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[Illustration: The quick eye of Janice Day caught sight of this row of nondescripts. (See page 15.)]
VII. THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LOST THE ECHO 64
The quick eye of Janice Day caught sight of this row of nondescripts. (See page 15.) _Frontispiece_
The old violin wailed out the tune haltingly 72
God's world _did_ look bigger and greater from The Overlook. (See page 155.) 154
She just _had_ to raise her eyes and look into his earnest ones. (See page 307.) 306
"Well! this is certainly a relief from the stuffy old cars," said Janice Day, as she reached the upper deck of the lake steamer, dropped her suitcase, and drew in her first full breath of the pure air.
"What a beautiful lake!" she went on. "And how big! Why--I had no idea! I wonder how far Poketown is from here?"
The ancient sidewheel steamer was small and there were few passengers on the upper deck, forward. Janice secured a campstool and sat down near the rail to look off over the water.
The officious man in the blue cap on the dock had shouted "All aboard!" the moment the passengers left the cars of the little narrow-gauge railroad, on which the girl had been riding for more than two hours; but it was some minutes before the wheezy old steamer got under way.
Janice was interested in everything she saw--even in the clumsy warping off of the _Constance Colfax_, when her hawsers were finally released.
"Goodness me!" thought the girl, chuckling, "what a ridiculous old tub it is! How different everything East here is from Greensboro. There! we're really off!"
The water hissed and splashed, as the wheels of the steamer began to turn rheumatically. The walking-beam heaved up and down with many a painful creak.
"Why! _that_ place is real pretty--when you look at it from the lake," murmured Janice, looking back at the little landing. "I wonder if Poketown will be like it?"
She looked about her, half tempted to ask a question of somebody. There was but a single passenger near her--a little, old lady in an old-fashioned black mantilla with jet trimming, and wearing black lace half-mitts and a little bonnet that had been so long out of date that it was almost in the mode again.