Blind—deaf—approaching dumbness! The thought made Janice suddenly seize the child in her arms and hug her, tight.
"Do you love me?" questioned Lottie Drugg, returning the embrace. "I wish I could hear you. But I can't hear father any more—nor his fiddle; only when he makes it quiver. Then I know it's crying. Did you know a fiddle could cry? You come home with me. Father will play the fiddle for you, and you can hear it."
Janice did not know how to reply. There was so much she wished to say to this poor little thing! But her quick mind jumped to the conclusion that the child belonged to the person whom she had heard playing the violin as she came down from High Street—the unknown musician in the store above the door of which was the faded sign of "Hopewell Drugg."
She squeezed the little girl's hand again and it seemed to suffice.
"I know the way. My feet are in the path now," said little Lottie, scuffling her slipper-shod feet about on the narrow footpath. "Yes! I know the way now. The sun is behind us. Come," and she put forth her hand, caught Janice's again, and urged her along the bank of the lake to the foot of the lane down which the girl from Greensboro had wandered.
Up the hill they went, Janice marveling that Lottie could be so confident of the way. She seldom hesitated, and Janice allowed herself to be led. Mr. Cross Moore was still smoking his pipe out in front of his house.
"I calkerlate that child's goin' to be drowned-ed some day," he said calmly, to Janice. "Jest a marcy that she ain't done it afore now. An' Hopewell—Huh! him sittin' up there fiddlin'——"
It seemed to Janice as though a spirit of criticism had entered into all the Poketownites. There was Walky Dexter scoffing at her Uncle Jason; and here was Selectman Moore criticising the father of little Lottie. Yet neither critic, as far as Janice could see, set much of an example for his townsmen to follow!
Lottie, with her hand in the bigger girl's, tripped along the walk as confidently as though she had her eyesight. She was an affectionate little thing, and she "snuggled" closely to Janice, occasionally touching her new friend's face and lips with her free hand.
"I guess I love you," she said, in her strange, little, flat voice. "You come in and see father. We are most there. Here is Mis' Robbins' gate. I used to see her flowers. Her yard's full of them, isn't it?"