f this unexplained anxiety
connected Hopewell Drugg with the dances at the Lake View Inn.

CHAPTER V

"THE BLUEBIRD--FOR HAPPINESS"

Could it be possible that Janice Day had alighted from Walky Dexter's
old carryall at the little grocery store for still another purpose? It
was waning afternoon, yet she did not immediately make her way homeward.

Mrs. Beaseley lived almost across the street from Hopewell Drugg's
store, and Nelson Haley, the principal of Polktown's graded school,
boarded with the widow. Janice ran in to see her "just for a moment."
Therefore, it could scarcely be counted strange that the young school
principal should have caught the girl in Mrs. Beaseley's bright kitchen
when he came home with his satchel of books and papers.

"There! I do declare for't!" ejaculated the widow, who was a rather
lugubrious woman living in what she believed to be the remembrance of
"her sainted Charles."

"There! I do declare for't! I git to talkin' and I forgit how the
time flies. That's what my poor Charles uster say--he had _that_ fault
to find with me, poor soul. I couldn't never seem to git the vittles
on the table on time when I was young.

"I was mindin' to make you a shortcake for your supper to-night, Mr.
Haley, out o' some o' them peaches I canned last Fall! But it's so
late----"

"You needn't hurry supper on my account, Mrs. Beaseley," said Nelson,
cheerily, and without removing his gloves. "I find I've to go downtown
again on an errand. I'll not be back for an hour."

Janice was smiling merrily at him from the doorway.

Mrs. Beaseley began to bustle about. "That'll give me just time to
toss up the shortcake," she proclaimed. "Good-bye, Janice. Come
again. Mr. Haley'll like to walk along with you, I know."

Mrs. Beaseley was blind to what most people, in Polktown knew--that
Janice and the schoolteacher were the very closest of friends. Only
their years--at least, only Janice's youth--precluded an announced
engagement between them.

"Wait until I can come home and get a square look at this phenomenal
young man whom you have found in Polktown," Daddy had written, and
Janice would not dream of going against her father's expressed wish.

Besides, Nelson Haley was a poor young man, with his own way to make in
the world. His work in the Polktown school had attracted the attention
of the faculty of a college not far away, and he had already been
invited to join the teaching staff of