u are more than welcome, Miss Janice," returned the storekeeper, as
he put down his instrument again. "Is the child all right?"

"She will be busy there for an hour, I think," declared Janice.

"I--I am afraid I shall scarcely know how to entertain you. Miss,"
said Drugg, hesitatingly. "We have little company. I--I have a few
books----"

"Oh, my, Mr. Drugg! you mustn't think of entertaining me," cried the
girl, cheerfully. "You have your own work to do--and customers to
serve----"

"Not many in this rain," he told her, smiling faintly.

"Why, no--I suppose not. But don't you have orders to put up? I
supposed a storekeeper was a very busy man."

"I am not that kind of a storekeeper, I am afraid," returned Hopewell
Drugg, shaking his head. "I have few customers now. Only a handful of
people come in during the day. You see, I am on the side street here.
We owned this property--mother and I. Mother was bedridden. I thought
it would be easier to keep store and wait on her back in the house
there, than to do most things; so I got into this line. It--it barely
makes us a living," and he sighed.

"But you _do_ have some business?"

"Oh, yes. Old customers who know my stock is always first-class come
to me regularly,--especially out-of-town people. Saturdays I manage to
have quite some trade, like the Hammett Twins, and the farmers. I
can't complain."

"You never liked the business, then?" asked Janice, shrewdly.

"No. Not that it isn't as good as most livelihoods. We all must work.
And I never could do the thing I _loved_ to do. Not with mother
bedridden."

"And that thing was?" asked Janice.

He touched the violin on the counter softly. "I had just music enough
in me to be mad for it," he said, and his gray face suddenly colored
faintly, for it evidently cost him something to speak so frankly.
"Mother did not approve--exactly. You see, my father was a music
teacher, and he never--well--'made good', as the term is now. So
mother did not approve. This was father's violin--fiddle 'most folks
call it. But it is very mellow and sweet--if I had only been taught
properly to play 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