A RAINY DAY
Janice had learned that there were at least two senses left to Hopewell
Drugg's unfortunate child that connected her with the world as it is,
and with her fellow creatures. As she gradually had lost her sight and
hearing, and, consequently, speech was more and more difficult for her,
Lottie's sense of touch and of smell were being sharpened.
Her olfactory nerves were almost as keen as a dog's. How she loved the
scent of flowers! She named many of the blossoms in the gardens about
just by the odor wafted to her upon the air. And she was really a
pretty sight, sitting upon the shady porch of her father's store,
sorting and making into bouquets the flowers that neighbors gave her.
The old-fashioned shrubs and flowers in the Day yard were in bloom now
in abundance, and one morning before school Janice carried to little
Lottie a huge armful of odorous blossoms. It was a "dripping" morning.
As yet it had not rained hard; but just as Janice turned off High
Street toward the store, the heavens opened and the rain fell in
torrents.
She ran laughing to the porch of the Drugg's store. For once the man
was at the front, and he welcomed her with his polite, storekeeper's
smile, and the natural courtesy which was usual with him. Janice
remembered how the carping Mrs. Scattergood had declared that Hopewell
Drugg would be "polite to a stray cat!"
"You must not go farther in this rain, Miss Janice," he said. "Do come
in. Miss 'Rill went along to school half an hour ago--or she never
would have gotten there without a wetting. Are these for little
Lottie? How kind of you!"
"She's a dear, and she loves flowers so," replied Janice, brightly. "I
_will_ come in out of the rain, if you don't mind, Mr. Drugg."
"Yes. The roof of the porch leaks a little. I--I ought to fix that,"
said the storekeeper, feebly.
He followed his visitor in, and as his fiddle lay on the counter near
at hand, he took it up. He was playing softly an old, old tune, when
Janice came back through the passage from the house. She had found
Lottie in the kitchen, and had left her, delighted with the posies,
sitting at the table to make them up into bouquets.
The rain was pouring down with no promise of a let-up, and Janice did
not have even an umbrella. She took off her coat and hung her hat to
dry on the back of a chair.
"I shall have to be company for a while, I expect, Mr. Drugg," she
said, laughing.
"You are more than welcome, Miss Janice," returned the storekeeper, as
he put down his instrument again. "Is the child all right?"
"She will be busy there for an hour, I think," declared Janice.
"I--I am afraid I shall scarcely know how to entertain you. Miss,"
said Drugg, hesitatingly. "We have little company. I--I have a few
books----"
"Oh, my, Mr. Drugg! you mustn't think of entertaining me," cried the
girl, cheerfully. "You have your own work to do--and customers to
serve----"
"Not many in this rain," he told her, smiling faintly.
"Why, no--I suppose not. But don't you have orders to put up? I
supposed a storekeeper was a very busy man."
"I am not that kind of a storekeeper, I am afraid," returned Hopewell
Drugg, shaking his head. "I have few customers now. Only a handful of
people come in during the day. You see, I am on the side street here.
We owned this property--mother and I. Mother was bedridden. I thought
it would be easier to keep store and wait on her back in the house
there, than to do most things; so I got into this line. It--it barely
makes us a living," and he sighed.
"But you _do_ have some business?"
"Oh, yes. Old customers who know my stock is always first-class come
to me regularly,--especially out-of-town people. Saturdays I manage to
have quite some trade, like the Hammett Twins, and the farmers. I
can't complain."
"You never liked the business, then?" asked Janice, shrewdly.
"No. Not that it isn't as good as most livelihoods. We all must work.
And I never could do the thing I _loved_ to do. Not with mother
bedridden."
"And that thing was?" asked Janice.
He touched the violin on the counter softly. "I had just music enough
in me to be mad for it," he said, and his gray face suddenly colored
faintly, for it evidently cost him something to speak so frankly.
"Mother did not approve--exactly. You see, my father was a music
teacher, and he never--well--'made good', as the term is now. So
mother did not approve. This was father's violin--fiddle 'most folks
call it. But it is very mellow and sweet--if I had only been taught
properly to play it. You see, father died before I was born."
Out of these few sentences, spoken so gently, Janice swiftly built, in
her quick mind, the whole story of the man. His had been a life of
repression--perhaps of sacrifice! The soul of music in the man had
never been able to burst its chrysalis.
"Mother died after I was of age. It seemed too late then for me to get
into any other business," Hopewell Drugg went on to say, evenly. "You
know, Miss, one gets into a rut. I was in a rut then. And we hadn't
any too much money left. It was quite necessary that I do something to
keep the pot a-boiling. There wasn't enough money left for music
lessons, and all that.
"And then----"
He stopped. A queer look came over his face, and somehow the alert
girl beside him knew what he was thinking of. 'Rill Scattergood was in
his mind. He must have thought a great deal of the little
school-mistress at one time--before he had married that other girl.
Aunt Almira had said he had married 'Cinda Stone "out of spite!" Was
it so?
"Well," sighed the storekeeper, finally coming back from his reverie as
though all the time he had been talking to Janice. "It turned out this
way for me, you see. And here's Lottie. Poor little Lottie! I wish
the store _did_ pay me better. Perhaps something could be done for the
child at the school in Boston. They have specialists there----"
"But, Mr. Drugg! why don't you _try_?" gasped Janice, quite shaken by
all she had heard and _felt_.
"Try what, Miss?" he asked, curiously.
"Why don't you try to make business better? Can't you improve it?"
"How, Miss?"
"Oh, dear me! You don't want _me_ to tell you how, do you?" cried
Janice, "I--I am afraid it would sound impudent."
"I couldn't imagine your being that, Miss Janice," he said, in his slow
way, looking down at her with a smile that somehow sweetened his gray,
lean face mightily.
"But why not put out some effort to attract trade here?"
"To this little, dark, old shop?" asked Drugg, in wonder. "Impossible!"
"Don't use that word!" the girl commanded, with vigor. "How do you
know it is impossible?"
"People prefer the big shops on High Street."
"There's not much choice between them and yours, I believe," declared
Janice.
"They're handier."
"You've got your own neighborhood. You used to have customers."
"Oh, yes. But that's when the store was new."
"Make it new again," cried Janice, feeling a good deal as though she
would like to shake this hopeless man. Hopewell, indeed! His name
surely did not fit him in the least. Wasn't old Mrs. Scattergood
almost right when she called him "a gump"? At least, if "gump" meant a
spineless creature?
Drugg was looking languidly about the store in the dim, brown light.
Outside the rain still fell heavily. Occasionally the clouds would
lighten for a moment as they frequently do in the hills; but the rain
was still behind them and _would_ burst through.
"Come, Mr. Drugg," said Janice, more softly. "Let me show you what I
mean. You can't really expect folks to come here and trade when they
can scarcely see through the windows----"
"Yes, yes," he murmured. "I _had_ ought to clean up a bit."
"More than that!" she cried. "You want to have a regular
overhauling--take account of stock, and all that--know what you've
got--arrange your goods attractively--get rid of the flies--put on
fresh paint----"
He was looking at her with wide-open eyes. "My soul!" he breathed.
"How'd I ever git around to doin' all _that_?"
"You love little Lottie, don't you?" Janice demanded, with sudden
cruelty. "I should think you'd be willing to do something for her!"
"What do you mean?" and a little snap, which delighted Janice, suddenly
came into Drugg's tone.
"Just what I say, Mr. Drugg. You _speak_ as though you loved her."
"And who says I don't?"
"Your actions."
"My actions? What do you mean by that?" and the man flushed more
deeply than before.
"I mean if you truly loved her, and longed to get her to Boston and to
the surgeons, and the school there, it seems to me you'd be willing to
work hard to that end."
"You show me--" he began, wrathfully, but she interrupted with:
"Now, wait! Let me have my way for an hour here, will you? I want you
to go back to Lottie and do up the housework; I see your breakfast
dishes are still unwashed. Leave me alone here and let me do as I like
for an hour."
"You mean to clean up?" he asked, gazing about the store hopelessly.
"Something like that. It rains so hard I can't get to school. I'll
visit with you, Mr. Drugg," said Janice smiling and her voice cheerful
again. "And instead of helping about the housework, I'll help in the
store. _Do_ let me, sir!"
"Why--yes--I don't mind. I guess you mean right enough, Miss Janice.
But you don't understand----"
"Give me an hour," she cried.
"Why, yes, Miss," he said, in his old, gentle, polite way. "If you
want to mess about I won't mind. Come in and I'll give you a big long
apron that will cover your frock all over. It--it's dreadful dusty in
here."
Janice would not be discouraged. She smiled cheerfully at him, found
brush, pan, broom, pail, and cloths, and with some hot water and
soap-powder went back to the store. The rain continued to fall
heavily. There was no likelihood of her being disturbed at her work.
She chose the more littered of the two show windows and almost threw
everything out of it in her hurry. Then she swept down the cobwebs and
dead flies, and brushed away all the dust. It was no small task to
scrub the panes of glass clean, and all the woodwork; but Janice knew
how to work. The old black Mammy who had kept house for her and Daddy
so many years had taught the girl domestic tasks, and had taught her
well.
Within an hour the work was done. More light came through the panes of
that window than usually ventured in upon a sunshiny day!
The balance of the task was a pleasure. Her bright eyes had noted the
newer goods upon Mr. Drugg's shelves. She selected samples of the more
recent canned goods--those of which the labels on the cans were fresh
and bright. She arranged these with package goods--breakfast foods,
and the like--so as to make a goodly display. She found colored tissue
papers, too, and she brightened the window shelf with these. She
festooned the fly-specked, T-arm light bracket in the window, and
carried twisted strings of the pink and green paper to the four corners
of the window shelf from the bottom of this bracket.
She went out upon the porch at last to look in at the display. From
the outside the window was pretty and bright--it was like the windows
she was used to seeing in the Greensboro stores.
"One thing about it," she declared, with confidence. "There's nothing
like this in the whole of Poketown. There isn't another store window
that looks so fresh and--yes!--dainty."
Then she went inside to Mr. Drugg. He was listlessly brushing up the
cottage kitchen. Lottie had fallen asleep on the wide bench beyond the
cookstove, a great bunch of posies hugged against her stained pinafore.
"Come in and see, sir," said Janice, beckoning the gray man into the
store. Drugg came with shuffling steps and lack-lustre eyes. He
seemed to be considering in his mind something that had nothing
whatsoever to do with what she had called him for.
"Do you re'lly suppose, Miss Janice," he murmured, "that I could
increase trade here? I need money--God knows!--for little Lottie. If
I could get her to Boston----
"Good gracious, Miss! what you been doing here?" he suddenly gasped.
"Isn't that some better?" demanded Janice, chuckling. "Astonished,
aren't you, Mr. Drugg? Don't you believe if both windows were like
that, and the whole store cleaned up, folks would sit up and take
notice?"
"I--I believe you," admitted the shopkeeper, still staring.
"And wouldn't it pay?"
"I--I don't know. It might."
"Isn't it worth trying?" demanded Janice, cheerily. "Now, please, I
want you to do as I say--and you must let me have my own way to-day
here. I've brought my lunch, and it's too late to go to school now,
even if it _does_ stop raining. You'll let me, won't you?"
"I--I--I don't know just what you want me to do--or what _you_ want to
do," stammered Hopewell Drugg, still staring at the transformed window.
"I want you to turn in and help me put your whole store to rights," she
declared. "You don't understand, Mr. Drugg. I believe you can attract
trade here if you will have things nice, and bright, and tidy. You
carry a good stock of wares; and you are not any more behind the times
than other Poketown merchants. Why not be _ahead of them all_?"
"Me?" breathed Drugg, in increasing wonder.
"And why not _you_? You've got as good a chance as any. Just get to
work and _make_ trade. Think of little Lottie. If your business can
be increased and you can make money, think of what you can do for her!"
Drugg suddenly straightened his stooped shoulders and held up his head.
"Just you show me what you want me to do," he said, with unexpected
fire.
"Grand!" cried the excited Janice. "I can set you to work in a minute.
First thing of all, you fix your screen doors; let's keep the fly
family out of the store--and we'll kill those already in here. You
commence on the screens, Mr. Drugg, while I tackle that other window."
About the time school was usually out, Janice removed her apron and the
other marks of her toil, and put on her hat and coat. As she raid,
they had made a good beginning. Better still, Hopewell Drugg seemed
quite inspired.
"You have done me a world of good, Miss Janice," he declared. "And
already the shop looks a hundred per cent. better."
"I should hope so," said Janice, vigorously. "And you keep right on
with the good work, Mr. Drugg. I'll come in and dress your windows
every week. And when you've torn those shelves away from the side
windows and let the light and air in here, and done your painting as
you promised, I'll come and arrange your wares on the shelves.
"Then you get out a little good advertising, and remind folks that
Hopewell Drugg is still in Poketown and doing business. Oh! there are
a dozen things I want you to do! But I won't tell you about all of
them now," and Janice laughed as she picked up her bag and ran out.
The rain had ceased. The sun was breaking through the clouds,
promising a beautiful evening. Janice almost ran into 'Rill
Scattergood on the sidewalk.
"Why, Janice dear!" cried the little schoolmistress. "I missed you
to-day." Then her eyes turned toward the store. "Is--is anything the
matter? Nothing's happened to little Lottie?"
"Not a thing," replied the girl, cheerfully.
"Nor--nor to Mr. Drugg? I don't hear him playing," said Miss 'Rill.
"And I hope you _won't_ hear him playing so much for a while," laughed
Janice. "The fiddle and the bow have been laid away on the shelf for a
while, I hope."
"But I really _do_ think Mr. Drugg plays very nicely," murmured the
little schoolmistress, not at all understanding what Janice meant. But
the girl ran on, smiling mysteriously.