain. Oh, Marty! p-l-e-a-s-e!"
"You give her that, Marty!" commanded Mr. Day.
Janice snatched the letter when the boy held it out to her; but she flashed Marty a "Thanks, awfully!" as she ran out of the room and upstairs. Supper? What did she care for supper? In the red light of the sunset she sat by the window in her room and read Mr. Broxton Day's loving letter.
It was almost like seeing and talking with Daddy! Those firm, flowing lines of black ink, displaying character and firmness and decision, looked just like Daddy himself! Janice kissed the open page ecstatically, and then began to read:
"Dear Daughter:
"The several thousand miles that separate us seem very short indeed when I sit down to write my little Janice. I can see her standing right before me in this barren, corrugated-iron shack—which would have been burned the last time a bunch of the Constitutionalists swept through these hills, only iron will not burn. If a party of Federal troops come along they may try to destroy our plant, too. Just at the present time the foreigner, and his property, are in no great favor with either party of belligerents. The cry is 'Mexico for the Mexicans'—and one can scarcely blame them. But although I have seen a little fighting at a distance, and plenty of the marks of battle along the railroad line as I came up here, I do not think I am as yet in any great danger.
"Therefore, my dear, do not worry too much about your father's situation. At the very moment you are worrying he may be eating supper, or hobnobbing with a party of very courteous and hospitable ranch owners, or fishing in a neighboring brook where the trout are as hungry as shoats at feeding time, or otherwise enjoying himself.
"And so, now, to you and your letter which reached me by one of my messengers from Juarez, by whom I shall send this reply. Yes, I knew you would find yourself among a people as strange to you as though they were inhabitants of another planet. Relatives though they are, they are so much different from our friends in and about Greensboro, that I can understand their being a perfect shock to you.