Chapter 30
WHAT THE ECHO MIGHT HAVE HEARD
"What's your hurry, Janice?" demanded the young teacher, coming to her side, smiling. Then he saw her wet lashes and exclaimed: "My dear girl! you are crying?"
"Not--not now," said Janice, shaking her head and her voice catching a little as she spoke.
"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. "Principal 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."
"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 grassy 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 shore 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----"
Nobody but Janice heard the rest of his question--not even the echo!
THE END
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