"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 there 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."

"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.

Lights had begun to twinkle in the sitting-rooms of the various houses along the street. But there was a moon. Indeed, that was the excuse they had for remaining so late on the sh.o.r.e of the inlet. They had stopped to see it rise.

Through the thick trees the moonlight searched out the side porch of Hopewell Drugg's store. The plaintive notes of the storekeeper's violin breathed tenderly out upon the evening air:

"Darling, I am growing old-- Silver threads among the gold,"

sighed Janice, happily. "And that is Miss 'Rill beside him there on the porch--don't you see her?"

"I see," said Nelson. "Mrs. Beasely is helping 'Rill make her wedding gown. Little Lottie is going to have a new mamma."

"And--and Hopewell's been playing that old song to her all these years!" murmured Janice "They are just as happy----"

"Aren't they!" agreed Nelson, with a thrill in his voice. "I hope that when we're as old as they are, we'll be as happy, too. Do you suppose----"

n.o.body but Janice heard the rest of his question--not even the echo!