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 shake this hopeless man. Hopewell, indeed! His name
surely did not fit him in the least. Wasn't old Mrs. Scattergood
almost right when she called him "a gump"? At least, if "gump" meant a
spineless creature?

Drugg was looking languidly about the store in the dim, brown light.
Outside the rain