ess existence which had cursed him when first Janice had taken an
interest in his little Lottie, his store, and himself?

But, of course, Hopewell could not _make_ trade. He had gained his full
share of the Poketown patronage, and held all his old customers. But the
profits of the business accumulated slowly. As this second winter drew
to a close the storekeeper confessed to Janice that he had only saved a
little over three hundred dollars altogether towards the betterment of
Lottie's condition.

Janice began secretly to complain. Her heart bled for the child, shut
away in the dark and silence. If only Daddy would grow suddenly very
wealthy out of the mine! Or if some fairy godmother would come to little
Lottie's help!

The person who seemed nearest like a fairy godmother to the child was
Miss 'Rill. She spent a great deal of her spare time with the
storekeeper's daughter. Sometimes she went to Mr. Drugg's cottage alone;
but oftener she had Lottie around to the rooms she occupied with her
mother on High Street.

"I declare for't, 'Rill," sputtered old Mrs. Scattergood, one day when
Janice happened to be present, "you'll have the hull town talkin' abeout
you. You're in an' aout of Hopewell Drugg's jest as though you belonged
there."

"I'm surely doing no harm, mother," said the little spinster, mildly.
"Everyone knows how this poor child needs somebody's care."

"Wal! let the 'somebody' be somebody else," snapped the old lady. "I
sh'd think you'd be ashamed."

"Ashamed of what, mother?" asked Miss 'Rill, with more spirit than she
usually displayed.

"You know well enough what I mean. Folks will say you're flingin'
yourself at Hopewell Drugg's head. An' after all these years, too.
I----"

"Mother!" exclaimed her daughter, in a low voice, but earnestly. "Don't
you think you did harm enough long, long ago, without beginning on that
tack now?"

"There! that's the thanks one gets when one keeps a gal from makin' a
perfect _fule_ of herself," cried the old lady, bridling. "S'pose you'd
been jest a drudge for Hopewell all these years, Amarilla Scattergood?"

"I might not have been a drudge," said Miss 'Rill, softly, flushing over
her needlework. "At least my life--and his--would have been different."

"Ye don't know how lucky you be," snapped her mother. "And this is all
the thanks I git for tellin' Hopewell Drugg that he'd brought his pigs
to the wrong market."

"At least," said the spinster, with a sigh, "he