Janice Day, the Young Homemaker
Page 4
CHAPTER IV. MORE TROUBLES THAN ONE
Janice dreaded to have this new houseworker look into that backkitchen and see its condition. What Olga had done with the softcoal ammunition was enough to make Delia depart before she hadeven taken up her new duties.
Yet Janice shrank from cleaning the room herself. She had a lotof home work to do for school, and she would have to show the newgirl, too, just where everything was kept and what was expectedof her.
Fortunately the dinner-getting would be a simple matter. Therewas a roast already prepared for the oven, potatoes and anothervegetable, and a salad. The latter were in the house. Olga hadbeen no dessert maker, but there were canned pears in therefrigerator and some baker's cake (Daddy called it "sweetenedsawdust") in the cupboard.
The girl would have to be told about these things. Fortunatelythey had not begun to use the summer kitchen as yet. It was truethat Olga had only the day before cleaned the place, as well asshe knew how, in preparation for the approaching warm weather.
But to put things to rights in that room again, and to remove alltraces of the bombardment of the cats, would take half a day ormore. And Janice Day shrank from the use of the scrubbing brushand strong soda-water.
She decided that the back kitchen could not be cleaned thisafternoon. She put on her bungalow apron and took the salad fromthe icebox where it had lain on the ice in a cheesecloth bag.She usually prepared the salad herself, for daddy was fond of itand most of the itinerant help they had had considered "grassonly fit for horses and cows."
She was decanting the oil, drop by drop, into the salad dressingwhen Delia appeared in the kitchen. There was one good pointabout the giantess; her face and hands looked as though they werefamiliar with soap and water. She had removed the ruffledmonstrosity and had put on a more simple frock. It did not serveto make her look less ungainly; but nevertheless it, likewise,was clean.
"Are you doing the cooking?" asked the new incumbent, her weak,squeaky voice quite above high C. "An' do I help you?"
"I am fixing the salad because my father likes it prepared in acertain way. I will show you what, else there is to do, Delia."
Janice spoke in rather a grown-up way because she had had so muchexperience with a class of houseworkers only too willing to takeadvantage of her youth and inexperience.
"Isn't that nice!" sighed Delia, with her rather, foolish smile.
Janice wondered whether the woman was making fun of her, or ifshe was quite as silly as she appeared. But if Delia would onlydo the work and do it half-way right, Janice told herself she didnot care if Delia was actually an idiot. At least the new girlseemed good-natured.
And she was not all thumbs! But Janice stuffed the end of akitchen towel into her mouth more than once to stifle her giggleswhen she chanced to think Of how daddy would look when he caughthis first glimpse of the gigantic Delia.
When the vegetables were peeled and on the stove, and the roastwas cooking in the covered roaster, Janice led Delia through thelower part of the house. She tried to explain what there was todo on the morrow when Delia would be alone all day, with daddy atbusiness and herself at school.
"Yes, ma'am," said Delia, after each item was explained. "Andthen what do I do?"
Her vacant face advertised to all beholders that she promptlyforgot what she was told. One particular formula for work drovethe previously explained item immediately out of Delia's head.
"Isn't it a nice house?" was her final whistling comment as theycame back to the kitchen. "And where does this door lead?"
She opened the back kitchen door. She stared at thecoal-littered floor, at the streaked and smutted walls, at theoverturned chairs and a broken flower-pot or two that had come toruin during the bombardment.
"Sure! whativer struck the place?" asked Delia in her high,squeaking voice. "What happened?"
Janice told her. Delia shook her head and slowly closed thedoor--slowly but firmly. "If folks will hire them Swedes, 'tisall they can expect," was her comment.
There was a finality to this that was uncanny. Janice becamesure, right then and there, that Mrs. Bridget Burns would neverclear up the wreck Olga Cedarstrom had made of the back kitchen.The girl wished with all her heart that she had boxed ArloJunior's ears harder.
Miss Peckham, her sharp chin hung upon the top rail of theboundary fence, called Janice just before daddy came home. Asthe Day house was on the corner of Love Street, Miss Peckham wasthe nearest neighbor.
She was a weazened little woman, with very sharp black eyes, whohad assumed the censorship of the neighborhood years before.Living alone with her cats and Ambrose, her parrot, Miss Peckhamrigidly adhered to the harshest precepts of spinsterhood.
Even Janice could understand that Miss Peckham considered daddynot at all fit to bring up, or have the sole care of, a daughter,and that Mr. Broxton Day was not to be altogether trusted.
Miss Peckham's nature overflowed with tenderness toward animals,and it was regarding one of her pets she now called to Janiceabout.
"You haven't seen him, have you, Janice? You haven't seen mySam?"
"Your Sam?" murmured Janice, rather non-plussed for the moment."You don't mean the dog you bought of the butcher, do you, MissPeckham?"
"No, indeed. That's Cicero. But Sam, the cat. He's got blackand yellow on him, Janice. You've seen him, I know."
And suddenly Janice remembered that she had seen him. He had beenone of those cats tolled into the back kitchen by Arlo Junior.Worse than all, Sam was the cat Olga Cedarstrom had hurt with alump of coal. She remembered that he was the last to escape whenshe opened the kitchen door, dragging his injured leg behind him.
How could Janice tell her of this awful thing that had happenedto Sam? The poor cat had probably dragged himself off into somesecret place to lick his wounds --to die, perhaps.
"You've seen him! I know you have, Janice Day," cried the shrewdmaiden lady. "What have you done to poor Sam?"
"Why, Miss Peckham! I haven't done a thing to him," declaredJanice
Miss Peckham, however, had read the girl's face aright. She sawthat Janice knew something about the missing cat.
"You tell me what you know!" she stormed, her clawlike handsshaking the top rail of the fence. "I wouldn't trust none of youyoung ones in this neighborhood. You are always up to somecapers."
"But really, honestly, I haven't done a thing to your Sam,"Janice said, shrinking from telling all she knew about theinjured animal.
"You know where he is?" Miss Peckham accused.
"Oh, I don't, either."
"When did you see him last?" probed the other, sharply.
"This--this morning."
"What time this morning?" "Before breakfast. Early," gasped Janice, wondering what shewould say next.
"Humph! Something funny about the way you answer," said thesuspicious spinster. "where was Sam when you saw him thatearly?"
"Running across our back yard," Janice gasped, telling the exacttruth--but no more.
"Ha!" exploded the other, "What made him run?"
After all, Janice Day did not want to "tell on" Arlo Junior.Arlo Junior was the child of all others in the neighborhood whomMiss Peckham carried on guerrilla warfare with. She hadthreatened to go to the police station and have Arlo Juniorlocked up the very next time he crossed her path in a mischievousway.
Janice knew that Miss Peckham was a very active member of theSociety for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and if she knewthat Arlo Junior had been in any way connected with Sam's injury,she would be all the more bitter toward the young rascal.
And really, after all, it was Olga Cedarstrom who had hurt thecat. But to tell Miss Peckham that, and how it all came about,would do little to pacify the spinster. So Janice kept silent.It seemed to her that she had gone about as far in the path ofdeceit as she could go.
"You saw him running; what made him run?" repeated Miss Peckham.
"He--he was frightened, I guess, Miss Peckham. There were otherc
ats. It was early this morning before anybody else was uparound here. The cats all ran out of our yard."
"And I warrant you'd done something to make 'em run," declaredthe tart-tongued neighbor. "Oh, I know all you young ones aroundhere. You ain't no better than the rest of 'em, Janice Day."
"Oh, Miss Peckham!" murmured the girl.
"And if I find out that you done something outrageous to thosecats--to my Sam, 'specially--it'll be the sorriest day of yourlife. Now, you see if 'tisn't!"
She turned and flounced into her house. Janice came slowly backto the kitchen door where she found the new houseworker franklylistening.
"Guess she's a sharper, ain't she?" squeaked the woman. "Well, Iwon't tell her 'bout the cats in the back kitchen. But o'course, if folks will hire them Swede--"