"Yes'm. That's why he couldn't take me with him," confessed Janice, eager to talk with a sympathetic listener. "You see, I guess 'most all the money we've got is invested in some mine down there. The fighting came near the mine, and the superintendent ran away and left everything."
"Goodness! why wouldn't he?" exclaimed the old lady, knitting faster than ever in her excitement.
"But then that made it so my father had to go down there and 'tend to things," explained Janice.
"What! right in the middle of the war? Good Land o' Goshen!"
"There wasn't anybody else to go," said Janice, sadly. "The stockholders might lose all they put into it. And our money, too. Why! we had to rent our house furnished. That's why I am coming East to Uncle Jason's while father is away."
"Too bad! too bad!" returned the old lady, shaking her head.
"But you see," Janice hastened to say, with pride, "my father is that kind of a man. The other folks expected him to take hold of the business and straighten it out. He—he's always doing such things, you know."
"I see," agreed Mrs. Scattergood. "He's one o' these 'up an' comin' sort o' men. And you're his darter!" and she cackled a little, shrill laugh. "I kin see that. You're one o' these new-fashioned gals, all right."
"I hope I'm like Daddy," said Janice, quietly. "Everybody loves Daddy—everybody depends on him to go ahead and do things. I hope Uncle Jason will be like him."
With the light breeze fluttering the little crinkles of hair between her hat and her brow, and an expression of bright expectancy upon her face, Janice was worth looking at a second time. So Mrs. Scattergood thought, as she glanced up now and again from her knitting.