But Janice thought of it—and thought of it often. If daddy were only—only successful again! That is the way she put it in her mind. If he could only send her some more money! There was many a thing Janice Day needed, or wanted. But she thought that she would deny herself much for the sake of recovering the violin for Hopewell Drugg.
Meanwhile nothing further had come to light regarding the missing collection of gold coins. No third coin had been put into circulation—in Polktown, at least. The four school committeemen who were responsible for the collection had long since paid the owner out of their own pockets rather than be put to further expense in law.
Jim Narnay's baby was growing weaker and weaker. The little thing had been upon the verge of passing on so many times, that her parents had grown skeptical of the doctor's prophecy—that she could not live out the Summer.
It seemed to Janice, however, that the little body was frailer, the little face wanner, the tiny smile more pitiful, each time she went to Pine Cove to see the baby. Nelson, who had come back to town and again taken up his abode with the overjoyed Mrs. Beaseley while he prepared for the opening of the school, urged Janice not to go so often to the Narnay cottage.
"You've enough on your heart and mind, dear girl," he said to her.
"Why burden yourself with other people's troubles?"
"Why—do you know, Nelson," she told him, thoughtfully, "that is one of the things I have learned of late."
"What is one of the things you have learned?"
"I have been learning, Nelson, that the more we share other people's burdens the less weight our own assume. It's wonderful! When I am thinking of the poor little Narnay baby, I am not thinking of daddy away down there in Mexico. And when I am worrying about little Lottie Drugg—or even about Hopewell's lost violin—I am not thinking about those awful gold coins and who could have taken them——"
"Here! here, young woman!" exclaimed the schoolmaster, stopping short, and shaking his head at her. "That's certainly not your personal trouble."
"Oh, but, Nelson," she said shyly. "Whatever troubles you must trouble me quite as though it were my really, truly own!"