yes, they were. But why they
did not marry, and why he married the girl he did, and why Miss 'Rill
kept on teaching school and never would look at any other man, is all a
mystery."

"Romance!" commented Nelson, with a little laugh, yet looking down upon
Janice with serious eyes. "The night is full of it--don't you think
so, Janice?"

"No, no!" she laughed up at him. "It's only the moonlight," and a
little later he left her at the old Day house with a casual handshake.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE SCHOOL DEDICATION

Thereafter there was a somewhat different tone to the friendship
between Janice and the schoolteacher. They were confidential. They
both assumed that the other was interested in the matters dear to each.
It was a comradery that had no silly side to it. Nelson Haley was a
young man working his way up the first rungs of the ladder of life;
Janice was his good friend and staunch partisan.

As neither was possessed of brother or sister, they adopted each other
in that stead.

The winter fled away at last and Spring came over the mountain range
and down to the lakeside, scattering flowers and grasses as she passed.
Although Janice had enjoyed some of the fun and frolic of the New
England winter, she was perfectly delighted to see the season change.

It had been late spring when she reached Poketown the year before. Now
she saw the season open, and her first trips over the hillsides and
through the wood lot where the snow still lay in sheltered places,
searching for the earliest flowers, were days of delight for the girl.

The Shower Bath was released from its icy fetters, and the little
mountain stream poured over the lip of granite with a burst of sound
like laughter. She visited The Overlook, too; but she did not need to
view the landscape o'er to enable her to understand why God did not
immediately answer her prayers for her father.

Great news from the mine in Mexico:

"We haven't made much money yet, it is true," Mr. Day wrote about this
time. "But things are going right. The armies--both of them--are now
far away and if they leave us in peace for a few months, your Daddy
will make so much money that you can have the desire of your heart, my
dear."

And the "desire of her heart" just then was--and had been for months--a
little automobile in which she might ride over the roads about
Poketown. There wasn't a good horse and carriage obtainable in the
town; and Janice found the time hangin