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?"