The old violin wailed out the tune haltingly.
CHAPTER VIII
A BIT OF ROMANCE
"Hopewell Drugg? Ya-as," drawled Aunt Almira. "He keeps store 'crosstown. He's had bad luck, Hopewell has. His wife's dead—she didn't live long after Lottie was born; and Lottie—poor child!—must be eight or nine year old."
"Poor little thing!" sighed Janice, who had come home to find her aunt just beginning her desultory preparations for supper, and had turned in to help. "It is so pitiful to see and hear her. Does she live all alone there with her father?"
"I reckon Hopewell don't do business enough so's he could hire a housekeeper. They tell me he an' the child live in a reg'lar mess! Ain't fittin' for a man to keep house by hisself, nohow; and of course Lottie can't do much of nothing."
"Is he an old man?" queried Janice. "I couldn't see his face very well."