CHAPTER III. DELIA
In spite of her anxiety Janice fixed her mind upon herrecitations with her usual success. During the past few monthsso many, many things had happened to trouble the home pool thatthe girl was pretty well used to seeing it ruffled.
"Help" came and went at the Day cottage on Knight Street in aprocession of incompetents. Some incumbents of the domesticsituation remained but a week. Olga Cedarstrom had been longerthan any in Mr. Day's employ.
Often, when they were without a girl, Janice had spent herSaturday holiday trying to clean house and set things to rights,and when daddy had come home from the bank he had donned akitchen apron and helped.
The house was by no means kept as it had been when Mrs. Day wasalive. For she had been a trained housewife, and she knew how tomake the domestic help do the work properly.
Now there was dust under the furniture and in the corners. Potsand pans were grimy. Because of the rough methods of cleaningpursued by Olga, the baseboards of the kitchen were streaked witha "high-tide" mark of soapy water.
The stove and the gas range were smeared with grease. Scarcely acooking utensil but was sticky. The silver went unpolished. Theyolk of egg ("the very stickingest thing there was" Janicedeclared,) could be found on the edges of plates and spoons.
And the laundry! The "wet wash," the "flat work" laundry, andthe complete service laundry were all only a little worse thanthe attempts of the hired help to wash clothes properly.
Bed and table linen wore out twice as fast as it should, Janiceknew. Nobody would wash and turn socks and stockings as theyshould be washed and turned. Fruit stains were never removed.
Either the girls used kerosene in boiling the clothes and theodor of it clung to them even after they were laid away in thebureau drawers, or she threw chloride of lime into the waterwhich ate holes in the various fabrics. Mother used to makeJavelle water to whiten the clothes, but Janice did not know howit was made, nor had she time to make it.
Indeed, with school-closing in the offing and lessons andexaminations getting harder and harder, the girl scarcely hadtime to keep her own clothing neat and mended. She knew thatright now daddy was wearing socks with holes in them.
So, when her mind was not fixed upon her lessons, it was notlikely that even Stella Latham's birthday party occupied much ofJanice's thought. She started home from school as soon as shewas released, considering if she could get the back kitchencleaned up before it was time to get supper for daddy. The lumpsof soft coal Olga Cedarstrom had thrown at the cats had made anawful mess of the place, Janice very well knew.
As she turned the corner into Knight Street there was Arlo Weeks,Junior, just ahead of her. Arlo Junior, the cause of themorning's trouble! Arlo Junior, the cause of Olga's leaving theDays in the lurch! More, Arlo Junior, who was the spring ofJanice Day's deeper trouble, for if it had not been for thatmischievous wight, Olga Cedarstrom could not have run off withthe treasure-box!
Arlo Junior had black, curly hair like his father. He hadsnapping brown eyes, too, and was quick and nervous in hismovements. Of all the Weeks' children (Daddy said there was a"raft" of them!) Arlo Junior was the worst behaved. He wasforever in trouble.
To report him to his parents was just like shooting cannon ballsinto a stack of feathers. His mother, tall, cadaverous, and ofcomplaining voice and manner, only declared:
"He's too much for me. I tell Arlo that Junior ought to belocked up, or handcuffed, or something. And that's all the goodit does."
To complain to Mr. Weeks of his namesake was quite asunsatisfactory.
"What? The young rascal!" Mr. Weeks would emphatically say."Arlo did that? Well, I tell you what. If you catch him at anyof his tricks, you thrash him. That's what you do--thrash him!You have my full permission to punish him as though he were yourown boy. That's the only way to deal with a rascal like him."
So, you see, both parents shed responsibility, both for ArloJunior's mischief and punishment, just as easily as a duck shedsrainwater. Under these circumstances,Arlo Junior usually went without punishment, no matter what hedid.
And here he was, swaggering along the walk with some of hismates, hilariously telling them, perhaps, of how he had tolledall the cats of the neighborhood into the Days' back kitchen.
Janice Day was a very human girl indeed. The thought of Junior'strick and all it had brought about made her very, very angry.She rushed right into the group of boys, all fully as big as shewas, soundly boxed Arlo Weeks' ears, and just as many times asshe could do so before he outran her and left her, panting andstill wrathful, on the curb.
The other boys backed away, leaving Arlo Junior to fight his ownbattle--or run, if that seemed to him the part of wisdom, asevidently it had.
"I hope that will teach you to bring cats into our kitchen, ArloJunior!" Janice cried after him.
"No, 'twon't," declared the boy, rubbing the ear that hadreceived the greater number of her blows. "I knew how to do itbefore, didn't I? My, Janice Day! but you can slam a fella."
"I wish I could hurt you more," declared the girl. "You've mademe enough trouble."
She marched on, leaving the scattered crowd of urchins to gatheragain about Arlo Junior, but now in a scoffing rather than in anadmiring crowd. The bubble of Arlo Junior's conceit had beenpunctured. He had been whipped by a girl!
"Now," thought Janice, as she went along home, "I would not wantDaddy to know I did that. Fighting a boy on the street! I guessMiss Peckham, who is always peering through her blinds at what Ido, if she had seen me would be sure to say I was misbehavingbecause I had no mother to make me mind. As though I wouldn'tbehave just as well for Daddy as I used to for dear mother!
"Only I haven't really behaved very well to-day," she went on,reviewing the matter to herself. "I don't care! Yes, I do too!No matter what Arlo Weeks, Junior, did, I oughtn't to have foughthim on the street like that. Oh, dear!" mused the girl, "I don'tknow whether I am sorry I hit Arlo Junior or am sorry that I'mnot sorry. It's awfully confusing."
She choked back a sob, dashed the tears from her eyes, andsuddenly saw that the hazy object she had been looking at for thepast minute was really a human figure squatting on the side porchsteps of the Day's cottage.
"Why! who can that be?" thought Janice Day, staring with all hermight at the odd-looking creature perched thus on the steps, witha bulging old-fashioned black oilcloth bag beside her.
It was a woman in a cheap, homemade calico dress, and with rowsupon rows of flounces on the skirt. She sat on thenext-to-the-top step of the porch while her shoes were plantedflat-footed on the walk. She was very short-waisted, while herlimbs, accentuated by the model of the flounced skirt seemedenormously long.
Indeed, she looked like the halves of two people mysteriouslyglued together. Her nether limbs without doubt belonged to agiantess; her body although broad and sturdy, was almostdwarflike. Her arms were very short.
Above this strange figure was a fat, baby-like face, withstaring, light-blue eyes and whisps of straw-colored hair laidflat to her, head under a close fitting hat.
"It's another one," groaned Janice, her heart sinking. "I knowshe must be from the intelligence office, because--well--shelooks so unintelligent, I guess!"
Janice opened the gate and approached the ungainly womandoubtfully. Surely daddy could not have seen her before hiringthis very peculiar-looking person. He must have accepted herservices over the telephone, and "sight, unseen."
The newly hired girl wreathed her flabby face in a vacuous smile.She bobbed up from her seat, bringing the oilcloth bag with her,and towering over Janice Day in a most startling manner.
"How-de-do! I guess you are after bein' Mr. Day's little girl,heh?"
The voice from the giantess made Janice jump. It was high andsquealing, like a bat's voice; and some people's ears are notattuned to the bat's cry and cannot hear it at all.
"Ye-es. I am Janice Day," admitted the girl.
"Well," squealed the newcomer, "I'm the
lady your paw sent up todo the work. You're a right pretty little girl, ain't you?"
Janice ignored this bit of flattery as she mounted the steps anddrew forth the door key.
"What is your name, please?" she asked the woman.
"Why, I'll tell you," said the other in a most confidential tone,blundering up the steps after Janice and stooping to get her lipsnear the girl's ear. "My real name is Mrs. Bridget Burns; but myfriends all call me Delia. I don't like 'Bridget.' Would youmind callin' me Delia, or else Mrs. Burns, heh?"
"I think father would prefer to call you by your first name,"Janice said, trying not to show her surprise and amusement. "Wewill call you Delia if that pleases you."
"You're a real nice little girl, I can see that," said Delia,with a huge sigh of satisfaction, following Janice, bag and all,into the house.
Janice led the way up the back stairs to the girl's room. It wasjust as Olga had left it--as untidy and "mussed up" as ever aroom was.
Delia uttered a high, nasal ejaculation. "I guess your last girlwasn't very clean," she said. "Who was she?"
"She was a Swede," Janice replied wearily.
"Heh! Them Swedes!" sniffed Delia, voicing a pronounced nationalprejudice.
"She left in a hurry," Janice explained. "She--she got mad. Oneof the neighbor's boys played a trick on her and she left."
"Ye don't be tellin' me? Couldn't she spank the boy? Sure, 'tisno sinse them foreigners has."
"I hope you will not take offense so easily," Janice rejoined."Here is clean linen for your bed. We send the flat work to thelaundry. There is a broom and carpet sweeper in the storeroom,and plenty of dust cloths. You would better put your own room inorder first. Then you can come down and I will show you aboutgetting dinner."
"Sure, you is very young to be so knowin' about housework. Isyour mother dead?"
"Yes."
"I didn't know but she'd gone off and left you and your
paw," observed this strange creature, "So many of them be's doin'that now."
"Oh!" gasped the girl.
"So that's why your paw did the hirin' through Murphy's Agency!Well, I like to work where there's no lady boss," said Delia."You and me is goin' to get on fine."
Janice wondered if that were so. In no very enthusiastic frameof mind, she descended the stairs to put away her hat and coatand to place her books on the table in the living room.