"That does sound like a teaser, don't it?" responded her cousin, with a grin. "Just the same, Mr. Haley made 'em all sit up and take notice. He didn't only speak for the schoolhouse, and new methods of teaching, and a graded school; but he took up Elder Concannon's arguments and shot 'em full of holes.
"You ought to have seen the old gentleman's face when Mr. Haley proved that a better-taught generation of scholars would possess an increased earning power and so be better able to take up and pay the school bonds than the present taxpayers.
"Say! the folks cheered! When Mr. Haley sat down, the question was put and the vote went through with a rush. But Elder Concannon and Old Bill Jones, and Mr. Cross Moore, and some of the others, were as mad as they could be."
"Mad at Mr. Haley?" queried Janice, with sudden anxiety.
"You bet! But they can't take the school away from him till the end of the year, as long as he doesn't neglect his work. So Dad says, and he knows."
Janice was worried. She knew that Nelson Haley had hoped to teach the Poketown school at least two years, so as to get what he called "a stake" for law-school studies. And there were not many ungraded schools in the state that paid as well as Poketown's; for it was a large school.
The furor occasioned by the special town meeting, and the fight for the new school, passed over. A site for the school was secured just off of High Street near the center of the town—a much handier situation for all concerned. The ground would be broken for the cellar as soon as the frost had gone.
The committee appointed at the town meeting to have charge of the building of the school were all in favor of it. There were three of them,—Mr. Massey, the druggist, the proprietor of the Lake View Inn, and Dr. Poole, one of the two medical practitioners in the town. These three were instructed to appoint two others to act with them, and as these two appointees need not be taxpayers, one of them was Nelson Haley, who acted as secretary.
When Janice heard of this, she was delighted. She had not seen the teacher more than to say "how-de-do" since their rather warm discussion before the date of the town meeting. Now she put herself in the way of meeting him where they might have a tête-à-tête.
There were not many social affairs in Poketown for young people. Janice had attended one or two of the parties where boys and girls mingled indiscriminately and played "kissing games," then she refused all such invitations. She was not old enough to expect to be bidden to the few social gatherings held by the more lively class of people in the town.