d himself "worked to a frazzle" and he
disappeared immediately after the noon meal, for fear Janice would find
something more for him to do.

"Wal, child, it does look nice," admitted Aunt Almira, coming to view
the front yard. "And you do have a way with Marty."

"Just the same," giggled Janice, "he doesn't like girls."

"Sho, child! he doesn't know _what_ he likes--a boy like him," returned
her aunt.

Sunday was a rainy day, and Janice felt her spirits falling again. It
really rained too hard at church time for her to venture out; but she
saw that her relatives seldom put themselves out to attend church,
anyway. Walky Dexter appeared in an oilskin-covered cart, drawn by
Josephus (who actually looked water-soaked and dripped from every
angle), delivering the Sunday papers, which came up from the city. The
family gave up most of their time all day to the gaudy magazine
supplements and the so-called "funny sections" which were a part of
these sheets.

Janice finally retired to her depressing bedroom and wrote a long
letter to her father which she tried to make cheerful, but into which
crept a note of loneliness and disappointment. It wasn't just like
talking to Daddy himself; but it seemed to help some.

It enabled her, too, to write shorter letters to friends back in
Greensboro and she managed to hide from them much of her homesickness.
She could write of the beauty of Poketown itself; for it _was_
beautiful. It was only the people who were so--well! so _different_.

Janice welcomed Monday morning. Although she had nearly completed her
junior year at the Greensboro High School, and knew that she would not
gain much help from Miss Scattergood, the girl loved study and she
hoped that the Poketown girls would prove to be better companions than
they had appeared when she had visited the school.

So she started for the old red schoolhouse in quite a cheerful frame of
mind, in spite of Marty's prophecy that "she'd soon git sick o' that
old maid." It was not Miss Scattergood that Janice had reason to be
"sick of!" The stranger in Poketown had to admit before the day was
over that she had never in her life dreamed of such ill-bred girls as
some of these who occupied the back seats in 'Rill Scattergood's school.

They had no respect for the little school-teacher, and had Miss
Scattergood taken note of all their follies she must have been in a
pitched battle with her older pupils all the time. Some of these
i