"There, there, 'Mira! don't you cry about it. You sartainly have got a good heart. An' I won't say nothin' agin' your savin' for the gal. Mebbe she'll need your savin's, too. Broxton Day is too free-handed, and he'll have his ups and downs again, p'r'aps. Anyhow, whatever you say is right, is right, 'Mira," and he kissed her suddenly in a shamedfaced sort of way, and then hurried out. The good woman sat there in her kitchen, with shining eyes, blushing like a girl. She touched tenderly her wet cheek where her husband had laid his lips. "He--he wouldn't ha' done that two year ago, I don't believe!" she murmured. She picked up the ever-present story paper; but her mind was not attuned to imaginary romance that morning. And there were the breakfast dishes waiting---- She went about her work briskly, and singing. Somehow it seemed as though _real_ romance had come into the old Day house, and into Aunt 'Mira's life! The weeks rolled on toward summer. A fortnight after little Lottie and Miss 'Rill had gone to Boston a letter came from the specialist to Hopewell Drugg. The operation on the child's eyes had been performed almost as soon as she had arrived at the sanitarium; now he could announce that it was successful. Lottie could see and, barring some accident, would be a bright-eyed girl and woman. Already, the doctor urged, she was fit to go into the school for the deaf and dumb in which such wonderful miracles were achieved for the afflicted. The good surgeon, learning from Miss 'Rill the circumstances of the child's being brought to him, had subscribed two hundred dollars toward Lottie's tuition and board in the school for the deaf and dumb. It was joyful news for both Hopewell and Janice. That evening the storekeeper got out his violin and played his old tunes over and over--especially "Silver Threads Among the Gold." "But it sounds more like a hymn of praise tonight," Nelson Haley whispered in Janice's ear, as they sat on the front porch of the little shop and listened to the violin. A week later the little spinster came home. Her visit in Boston seemed to have done her a world of good. She brought a great trunk packed full of things to wear, or goods to be made up into pretty dresses and the like. "I declare for't!" ejaculated her mother. "Looks like you had been buyin' your trossoo--an' old maid like you, too!" But Miss 'Rill was unruffled, and parried her mother's suspicion. When the lake boat, the _Constance Colfax_, began to run on her summer schedule after Decoration Day, many more summer tourists than usual got off the boat at Poketown to look about. The dock was so neat, and the surroundings of the landing so attractive, that these visitors were led to go further up into the town. There was the pleasant, rambling, old Lake View Inn, freshened with paint that spring, and with a green grass plot before it, and wide, screened verandas.