kitchen, with shining eyes, blushing
like a girl. She touched tenderly her wet cheek where her husband had
laid his lips.

"He--he wouldn't ha' done that two year ago, I don't believe!" she
murmured.

She picked up the ever-present story paper; but her mind was not attuned
to imaginary romance that morning. And there were the breakfast dishes
waiting----

She went about her work briskly, and singing. Somehow it seemed as
though _real_ romance had come into the old Day house, and into Aunt
'Mira's life!

The weeks rolled on toward summer. A fortnight after little Lottie and
Miss 'Rill had gone to Boston a letter came from the specialist to
Hopewell Drugg. The operation on the child's eyes had been performed
almost as soon as she had arrived at the sanitarium; now he could
announce that it was successful. Lottie could see and, barring some
accident, would be a bright-eyed girl and woman.

Already, the doctor urged, she was fit to go into the school for the
deaf and dumb in which such wonderful miracles were achieved for the
afflicted. The good surgeon, learning from Miss 'Rill the circumstances
of the child's being brought to him, had subscribed two hundred dollars
toward Lottie's tuition and board in the school for the deaf and dumb.

It was joyful news for both Hopewell and Janice. That evening the
storekeeper got out his violin and played his old tunes over and
over--especially "Silver Threads Among the Gold."

"But it sounds more like a hymn of praise to-night," Nelson Haley
whispered in Janice's ear, as they sat on the front porch of the little
shop and listened to the violin.

A week later the little spinster came home. Her visit in Boston seemed
to have done her a world of good. She brought a great trunk packed full
of things to wear, or goods to be made up into pretty dresses and the
like.

"I declare for't!" ejaculated her mother. "Looks like you had been
buyin' your trossoo--an' old maid like you, too!"

But Miss 'Rill was unruffled, and parried her mother's suspicion.

When the lake boat, the _Constance Colfax_, began to run on her summer
schedule after Decoration Day, many more summer tourists than usual got
off the boat at Poketown to look about. The dock was so neat, and the
surroundings of the landing so attractive, that these visitors were led
to go further up into the town.

There was the pleasant, rambling, old Lake View Inn, freshened with
paint that spring, and with a green grass plot b