"Darling, I am growing old, Silver threads among the gold----"
The old violin wailed out the tune haltingly. The deaf and blind child caught the tremulo of the final notes, and she danced up and down and clapped her little hands.
"I can hear that! I can hear that!" she muttered, her lips writhing to form the sounds.
Janice felt the tears suddenly blinding her. "I'll come back and see you again--indeed I will!" she said, brokenly, and hugging and kissing little Lottie impetuously, she released her and ran out of the ugly, dark little store.
It is doubtful if Hopewell Drugg even heard her. The violin was still wailing away, while he searched out slowly the minor notes of the old, old song.
[Illustration: The old violin wailed out the tune haltingly.]
"Hopewell Drugg? Ya-as," drawled Aunt Almira. "He keeps store 'crosstown. He's had bad luck, Hopewell has. His wife's dead--she didn't live long after Lottie was born; and Lottie--poor child!--must be eight or nine year old."
"Poor little thing!" sighed Janice, who had come home to find her aunt just beginning her desultory preparations for supper, and had turned in to help. "It is so pitiful to see and hear her. Does she live all alone there with her father?"
"I reckon Hopewell don't do business enough so's he could hire a housekeeper. They tell me he an' the child live in a reg'lar mess! Ain't fittin' for a man to keep house by hisself, nohow; and of course Lottie can't do much of nothing."
"Is he an old man?" queried Janice. "I couldn't see his face very well."
"Lawsy! he ain't what you'd call old--no," said Aunt 'Mira. "Now, let me see; he married 'Cinda Stone when he warn't yit thirty. There was some talk of him an' 'Rill Scattergood bein' sweet on each other onc't; but that was twenty year ago, I do b'lieve.
"Howsomever, if there _was_ anythin' betwixt Hopewell and 'Rill, I reckon her mother broke up the match. Mis' Scattergood never had no use for them Druggs. She said they was dreamers and never did amount to nothin'. Mis' Scattergood's allus been re'l masterful."
Janice nodded. She could imagine that the birdlike old lady she had met on the boat could be quite assertive if she so chose.
"Anyhow," said Aunt 'Mira, reflectively, "Hopewell stopped shinin' about 'Rill all of a sudden. That was the time Mis' Scattergood was widdered an' come over here from Middletown to live with 'Rill.