"Do you believe she can?" asked the schoolmaster, rather startled.
"Why not?" was Hopewell's response. "She has never yet, to my knowledge, failed in anything she has set out to do."
This statement furnished Nelson with another positive shock. Not for a moment had he considered that Janice would accomplish what she had set about doing. It seemed impossible to his mind that a mere girl could get into Mexico and return again with her wounded father. Yet here was Hopewell Drugg implicitly believing in her ultimate success!
Mrs. Scattergood buzzed like a very cross bumblebee. She seemed only too glad that Janice had done something to shock Polktown.
"Wal! what could you expect from a gal that's allus had her own way an' been allowed to go ahead an' boss things the way Janice Day has? I don't approve of these new-fashioned gals. What diff'rent could ye expec'?"
"That's a fac'," agreed Marm Parraday, who chanced to be the recipient of this opinion. "Ye could expec' Janice Day to do just what she done—an' I tell 'em all so. She ain't no namby-pamby, Susie-Sozzles sort of a gal—no, ma'am!
"Lem says he doesn't see how she found the pluck to do it. But it didn't s'prise me none, Miz' Scattergood. A gal that's done what Janice Day has for, and in, Polktown is jest as able to do things down there in Mexico."
"Why, haow you talk!" gasped Mrs. Scattergood, finding to her amazement that the hotel-keeper's wife did not at all agree with her opinion of Janice. "She's nothin' but a gal. In aour day——"
"Ye-as, I know," admitted Marm Parraday. "When we was gals women's rights and women's doin's warn't much hearn tell on. Still, Miz' Scattergood, I wasn't so meek as I know on. But mebbe, women was mostly chattels—like horses an'—an' chickens. But if that was so, that day's gone by, thanks be! An' it's gone by in Polktown a deal because of this same Janice Day. Oh, yes! I know what she's done here, an' all about it. Mebbe she didn't know she was a-doin' of it. But if Polktown ever erects a statue to the one person more than another that 'woke it up, it'll hafter be the figger of jest a gal, with a strapful o' schoolbooks in one hand, the other hand held out friendly-like, and that queer, sweetenin' little smile of Janice on its face."
Yes, Janice and what she had done was the single topic of conversation all over town that night. Those who knew her best did not call her mission a "silly, child's trick." Oh, no, indeed!