rt 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