"NO ODOR OF GASOLINE!"

During the winter now passed, Janice had watched the progress of the new
school under Nelson Haley's administration with growing confidence in
that young man. Nelson was advancing, as well as his pupils and the
school discipline. Educators from other towns in the state--even in
neighboring states--had come to visit Poketown's school.

Janice could not help having a thrill of pride when she learned of these
visitations and the appreciation shown by other educators of Nelson
Haley's work. She did not so often see the young man in a situation
where they could talk these wonders over; for Nelson was very, very busy
and gave both his days and evenings to the work he had set for himself
the fall before.

The girl might no longer honestly complain of Nelson's lack of purpose.
He had "struck his gait" it seemed; it was as though he had suddenly
seen a mark before him and was pressing onward to that goal at top
speed.

When he and Janice met as they did, of course, at church and
occasionally at evening parties, the teacher and the girl were the very
best of friends But tete-a-tetes were barred. Was it by Janice herself?
Or had Nelson deliberately changed his attitude toward her?

Sometimes she tried to unravel this mystery; but then, before she had
gone far in her ruminations, she began to wonder if she _wanted_ Nelson
to change toward her? That question frightened her, and she would at
once refuse to face the situation at all!

Once Nelson told her that a small college in middle Massachusetts
offered a line of work that he believed he would like to take up--if he
was "doomed to the profession of teaching, after all."

"And does the doom seem so very terrible?" she asked him, laughingly.

"I admit that I can _do_ things with the scholars," he said, gravely. "I
have just begun to realize it. It seems easy for me to make them
understand. But the profession doesn't give one the freedom that the law
does, for instance."

Janice had made no further comment, nor did Nelson advance anything more
regarding the work offered by the college in question.

She had her own intense interests, now and then. Clean-Up Day was past
but its effect in Poketown was ineradicable. Janice was satisfied that
there were enough people finally awake in the town to surely, if slowly,
revolutionize the place.

How could one householder drop back into the old, shiftless, careless
manner of living when his neighbors' pl