"Yes," replied the wife, quite as seriously, and dropping her gaze.
"Oh! I hear my Janice! I hear my Janice Day!" cried Lottie's sweet, shrill voice from the rear apartment and she came running out into the store to meet the visitor.
"Have a care! have a care, dear!" warned 'Rill. "Look where you run."
Janice, seeing more clearly from where she stood in front of the counter, was aware that the child ran toward her with her hands outstretched, and with her eyes tightly closed—just as she used to do before her eyes were treated and she had been to the famous Boston physician.
"Oh, Lottie dear!" she exclaimed, taking the little one into her arms. "You will run into something. You will hurt yourself. Why don't you look where you are going?"
"I do look," Lottie responded pouting. Then she wriggled all her ten fingers before Janice's face. "Don't you see my lookers? I can see—oh! so nicely!—with my fingers. You know I always could, Janice Day."
'Rill shook her head and sighed. It was plain the bride was a very lenient stepmother indeed—perhaps too lenient. She loved Hopewell Drugg's child so dearly that she could not bear to correct her. Lottie had always had her own way with her father; and matters had not changed, Janice could see.
"Mamma 'Rill," Lottie coaxed, patting her step-mother's pink cheek, "you'll let me sit up longer, 'cause Janice is here—won't you?"
Of course 'Rill could not refuse her. So the child sat there, blinking at the store lights like a little owl, until finally she sank down in the old cushioned armchair behind the stove and fell fast asleep. Occasionally customers came in; but between whiles Janice and the storekeeper's wife could talk.
The racking "clump, clump, clump," of a big-footed farm horse sounded without and a woman's nasal voice called a sharp: