The sloop swept majestically between the old wharf and the pine wood where the echo "lived."
"Now, Janice!" urged Lottie, "shout again. Call a name my echo doesn't know."
And Janice, still smiling, cried aloud:
"Daddy! Daddy!"
No repetition of the call came back from the wall of pine wood. Lottie seized her friend's hand almost in fear.
"Oh! he doesn't answer! He doesn't know your father, Janice Day." Then, awestruck, she put a question that stabbed Janice to the quick: "Do—do you suppose anything real bad has happened to your father 'way down there in Mexico?"
Afterwards, Janice realized that the big sail of the sloop, flattened as it crossed between the wharf and the distant wood, had caught her voice and held it, echoless. Nevertheless the odd occurrence engendered in her heart a fear of impending peril. She began to worry again about Broxton Day. She counted the days that must elapse before she could possibly hear from her father in reply to the letter she had written about her Uncle Jason's difficulties.
The Day homestead on Hillside Avenue no longer housed a happy and contented family. It grew very difficult for Janice, even, to be cheerful. And Marty positively seemed to have lost his whistle. Janice tried her best to don a sprightly air; but she observed her uncle and aunt and Marty sometimes whispering together and watching her; and this made her feel uncomfortable.
"Daddy" usually wrote his beloved daughter a weekly letter. Sometimes it was delayed a day or so because the ore train was delayed out of Alderdice to San Cristoval. So, when the expected letter did not arrive with the maximum of speed Janice was patient.
"I just won't let that old echo foolishness get on my nerves," she told herself firmly. "I am not superstitious—I won't be!"