lf, 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."

"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:

"Jest as near like I please as kin be."

"Saturday afternoon, where I cam