"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?"