"Whose cellar? Oh! is she very, very badly hurt?" cried Janice, equally anxious.
"Hopewell had the trap door open. She came running into the shop and went straight down on her poor little head! Oh! she's all cut and bruised——"
Miss 'Rill could say no more. Nor did Janice need to ask, for they were at the store and pushing through the little group of helpless but sympathizing neighbors. Dr. Poole was already there. They had Lottie in bed, all bandaged and white.
"Just a bad cut over the forehead—right across the crown," Dr. Poole assured the waiting neighbors. "She's had a bad shock, but she's in no particular danger. Only——"
He looked at Janice and shook his head. Then he whispered to her: "It's a terrible shame Hopewell can't send the poor little thing to a specialist and have her eyes fixed up. My soul and body, girl! if I'd only been able to go in for surgery myself—If I'd only learned to use the knife!" and he groaned, shook his head, did this old-school family practitioner, and departed.
Janice did not remain long. Miss 'Rill would sit by the child for the remainder of the afternoon; and even her mother was anxious to help and promised to come over and stay all night at Hopewell's.
"I ain't got nothin' ag'in the poor child, that's sure," Mrs. Scattergood told Janice. "It's only Hopewell that's so triflin'—he an' his fiddle. Jest like his father before him!"
But the storekeeper's fiddle was silent a good deal of the time how; only when Miss 'Rill or Janice urged him did the man take up the instrument that had once been so much his comfort—and little Lottie's delight.
But now, on this sorrowful afternoon, Janice went back slowly toward home with a very serious mind indeed. On the way she met Nelson Haley coming from school.
"Congratulations—and then some!" he cried, shaking hands with Janice.