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.

Only, Olga could not be taught to do these things. She did not
want to learn. She said she had a "fella" and would be married