Janice Day at Poketown Part 41

"Tell me what is the matter?" begged Nelson. "Who's hurt you?"

"They're not those sort of tears, Nelson!" she cried, with a quivering little smile. "Oh, I ought to be just the very happiest girl alive!"

"And in tears?"

"Tears of joy, I tell you," she declared.

"Not weeping over the lost motor car, then?"

"Oh, my goodness! No! How could one be so foolish with such a dear, dear letter as I've got here. A regular _love_ letter, Nelson Haley!"

The young man's face changed suddenly. It looked very grim, and he caught at her hand which held little Lottie's letter.

"What's that?" he demanded, so gruffly that Janice was quite astonished.

"Why, Nelson Haley! What's the matter?" she asked, looking at him with wide-open eyes.

"Who's been writing to you, Janice?" he asked, huskily.

"I will show it to you. It is too, too dear!" exclaimed the girl, again half sobbing. "Read it!"

The teacher spread out the crumpled page. The look of relief that came into his face when he saw Lottie's straggling pen-tracks was not at all understood by Janice.

He read the child's letter appreciatively. She saw the tears flood into his own eyes as he gently folded the letter and handed it back.

"Why, Janice," he said, at last. "What's a motor car to _that_?"

"That's what I say," she cried, and laughed. "Come on! let's tell it to Lottie's echo. We'll see if it is still lurking in the dark old spruce trees over yonder on the point."

She darted ahead of him and reached the ruined wharf where Lottie had stood when first Janice had seen her. In imitation of the child she raised her voice in that weird cry:

"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.