most there. Here is Mis' Robbins'
gate. I used to see her flowers. Her yard's full of them, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes!" replied Janice, fighting her inclination to burst into
tears. "Oh, yes, dear! beautiful flowers." She pressed the hand
tightly.

"I can smell 'em," said the child, snuffing with her nose like a dog.
"And now here is the shade of our big trees. It's darker and cooler
under these trees than anywhere else on the street. Isn't it?"

Janice agreed by pressing her hand again, and little Lottie
laughed--such a shrill, eyrie little laugh! They were before the
gloomy-looking store of Hopewell Drugg. The wailing of the fiddle
floated out upon the warm afternoon air.

The blind girl tripped up the steps of the porch and in at the open
door. "Silver Threads Among the Gold" came to a sharp conclusion.

"Merciful goodness!" croaked a frightened voice. "I thought you was
asleep in your bed, Lottie."

Janice had followed the little girl to the doorway. She saw but dimly
the store itself and the shelves of dusty merchandise. From the back
room where he had been sitting with his violin, a gray, thin,
dusty-looking man came quickly and seized Lottie in his arms.

"Child! child! how you frighten me!" he murmured. Then he looked over
the little girl's head and blinked through his spectacles at Janice in
the doorway.

"I'm certainly obliged to ye," he said. "She--she gets away from the
house and I don't know it. I--I can't watch her all the time and she
ain't got no mother, Miss. I certainly am obliged to ye for bringing
her home."

"She was down on the old wharf at the foot of the street, trying to
wake the echo from the woods across the inlet," said Janice, gravely.

The gray man hugged his daughter tightly, and his eyes blinked like an
owl's in strong daylight, as he peered through his spectacles at
Janice. "She--she loved to go there--always," he murmured. "I go with
her Sundays--and when the store is closed. But she is so quick--in a
flash she is out of my sight."

"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
qu