away from
him.

"What--what is it, Nelson?" she asked, looking at him for only a
moment, and there 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 ques