lay it. You see, father died before I was born."

Out of these few sentences, spoken so gently, Janice swiftly built, in
her quick mind, the whole story of the man. His had been a life of
repression--perhaps of sacrifice! The soul of music in the man had never
been able to burst its chrysalis.

"Mother died after I was of age. It seemed too late then for me to get
into any other business," Hopewell Drugg went on to say, evenly. "You
know, Miss, one gets into a rut. I was in a rut then. And we hadn't any
too much money left. It was quite necessary that I do something to keep
the pot a-boiling. There wasn't enough money left for music lessons, and
all that.

"And then----"

He stopped. A queer look came over his face, and somehow the alert girl
beside him knew what he was thinking of. 'Rill Scattergood was in his
mind. He must have thought a great deal of the little school-mistress at
one time--before he had married that other girl. Aunt Almira had said he
had married 'Cinda Stone "out of spite!" Was it so?

"Well," sighed the storekeeper, finally coming back from his reverie as
though all the time he had been talking to Janice. "It turned out this
way for me, you see. And here's Lottie. Poor little Lottie! I wish the
store _did_ pay me better. Perhaps something could be done for the child
at the school in Boston. They have specialists there----"

"But, Mr. Drugg! why don't you _try_?" gasped Janice, quite shaken by
all she had heard and _felt_.

"Try what, Miss?" he asked, curiously.

"Why don't you try to make business better? Can't you improve it?"

"How, Miss?"

"Oh, dear me! You don't want _me_ to tell you how, do you?" cried
Janice, "I--I am afraid it would sound impudent."

"I couldn't imagine your being that, Miss Janice," he said, in his slow
way, looking down at her with a smile that somehow sweetened his gray,
lean face mightily.

"But why not put out some effort to attract trade here?"

"To this little, dark, old shop?" asked Drugg, in wonder. "Impossible!"

"Don't use that word!" the girl commanded, with vigor. "How do you know
it is impossible?"

"People prefer the big shops on High Street."

"There's not much choice between them and yours, I believe," declared
Janice.

"They're handier."

"You've got your own neighborhood. You used to have customers."

"Oh, yes. But that's when the store was new."

"Make it new again," cried Janice, feeling a good deal as though she
would like to s