up at the Inn, there had been through this Winter a
considerable stream of visitors. And it was expected that the Inn, as
well as every house that took boarders in the town, would be well
patronized during the coming Summer.

To Janice Day the Winter had been lovely. She had been very busy.
Well had she fulfilled her own tenet of "Do Something." In service she
found continued joy. Janice loved Polktown, and almost everybody in
Polktown loved her.

At least, everybody knew her, and when these young rascals trailing the
drunken man spied the accusing countenance of Janice they fell back in
confusion. She was thankful her cousin Marty was not one of them; yet
several, she knew, belonged to the boys' club, the establishment of
which had led to the opening of Polktown's library and free
reading-room. However, the boys pursued Tim Narnay no farther. They
slunk back into the lane, and finally, with shrill whoops and laughter,
disappeared. The besotted man stood wavering on the curbstone,
undecided, it seemed, upon his future course.

Janice would have passed on. The appearance of the fellow merely
shocked and disgusted her. Her experience of drunkenness and with
drinking people, had been very slight indeed. Gossip's tongue was busy
with the fact that several weak or reckless men now hung about the Lake
View Inn more than was good for them; and Janice saw herself that some
boys had taken to loafing here. But nobody in whom she was vitally
interested seemed in danger of acquiring the habit of using liquor just
because Lem Parraday sold it.

The ladies of the sewing society of the Union Church missed "Marm"
Parraday's brown face and vigorous tongue. It was said that she
strongly disapproved of the change at the Inn, but Lem had overruled
her for once.

"And, poor woman!" thought Janice now, "if she has to see such sights
as this about the Inn, I don't wonder that she is ashamed."

The train of her thought was broken at the moment, and her footsteps
stayed. Running across the street came a tiny girl, on whose bare head
the Spring sunshine set a crown of gold. Such a wealth of tangled,
golden hair Janice had never before seen, and the flowerlike face
beneath it would have been very winsome indeed had it been clean.

She was a neglected-looking little creature; her patched clothing
needed repatching, her face and hands were begrimed, and----

"Goodness only knows when there was ever a comb in that hair!" sig