le. "But us'ally the Days ain't in no hurry."

"Then this is one Day who is in a hurry," she said, briefly. "What is
your charge for delivering the trunk, sir?"

"Oh--'bout a quarter, Miss. And gimme that suitcase, too. 'Twon't
cost ye no more, and I'll git 'em there before Jason and you reach the
house. Poketown is a purty slow old place, Miss," the man added, with
a wink and a chuckle, "but I kin see the _days_ are going to move
faster, now you have arove in town. Don't you fear; your trunk'll be
there--'nless Josephus, here, busts a leg!"

Quite stunned, Uncle Jason had not moved from his tracks. "Now we're
all right, sir," said the girl, cheerily, taking his arm and by her
very touch seeming to galvanize a little life into his scarecrow
figure. "Shall we go home?"

"Eh? Wal! Ef ye say so, Janice," replied Mr. Day, weakly.

They started up the main street of Poketown, Janice accommodating her
step to that of her uncle. Mr. Day was not one given to idle chatter;
but the girl did not notice his silence in her interest in all she saw.

It was a beautiful, shady way, with the hill not too steep for comfort.
And some of the dwellings set in the midst of their terraced old lawns,
were so beautiful! It was the beauty of age, however; there did not
seem to be a single _new_ thing in Poketown.

Even the scant display of goods in the shop windows had lain there
until they were dust-covered, sun-burned, and flyspecked. The signs
over the store doors were tarnished.

They came to the lane that led up the hill away from High Street, and
on which Uncle Jason said he lived. An almost illegible sign at the
corner announced it to be "Hillside Avenue." There were not two fences
abutting upon the lane that were set in line, while the sidewalks were
narrow or broad, according to the taste of the several owners of
property along the way.

The beautiful old trees were everywhere, however; only some of them
needed trimming badly, and many overhung the roofs, their dripping
branches having rotted the shingles and given life to great patches of
green moss. There was a sogginess to the grass-grown yards that seemed
unhealthful. There were several, picturesque, old wells, with massive
sweeps and oaken buckets--quaint breeders of typhoid germs--which
showed that the physicians of Poketown had not properly educated their
patients to modern sanitary ideas.

Altogether the village in which her father had been born and b