But, of course, Hopewell could not _make_ trade. He had gained his full share of the Poketown patronage, and held all his old customers. But the profits of the business acc.u.mulated slowly. As this second winter drew to a close the storekeeper confessed to Janice that he had only saved a little over three hundred dollars altogether towards the betterment of Lottie's condition.

Janice began secretly to complain. Her heart bled for the child, shut away in the dark and silence. If only Daddy would grow suddenly very wealthy out of the mine! Or if some fairy G.o.dmother would come to little Lottie's help!

The person who seemed nearest like a fairy G.o.dmother to the child was Miss 'Rill. She spent a great deal of her spare time with the storekeeper's daughter. Sometimes she went to Mr. Drugg's cottage alone; but oftener she had Lottie around to the rooms she occupied with her mother on High Street.

"I declare for't, 'Rill," sputtered old Mrs. Scattergood, one day when Janice happened to be present, "you'll have the hull town talkin' abeout you. You're in an' aout of Hopewell Drugg's jest as though you belonged there."

"I'm surely doing no harm, mother," said the little spinster, mildly.

"Everyone knows how this poor child needs somebody's care."

"Wal! let the 'somebody' be somebody else," snapped the old lady. "I sh'd think you'd be ashamed."

"Ashamed of what, mother?" asked Miss 'Rill, with more spirit than she usually displayed.

"You know well enough what I mean. Folks will say you're flingin'

yourself at Hopewell Drugg's head. An' after all these years, too.

I----"

"Mother!" exclaimed her daughter, in a low voice, but earnestly. "Don't you think you did harm enough long, long ago, without beginning on that tack now?"

"There! that's the thanks one gets when one keeps a gal from makin' a perfect _fule_ of herself," cried the old lady, bridling. "S'pose you'd been jest a drudge for Hopewell all these years, Amarilla Scattergood?"

"I might not have been a drudge," said Miss 'Rill, softly, flushing over her needlework. "At least my life--and his--would have been different."

"Ye don't know how lucky you be," snapped her mother. "And this is all the thanks I git for tellin' Hopewell Drugg that he'd brought his pigs to the wrong market."

"At least," said the spinster, with a sigh, "he will never worry you on that score again, mother--he nor any other man. When a woman gets near to forty, with more silver than gold in her hair, and the best of her useless life is behind her, she need expect no change in her estate, that's sure."

"Ye might be a good deal wuss off," sniffed her mother.

"Perhaps that is so," agreed Miss 'Rill, with a sudden hard little laugh. "But don't you take pattern by me, Janice, no matter what folks tell you. Mrs. Beasely is better off than I am. She has the memory of doing for somebody whom she loved and who loved her. While I----Well, I'm just an old maid, and when you say that about a woman, you say the worst!"

"Why, the idee!" exclaimed her mother, with wrath. "I call that flyin'

right in the face of Providence."

"I don't believe that G.o.d ever had old maids in the original scheme of things."

"Humph! didn't He?" snapped Mrs. Scattergood. "Then why is there so many more women than men in the world? Will you please tell me _that_, Amarilla?" and this unanswerable argument closed what Janice realized was not the first discussion of the unpleasant topic, between the ex-schoolteacher and her sharp-tongued mother.

CHAPTER XXVI

JUST HOW IT ALL BEGAN

It was one of those soft, irresponsible days of April. The heavens clouded up and wept like a naughty child upon the least pretext; yet between the showers the sun warmed the glad earth, and coaxed the catkins into bloom, and even expanded the first buds of the huge lilac bush at the corner of the Day house.

This was a special occasion; one could easily guess that from the bustle manifest about the place. Aunt 'Mira and Janice had been busy since light. Mrs. Day was not in the habit of "givin' things a lick and a promise" nowadays when she cleaned house. No, indeed! They gave the house a "thorough riddin' up," and were scarcely through at dinner-time.

Then they hurried the dinner dishes out of the way, drove Marty and his father out of the house and hurried to change into fresh frocks; for company was expected.

The ladies' sewing circle of the Union Church was to meet with Mrs.

Day. These meetings of late had become more like social gatherings than formerly. The afternoon session was better attended; then came a hearty supper to which the ladies' husbands, brothers, or sweethearts were invited; and everything wound up with a social evening.

Aunt 'Mira and Janice had made many extra preparations for the occasion in the line of cooked food; there were two gallon pots of beans in the oven cooking slowly; and every lady, as she arrived, handed to Janice some parcel or package containing cooked food for the supper.

The girl was busy looking after these donations when once the members of the sewing circle began to arrive; and Aunt 'Mira's pantry had never before been so stacked with food. Marty stole in to gaze at the goodies, and whispered:

"Hi tunket! Just you go away for half an hour, Janice, and lemme be here. I could do something to that tuck right now."

"And so soon after dinner?" cried his cousin. "I wonder if boys _are_ hollow all the way down to their heels, as they say they are?"

"It ain't that," grinned Marty. "But a feller runs so many chances in this world of going hungry, that he ought ter fill up while he can. You just turn your back for a while and I'll show you, Janice."

But his cousin turned the key in the pantry door and slipped it into her pocket for safety. "We'll have no larks like _that_, Master Marty," she declared.

Mrs. Scattergood and 'Rill were among the first to arrive; and then came Mrs. Middler, the minister's wife. Mrs. Beasely was there, and Walky Dexter's wife, and the druggist's sister, who kept house for him; and Mrs. Poole, the doctor's wife; and Mrs. Marvin Petrie, who had married children living in Boston and always spent her winters with them, and had just come back to Poketown again for the season.

Many of the ladies of Poketown never thought of making up their spring frocks, or having Mrs. Link, the milliner, trim their Easter bonnets, until Mrs. Marvin Petrie came from Boston. She was supposed to bring with her the newest ideas for female apparel, and her taste and advice was sought on all sides when the ladies sat down to their sewing in the big sitting-room of the old Day house.

Mrs. Marvin Petrie, however, was one of those persons who seem never to absorb any helpful ideas. Her forte was mostly criticism. She could see the faults of her home town, and her home people, in comparison with the Hub; but she had never, thus far, led in any benefit to Poketown.

"You can't none of you understand how glad I am to git to my daughter Mabel's in the winter; and then how glad I am to shake the mud of Boston off my gaiters when it comes spring," declared the traveled lady, who had a shrill voice of great "carrying" quality. When Mrs. Marvin Petrie was talking there was little other conversation at the sewing circle. Her comments upon people she had met and things she had seen, were in the line of a monologue.

"I do sartainly grow tired of Poketown when it comes fall, and things is dead, and the wind gets cold, and all. I'm sartain sure glad to git shet of it!" she pursued on this particular afternoon. "And then the first sight of Boston--and the mud--and the Common and Public Library,--and the shops, and all, make me feel like I was livin' again.

"Mabel says to me: 'How kin you live, Maw, most all the year in Poketown! Why, I was so glad to git away from it, that I'd walk the streets and beg before I'd go back to it again!' An' she would; Mabel's lively yet, if she has been married ten years and got three children.

"But by this time o' year--arter bein' three months or more in the hurly-burly of Boston, I'm _de_-lighted to git into the country. Ye see, city folks keep dancin' about so. They're always on the go. They ain't no rest for a body."

"But you ain't got ter go because other folks dooes, Miz' Petrie,"

suggested old lady Scattergood. "Now, when I go ter see my son-in-law at Skunk's Holler, I jest sit down an' fold my hands, an' _rest_."

"Skunk's Holler!" murmured one of the other women. "To hear Miz'

Scattergood talk, one 'ud think she was traveled, too. An' she ain't never been out o' sight o' this lake, I do believe."

"If ye don't go yourself, you feel's though you had," said Mrs. Petrie, with good nature. "So much bustle around you--yes. An' so I tell my daughters. I git enough of it b'fore spring begins."

"But," said the minister's wife, timidly, "after all, there isn't so much difference between Poketown and Boston, excepting that Boston is so very much bigger. People are about the same everywhere. And one house is like another, only one's bigger----"

"Now, that's right foolish talk, Miz' Middler!" exclaimed the lady so recently from the Hub. "The people's just as different as chalk is from cheese; and there ain't a church in Boston--and there's hundreds of 'em--that don't make our Union Church look silly."

"But, Miz' Petrie," cried one inquiring body. "Just what is it that makes Boston so different from Poketown? After all, folks is folks--and houses is houses--and streets is streets. Ain't that so?"

"Wa-al!" The traveled lady was stumped for a moment. Then she burst out with: "There! I'll tell ye. It's 'cause there's some order in the city; ev'rything here is haphazard. Course, there's poor sections--reg'lar _slums_, as they call 'em--in Boston. But the poor, dirty buildings and the poor, dirty streets, are in sort of a bunch together. They're in spots; they ain't dribbled all through the town, mixed up with fine houses, and elegant squares, and boulevards. Nope. Cities know how to hide their poor spots in some ways. Boston puts its best foot forward, as the sayin' is.

"But take it right here in Poketown. Now, ain't the good and the bad all shoveled together? Take Colonel Pa'tridge's fine house on High Street, stuck in right between Miner's meat shop and old Bill Jones' drygoods an' groceries--an' I don't know which is the commonest lookin' of the two."