There were still stores with their windows heaped with flyspecked goods. The horses still gnawed the boles of the shade trees along High Street. The flagstone sidewalks were still broken and the gutters unsightly. High street itself was rutted and muddy all through the early spring, after the snow had gone. A few of the merchants patterned after Hopewell Drugg, brightened up their stores, and exposed only fresh goods for sale. But these few changes only made the general run of Poketown institutions appear more slovenly. The contrast was that of a new pair of shoes, or a glossy hat, on a ragged beggar! With Janice on one side to spur him, and Miss 'Rill's unbounded faith in him on the other hand, how _could_ Hopewell Drugg fall back into the old aimless existence which had cursed him when first Janice had taken an interest in his little Lottie, his store, and himself? 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 accumulated 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 godmother would come to little Lottie's help! The person who seemed nearest like a fairy godmother 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."