"Oh, yes!" replied Janice, fighting her inclination to burst into tears. "Oh, yes, dear! beautiful flowers." She pressed the hand tightly.
"I can smell 'em," said the child, snuffing with her nose like a dog. "And now here is the shade of our big trees. It's darker and cooler under these trees than anywhere else on the street. Isn't it?"
Janice agreed by pressing her hand again, and little Lottie laughed—such a shrill, eyrie little laugh! They were before the gloomy-looking store of Hopewell Drugg. The wailing of the fiddle floated out upon the warm afternoon air.
The blind girl tripped up the steps of the porch and in at the open door. "Silver Threads Among the Gold" came to a sharp conclusion.
"Merciful goodness!" croaked a frightened voice. "I thought you was asleep in your bed, Lottie."
Janice had followed the little girl to the doorway. She saw but dimly the store itself and the shelves of dusty merchandise. From the back room where he had been sitting with his violin, a gray, thin, dusty-looking man came quickly and seized Lottie in his arms.
"Child! child! how you frighten me!" he murmured. Then he looked over the little girl's head and blinked through his spectacles at Janice in the doorway.
"I'm certainly obliged to ye," he said. "She—she gets away from the house and I don't know it. I—I can't watch her all the time and she ain't got no mother, Miss. I certainly am obliged to ye for bringing her home."
"She was down on the old wharf at the foot of the street, trying to wake the echo from the woods across the inlet," said Janice, gravely.
The gray man hugged his daughter tightly, and his eyes blinked like an owl's in strong daylight, as he peered through his spectacles at Janice. "She—she loved to go there—always," he murmured. "I go with her Sundays—and when the store is closed. But she is so quick—in a flash she is out of my sight."