"He-a! he-a! he-a!"

Back came the imitation, shot out of the wood by the nymph:

"'E-a! 'e-a! 'e-a!"

"Ha, ha!" laughed the girl. "There's Lottie's echo."

"'A!" laughed the echo. "'Ere's Lottie's echo!"

Nelson, flushed and breathing rather heavily, reached the old dock.

"What a girl you are, Janice!" he said.

"And what a very, very old person you are getting to be, Nelson Haley,"

she told him. "Princ.i.p.al of the Polktown School! I saw your article in the State School Register. Theories! You write just as though you know what you were writing about."

"Oh--well," he said, rather taken aback by her joking.

"And it wasn't much more than a year ago that you turned up your nose at the profession of teaching."

"Aw--now!" he said, pleadingly.

"And _you_ were the young man who wanted to get through life without hard work--or, so you said."

"Don't you know that it is only the fool who doesn't change his opinion--and change it frequently, too?" he bantered back at her.

"You must have changed a whole lot, Nelson Haley," she declared, with sudden gravity. "Don't--don't you feel awfully _funny_ inside? It's a terrible shock, I should think, for one to turn right square around----"

"I don't feel humorous--not a little bit," he interposed, seriously. "I have been working toward an end. I expect my reward."

"Oh, Nelson! The college? Are they really going to invite you to go there to teach?"

"That isn't the reward I mean," he said, shaking his head.

"For pity's sake! something bigger than _that_? My!" Janice cried, all dimpling again, "but you _are_ a person with great expectations, aren't you?"

"I certainly am," he said, bowing gravely. "I have a great goal in view.

Let me tell you----"

But suddenly she jumped up and walked along the edge of the inlet away from the dock. "Oh, do come along, Nelson. We don't want to sit there all day."

Nelson, flushed and only half rose. Then he settled back again and said, with some doggedness:

"I've got something to tell you myself. This is a good place to talk."

"Why, how serious!"

"It is serious business--for me," declared the young man.

"And you're a trifle ungallant," she accused, looking at him from under lowered lashes.

"This is no time for gallantry. This is _business_."

"What business?" she asked, tentatively approaching.

"The business of living. The business of finding out what's going to happen to me--to _us_."

"My goodness!" murmured Janice. "You talk almost like a soothsayer."

"Come and hear what the astrologer has to say," urged Nelson, yet without his customary lightness of speech and look. He was still very serious.

"I don't know," she said, slowly, hesitating in her approach. "I am almost afraid of you in this mood. Daddy says when a young man begins to act like he was really seriously grappling with life, look out for him!"

"Your father is right. I am not to be trifled with, Miss Janice Day."

"Why, Nelson! is something really wrong?" she asked him, and came a step nearer.

"As far as my future is concerned," said he, quietly, "it seems to be quite all right."

"Then the college----?"

"I have a letter, too," he said, pulling it out of his pocket.

This bait brought her to him. He thrust the letter into her hand, but he held onto that hand, too, and she could not easily pull away from him.

"What--what is it, Nelson?" she asked, looking at him for only a moment, and then dropping her gaze before his intense look.

"I've had a committee come to see me and look over my work at the Polktown School."

[Ill.u.s.tration: She just _had_ to raise her eyes and look into his earnest ones. (See page 307.)]

"Oh, Nelson!"

"Now the secretary of the college faculty writes me the nicest kind of a letter. I've made good with them, Janice."

"I--I'm so glad!" she murmured, eyes still down, and trying ever so faintly to wriggle her hand out of his.

Suddenly Nelson Haley caught her other hand, too. He held them firmly and--for some reason--she just _had_ to raise her eyes and look straight into his earnest ones.

"I've made good with them, Janice!" he cried--he almost shouted it. "But that's nothing--just nothing! The big thing with me now--the reward I want--is to hear you say that I've won out with you. Is it so, Janice--have I won out with _you_?"

The long lashes screened the hazel eyes again. She looked on the one hand and on the other. There really seemed no escape, this greatly metamorphosed Nelson Haley was _so_ insistent.

So she raised her lashes again and looked straight into his eyes. What she whispered the echo might have heard; and she nodded her head quickly, several times.

They came up through the gra.s.sy lane in the gloaming. Mrs. Beasely would be waiting supper for her boarder; but Nelson scouted the idea that he should not see Janice home first.