ed and she gave the biddies more
attention; therefore she was being repaid in eggs and chickens for
frying. Altogether it could no longer be said that the Day family was
shiftless.

Janice received several cheerful and entertaining letters that summer
from Nelson Haley. He was clerk of a summer hotel on the Maine shore,
and he seemed to be having a good time as well as earning a
considerable salary.

When the new school committee of Poketown tendered him an offer of the
head mastership of the school (he was to begin with one assistant for
the kindergartners), he threw up his clerkship and hastened to a
certain summer normal school in central Massachusetts.

Janice was very glad, although his action surprised her, knowing, as
she did, how much young Haley needed the money he was earning at the
hotel. His tuition at the summer school for a month, and his board
there, would eat up a good deal of the money he had saved. He might
not be able to enter for his law studies at the end of another school
year.

Janice believed, however, that Nelson Haley was "cut out," as the local
saying was, for a teacher. He had an easy, interesting manner, which
was bound to hold the attention of even the wandering minds among his
pupils. She knew by the improvement in Marty that the young man's
influence, especially on the boys of Poketown, was for good.

"If he would only make up his mind to _work_, he might rise high in the
profession," she thought. "Some day he might even be president of a
college--and wouldn't that be fine?"

But she did not write anything of this nature to the absent Nelson.
She treasured in her mind what he had said about working because _she_
was proud of him; and she wisely decided that Nelson Haley was a young
man who needed very little encouragement in some ways. Janice was by
no means sure that she liked Nelson Haley as he liked her.

So she kept her answers to his letters upon a coolly friendly basis and
only showed him, when he returned to Poketown in September in time for
the dedication exercises of the school building, how glad she was to
see him by the warmth of her greeting.

It was a real gala day in Poketown when the new school building was
thrown open for public inspection. In the evening the upper floor of
the building (which for the present was to be used as a hall) was
crowded by the villagers to hear the "public speaking"; and on this
occasion Nelson Haley again covered himself with