g here. The honeymoon for such a loving
couple could not yet have waned; but there was a rift in it.

'Rill wanted to talk. Janice could see that. The young girl had been
the school teacher's only confidant previous to her marriage to
Hopewell Drugg, and she still looked upon Janice as her dearest friend.
They left Lottie playing in the back room of the store and listening to
her father's fiddle, while 'Rill closed the door between that room and
the dwelling.

"Oh, my dear!" Janice hastened to ask, first of all, "is it true?"

'Rill flushed and there was a spark in her eye--Janice thought of
indignation. Indeed, her voice was rather sharp as she asked:

"Is what true?"

"About Lottie. Her eyes--you know."

"Oh, the poor little thing!" and instantly the step-mother's
countenance changed. "Janice, we don't know. Poor Hopewell is 'most
worried to death. Sometimes it seems as though there was a blur over
the child's eyes. And she has never got over her old habit of shutting
her eyes and seeing with her fingers, as she calls it."

"Ah! I know," the girl said. "But that does not necessarily mean that
she has difficulty with her vision."

"That is true. And the doctor in Boston wrote that, at times, there
might arise some slight clouding of the vision if she used her eyes too
much, if she suffered other physical ills, even if she were frightened
or unhappy."

"The last two possibilities may certainly be set aside," said Janice,
with confidence. "And she is as rosy and healthy looking as she could
be."

"Yes," said 'Rill.

"Then what can it be that has caused the trouble?"

"We cannot imagine," with a sigh. "It--it is worrying Hopewell, night
and day."

"Poor man!"

"He--he is changed a great deal, Janice," whispered the bride.

Janice was silent, but held 'Rill's hand in her own comforting clasp.

"Don't think he isn't good to me. He is! He is! He is the sweetest
tempered man that ever lived! You know that, yourself. And I thought
I was going to make him--oh!--so happy."

"Hush! hush, dear!" murmured Janice, for Mrs. Drugg's eyes had run over
and she sobbed aloud. "He loves you just the same. I can see it in
the way he looks at you. And why should he not love you?"

"But he has lost his cheerfulness. He worries about Lottie, I know.
There--there is another thing----"

She stopped. She pursued this thread of thought no further. Janice
wondered then--and she wondered afterward--i