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Janice Day the Young Homemaker By: Helen Beecher Long |
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Janice Day, The Young Homemaker by Helen Beecher Long
CHAPTER I. WHEN MOTHER WAS A GIRL "Why, that is Arlo Junior. What can he be doing out of doors so
early? And look at those cats following him. Did you ever!"
Janice Day stared wonderingly from her front bedroom window at
the boy crossing the street in the dim pre dawn light, with a cat
and three half grown kittens gamboling about him. Occasionally
Arlo Junior would shake something out of a paper to the ground
and the cats would immediately roll and frolic and slap playfully
at one another, acting as the girl had never seen cats act
before. The pleasantly situated cottage belonging to Mr. Broxton Day
stood almost directly across the way from the Arlo Weeks' place
on Knight Street. Therefore Janice often said that, "the days
and nights and weeks are very close together!" Knight Street, as level as the palm of one's hand, led straight
into Greensboro, where it crossed Market and Hammond Streets,
making the Six Corners actually the heart of the business
district of this thriving mid western town. The Day cottage was a mile and a half from the Six Corners and
the Farmers & Merchants Bank in which Mr. Broxton Day held an
important salaried position. Besides his house and his situation
in the bank, Mr. Day considered another of his possessions very
important indeed, although he did not list it when he made out
his tax return. This that he so highly valued possessed the very brightest hazel
eyes in the world, wore a wealth of free brown hair in two plaits
over her shoulders, and was of a slender figure without bordering
upon that unfortunate "skinniness" which nature abhors as she
does a vacuum. Janice possessed, also, even teeth that flashed when she smiled
(and she smiled often), a pink and white complexion that the sun
was bound to freckle if she was not careful, and a cheerful,
demure expression of countenance that went a long way toward
making her good to look upon, if not actually good looking. In a spick and span blue checked bungalow apron, she stood at her
window just as Dawn swept a brush of partially hued color across
the eastern horizon. Having had it in her mind when she went to
bed the night before to arise early, she had of course awakened
long before it was really time to get up to make sure that daddy,
for once, got a proper breakfast. For the Days, father and daughter, were dependent on hired
service, and such service in the form of Olga Cedarstrom was
about as incapable and stupid as fate had yet produced. Having caught the first glimpse of that mischievous youngster,
Arlo Weeks, Junior, with the cats, Janice raised her window
softly as far as the lower sash would go, to peer out at the
strange procession. The boy and the cats entered the Day's side
gate and disappeared around the comer of the kitchen ell. "Now! what can that rascal be about? If he does anything to
bother Olga there will be trouble. And everything here goes
crossways enough now, without Arlo Junior adding to it, I
declare!" Janice could very clearly remember when the cottage had been a
real home instead of "just a place to stay"; for her mother had
been dead only a year. The experiences of that year had been
trying, both for the sorrowing widower and the girl who had been
her mother's close companion and confidant. Janice was old enough and well trained enough in domestic affairs
to have kept house very nicely for her father. But she had to go
to school, of course; an education was the most important thing
in the world for her. And the kind of help that came into the
Days' kitchen often balked at being "bossed by a slip of a
gur r rl," as one recent incumbent of the position had said. Olga Cedarstrom was stupid and often cross in the morning; and
she was careless and slatternly in her ways. But she did not
object when Janice came down early to get her father's breakfast,
and serve it daintily, as her mother had taught her... Continue reading book >>
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Genres for this book |
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Fiction |
Literature |
Teen/Young adult |
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