It is doubtful if Hopewell Drugg even heard her. The violin was still wailing away, while he searched out slowly the minor notes of the old, old song. CHAPTER VIII A BIT OF ROMANCE "Hopewell Drugg? Ya-as," drawled Aunt Almira. "He keeps store 'crosstown. He's had bad luck, Hopewell has. His wife's dead--she didn't live long after Lottie was born; and Lottie--poor child!--must be eight or nine year old." "Poor little thing!" sighed Janice, who had come home to find her aunt just beginning her desultory preparations for supper, and had turned in to help. "It is so pitiful to see and hear her. Does she live all alone there with her father?" "I reckon Hopewell don't do business enough so's he could hire a housekeeper. They tell me he an' the child live in a reg'lar mess! Ain't fittin' for a man to keep house by hisself, nohow; and of course Lottie can't do much of nothing." "Is he an old man?" queried Janice. "I couldn't see his face very well." "Lawsy! he ain't what you'd call old--no," said Aunt 'Mira. "Now, let me see; he married 'Cinda Stone when he warn't yit thirty. There was some talk of him an' 'Rill Scattergood bein' sweet on each other onc't; but that was twenty year ago, I do b'lieve. "Howsomever, if there _was_ anythin' betwixt Hopewell and 'Rill, I reckon her mother broke up the match. Mis' Scattergood never had no use for them Druggs. She said they was dreamers and never did amount to nothin'. Mis' Scattergood's allus been re'l masterful." Janice nodded. She could imagine that the bird-like old lady she had met on the boat could be quite assertive if she so chose. "Anyhow," said Aunt 'Mira, reflectively, "Hopewell stopped shinin' about 'Rill all of a sudden. That was the time Mis' Scattergood was widdered an' come over here from Middletown to live with 'Rill. "I declare for't! 'Rill warn't sech an old maid then. She was right purty, if she _had_ been teachin' school some time. Th' young men use ter buzz around her in them days. "But when she broke off with Hopewell, she broke off with all. Hopewell was spleeny about it--ya-as, indeed, he was. He soon took up with 'Cinda--jest as though 'twas out o' spite. Anyhow, 'fore any of us knowed it, they'd gone over to Middletown an' got married. "'Cinda Stone was a right weakly sort o' critter. Of course Hopewell was good to her," pursued Aunt 'Mira. "Hopewell Drugg is as mild as dishwater, anyhow. He'd be perlite to a stray cat." Janice was interested--she could not help being. Miss Scattergood, it seemed to her, was a pathetic figure; and the girl from Greensboro was just at an age to appreciate a bit of romance. The gray, dusty man in the dark, little store, playing his fiddle to the child that could only hear the quivering minor tones of it, held a place in Janice's thought, too.