azard; but quite another matter to cut it
evenly, and on a ruled line. Nor was the driving of nails as simple
as he had supposed. At the end of the first hour Theo, feeling very
awkward and clumsy, and rubbing a finger that had been too slow to get
out of the path of the hammer, left the workshop.

"I never dreamed it would be so hard!" he muttered, viewing his
bleeding knuckle with chagrin.

The lesson of the following day did not prove much easier, and its
difficulties aroused the lad's fighting spirit.

"I am going to learn to saw and drive nails properly if it takes me
the rest of my life!" he declared resolutely. "The very idea! Why,
some of those little chaps in the sloyd room can chisel and plane like
carpenters. I'll bet I can do it, too, if I stick at it."

Therefore it came about that instead of missing tennis and basket-ball
as he had expected, Theo became completely absorbed in his new
interest--so absorbed that his father soon began to fear that his
studies would suffer. Early and late Theo was at his bench with his
tools. He tried faithfully not to slight his books, but there was no
use pretending he did not enjoy his carpentry. He was making a
footstool now, a little wooden piece with turned legs which he was to
stain with orange shellac and give to his mother. Already he had
finished a square tray and a handkerchief box. When the stool was
completed he was preparing for a more ambitious enterprise, a thing he
longed yet hesitated to venture upon--a wooden bookrack for
Mr. Croyden.

It was to be made from oak, not from the ordinary pine wood on which,
up to this time, he had been working; and it was to be a much more
elaborately finished article than anything he had undertaken. He had
delayed beginning it until the closing part of the term in order that
he might have the benefit of every atom of training he could get
before he made the first cuts in the wood. As he now framed his plans
for the making of the gift he smiled to think how impossible such a
project would have been a few months ago.

"Dad was right!" he affirmed. "Training your hands is just like
training any other part of your body. The longer and more regularly
you keep at it the more expert you get. Sloyd is no different from
rowing, or football, or tennis."

With the help of his instructor he drew his design, measured his
pattern, and sent for the wood.

Then, impatient to begin work, he waited.

Mr. Croyden's birthday he had le