The Mission of Janice Day Part 9

"Just about," was the response. "The dear child!"

It was as Janice descended the broad store steps that little Lottie appeared. And not so little now. Her father declared she was "growing like a weed."

She caught sight of Janice and ran, delighted, toward her, shouting a greeting:

"Oh, Janice Day! My Janice Day! May I ride with you?"

She had great, violet eyes and a mane of hair that was now becoming tawny--darkening as she grew older. Her vivid face and dancing feet made Lottie seem a fairylike little person, a veritable ray of sunshine, in Hopewell Drugg's dim old store.

During the long time in which she had suffered blindness and when her hearing and speech both threatened to leave the child, Lottie had flitted about almost uncannily. Even now she retained the habit of shutting her eyes and "seeing" with the tips of her fingers--that more than natural sense that is vouchsafed those who are blind.

"See my new coat! Isn't it pretty and blue? Papa sent to Boston for it.

And see my pretty blue beads? Mamma 'Rill gave them to me. Aren't they lovely?" crowed Lottie.

Mrs. Scattergood came along the flagstone walk in season to hear this.

"Oh, yes! Oh, yes!" she sniffed. "All very fine, I dessay. Fine feathers make fine birds, I've heard."

"And do ugly feathers make ugly birds?" asked Lottie wonderingly.

"Never you mind! never you mind!" said the tart old woman, going up the store steps. "_Your_ nose will soon be out o' joint, young lady."

Lottie felt her pretty nose and looked at Janice seriously.

"Do--do you s'pose it will?" she queried.

"Do I suppose what will?" the older girl asked, preparing to start the car.

"My nose."

"What about your nose?"

"Will it be put out of joint? It doesn't feel so."

Janice wanted to laugh. Then she felt like crying a little. But finally she became angry with the ill-natured Mrs. Scattergood. The latter had ever been a carping critic of the Drugg household--particularly since her daughter had married her old-time sweetheart quite against Mrs.

Scattergood's wishes.

"Don't worry about your pretty nose, Lottie," Janice said rather gruffly. "Nothing she can say will put it out of joint."

CHAPTER VII

ECHOES

"Let's go down to the cove, Janice Day, and call on my echo," Lottie said eagerly. "Do you know, I haven't been there for ever so long. My echo must be awfully lonely with n.o.body to shout to him any more."

"If you like," the older girl said smilingly, "we will go there first."

"Oh, yes!"

Janice turned the car skillfully in the narrow street. She could even safely wave her hand to Mrs. Beaseley who looked from her sitting room window across the street, where Nelson Haley boarded.

There were other people who waved to Janice, or who spoke to her, as the car rolled down the hill. Here was Mr. Cross Moore wheeling his invalid wife in her chair around and around the smooth, graveled walks of their garden. Janice stopped her car and shut off the engine here.

"Good-day, Mrs. Moore. How are you feeling this lovely weather?" Janice asked.

"Ha! fooling away your time same's usual, are you?" snapped the invalid, disapproval written large on her querulous features.

"She's feeling pretty well, for her," Mr. Moore said placidly. "But we hate to see winter coming. Then she can't get out of doors so much."

"I wish you would let me take you out in the car sometimes, Mrs. Moore,"

Janice said, smiling. "You could see the country while it is so beautiful."

"Huh! risk my neck and bones bein' driven about in one o' them things by a silly girl? Not much!"

"I guess she'd feel safer if I was shoofer," said Cross Moore grimly.

"And I've a mind to get one o' them things next year."

"You will _not_, Cross Moore!" cried his wife, who made it a practice to oppose every suggestion--verbally, at least.

"Oh, I dunno," said the man cheerfully. "You know I've shoofered you in this here chair for many a year without an accident. I reckon I could graduate to an automobile seat pretty easy."

"Why! it's just as e-asy to learn," Janice said, smiling. "And think how far and how quickly you could go, Mrs. Moore."

"Huh! Why should I wish to go far or quick--me that ain't walked right for ten years? I've got all over sech desires."

"Wait till you have tried it," Janice cried as she touched the self-starter and the engine began to purr again.

"Now, ain't that mighty nice, Mother?" they heard Cross Moore say to the fretful woman. "To go spinning about the old roads around Polktown would do you good."

"Oh, you got more uses for your money, Cross Moore, than flitterin' it away on sech things. If you spent money as careless as them Days does,--look at the hole Jase Day is into right now--_you'd_ be 'Owin"

Moore, 'stead o' Cross Moore."

"Do you know," Lottie said to Janice as they drove on, "I think Miz'

Cross Moore would be lots happier if--maybe--she had an echo."

"An echo?"

"Yes," the child said, nodding her head. "Like me. You know, _I_ should have been awfully lonesome, and maybe as short-tempered as she is, if I couldn't have talked to my echo."

"Why?" Janice asked curiously, for the philosophy of the little girl interested her.

"Why," Lottie said, still speaking seriously, "my echo was worse off than I was. Yes it was. It couldn't get away from where it was--not even to fly across the cove--unless I told it to. It had to stay right there in the pine woods on Pine Point. But even while I was blind I could find my way about."

"Very true," agreed Janice, likewise serious. "The echo is a poor little prisoner."