. "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 sho