"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.

At the corner of High Street, where the lane led back to the stables of the Lake View Inn, Janice Day stopped suddenly, startled by an eruption of sound from around an elbow of the lane-a volley of voices, cat-calls, and ear-splitting whistles which shattered Polktown's usual afternoon somnolence. One youthful imitator expelled a laugh like the bleating of a goat: "Na-ha-ha-ha Ho Jim Nar-ha-nay There's a brick in your hat " Another shout of laugher and a second boy exclaimed: "Look out, old feller You'll spill it "

Some ancient dwellings have the dignity of "homestead" resting upon them like a benediction; others are aureoled by the name of "manor." The original Day in Poketown had built a shingled, gable-ended cottage upon the side-hill which had now, for numberless years, been called "the old Day house"-nothing more.

"He don't look right and he don't sleep right," complained Aunt Almira Day, swinging to and fro ponderously in one of the porch rockers and fanning herself vigorously with a folded copy of the Fireside Favorite. "If it wasn't for his puttin' away jest as many victuals as usual I'd sartain sure think he was sickenin' for something." "Oh I hope Uncle Jason isn't going to be ill," Janice said sympathetically. "He has always seemed so rugged."