laimed 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