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."
[Illustration: She just _had_ to raise her eyes and look into his
earnest ones. (See page 307.)]
"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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_WHEN PATTY WENT TO COLLEGE_, By Jean Webster.
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[Illustration]
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