shirt on--and straw cuffs, too--and a
necktie! My goodness me! And the hotel keeper really looks as though his
wife cared a little about his appearance. And Ben Hutchins wears whole
boots now, and has washed his face, and had a shave.

"I must admit they don't look so much like a delegation from the
poorfarm as they did the day. I came in on the _Constance Colfax_. There
has been a change in Poketown--there most certainly _has_ been a
change!" and the girl laughed delightedly.

It was marked everywhere. It even seemed to Janice as though people whom
she met on the street stepped quicker than they once had!

Janice knew she had given her own folks--Uncle Jason, and Aunt 'Mira,
and Cousin Marty--a push or two in the right direction. She had helped
Hopewell Drugg, too; and maybe she had instigated the waking up of
several other people. But not for a moment did she realize--healthy,
thoughtless girl that she was--how much Poketown owed to her on Clean-Up
Day.

That was one great occasion in the old town. Although the selectmen had
allowed two days in which the farmers' wagons were to cart away the
rubbish for the householders, the removal men had hard work to fill
their contract.

Some curbs were piled shoulder high with boxes of ashes, old bedsprings,
broken furniture, decayed mattresses, yard rakings, unsightly pots and
pans hidden away for decades in mouldy cellars--debris of so many kinds
that it would be impossible to catalogue it!

For two days, also, hundreds of rubbish fires burned, and the taint of
the smoke seemed to saturate every part of Poketown. Janice declared
that all the food on the supper table at the Day house seemed to have
been "slightly scorched."

"By jinks!" declared Marty, gobbling his supper with an appetite that
never seemed to lag. "I bet I burned three wagon-loads of stuff 'sides
what I set outside on the street for 'em to take away. No use talkin',
Dad, you got ter build a new pen and yard for the shoats."

"Whuffor?" demanded his father, eyeing him slowly.

"'Cause the old boards and rails was so rotten that I jest burned 'em
up," declared his son. "You know folks could see it from the street, an'
it looked untidy."

"Wa-al," drawled Uncle Jason, with only half a sigh.

Janice could scarcely keep from clapping her hands, this so delighted
her. She compared this with some of the conversation at the Day table
soon after the time she had arrived in Poketown!

CHAPTER XXVIII