"Lawsy! he ain't what you'd call old—no," said Aunt 'Mira. "Now, let me see; he married 'Cinda Stone when he warn't yit thirty. There was some talk of him an' 'Rill Scattergood bein' sweet on each other onc't; but that was twenty year ago, I do b'lieve.
"Howsomever, if there was anythin' betwixt Hopewell and 'Rill, I reckon her mother broke up the match. Mis' Scattergood never had no use for them Druggs. She said they was dreamers and never did amount to nothin'. Mis' Scattergood's allus been re'l masterful."
Janice nodded. She could imagine that the birdlike old lady she had met on the boat could be quite assertive if she so chose.
"Anyhow," said Aunt 'Mira, reflectively, "Hopewell stopped shinin' about 'Rill all of a sudden. That was the time Mis' Scattergood was widdered an' come over here from Middletown to live with 'Rill.
"I declare for't! 'Rill warn't sech an old maid then. She was right purty, if she had been teachin' school some time. Th' young men use ter buzz around her in them days.
"But when she broke off with Hopewell, she broke off with all. Hopewell was spleeny about it—ya-as, indeed, he was. He soon took up with 'Cinda—jest as though 'twas out o' spite. Anyhow, 'fore any of us knowed it, they'd gone over to Middletown an' got married.
"'Cinda Stone was a right weakly sort o' critter. Of course Hopewell was good to her," pursued Aunt 'Mira. "Hopewell Drugg is as mild as dishwater, anyhow. He'd be perlite to a stray cat."
Janice was interested—she could not help being. Miss Scattergood, it seemed to her, was a pathetic figure; and the girl from Greensboro was just at an age to appreciate a bit of romance. The gray, dusty man in the dark, little store, playing his fiddle to the child that could only hear the quivering minor tones of it, held a place in Janice's thought, too.
"What do you do Saturday mornings, Marty?" asked the visitor, at the breakfast table. Janice had already been to the Shower Bath and back, and the thrill of the early day was in her veins. Only a wolfish appetite had driven her indoors when she smelled the pork frying.
Marty was just lounging to his seat,—he was almost always late to breakfast,—and he shut off a mighty yawn to reply to his cousin: