"I should think _you_, a collegian and an educated man, would be only too eager to help in such a movement as this," Janice cried. "Oh, Nelson! don't you know that the people who are waking up in this town need your help?" "My goodness me! how serious you are about it," he returned, teasingly. "Of course, if you insist, I'll risk my job with the committee and come out flat-footed for the new schoolhouse and reform." "I don't wish you to do anything at all for _me_," returned Janice, rather tartly. "If your own conscience doesn't tell you what course to pursue, pray remain neutral--as you are. But I am disappointed in you." "There is feminine logic for you!" laughed the young man. "With one breath you tell me to follow the dictates of my own conscience, and then you show me plainly just how much you will despise me if I go against your side of the controversy." "You are mistaken," Janice said, with some little heat. "I do not personally care what you do, only as your action reflects upon your own character." "Now, dear me!" he sighed, still amused at her earnestness, "I thought if I came out strongly at the town meeting for the new school, you would award me the palm." "My goodness me!" exclaimed the exasperated girl. "Somebody ought to award you a palm--and right on the ear! You're as big a tease as Marty," and she refused to discuss the school project with him any further. CHAPTER XXII AT THE SUGAR CAMP Nelson Haley was, however, at the town meeting and spoke in favor of the new school building. Janice had a full report of it afterward from Marty, who squeezed in at the back with several of the other boys and drank in the long and tedious wrangle between the partisans in the school matter. "And, by jinks!" the boy proclaimed, "lemme tell you, Janice, it looked like the vote was goin' ag'in us till Mr. Haley began to talk. I thought he didn't have much interest in the thing. Nobody thought he did. I heard some of the old fellers cacklin' that 'teacher didn't favor the idee none.' "But, say! When he got up to talk, he showed 'em. He was sitting alongside of Elder Concannon himself, and the Elder had made a mighty strong speech against increasin' taxes and burdenin' the town for years and years with a school debt. "But, talk about argument! Mr. Haley sailed inter them old fossils, and made the fur fly, you bet!" "Oh, Marty! Fur fly from fossils?" chuckled Janice. "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.