t."

"Can--can nothing be done for her?" questioned Janice, in a whisper.

"She cannot hear you--now," said Hopewell Drugg, gloomily, shaking his
head. "And the doctors here tell me she is almost sure to be dumb, too.
If I could only get her to Boston! There's a school for such as her,
there, and specialists, and all. But it would cost a pile of money."

"You play the fiddle, father," commanded little Lottie. "And make it
quiver--make it cry, father! Then _I_ can hear it."

He set her down carefully, still shaking his head. Her strange little
voice kept repeating: "Play for her, father! Play for her, father!"

Hopewell Drugg picked up the violin and bow from the end of the counter.
He leaned against the counter and tucked the violin under his chin.
There was only a brown light in the dusky store, and the dust danced in
the single band of sunlight that searched out a knot hole in the wall of
the back room--the shed between the store proper and the cottage in the
rear.

"Darling, I am growing old,
Silver threads among the gold----"

The old violin wailed out the tune haltingly. The deaf and blind child
caught the tremulo of the final notes, and she danced up and down and
clapped her little hands.

"I can hear that! I can hear that!" she muttered, her lips writhing to
form the sounds.

Janice felt the tears suddenly blinding her. "I'll come back and see you
again--indeed I will!" she said, brokenly, and hugging and kissing
little Lottie impetuously, she released her and ran out of the ugly,
dark little store.

It is doubtful if Hopewell Drugg even heard her. The violin was still
wailing away, while he searched out slowly the minor notes of the old,
old song.

[Illustration: 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 hisse