e to Prebles'?"

"A good deal of money. What way were you bad, Rog?"

"Oh, about every way, temper and all. Papa, I guess I'll build that
railroad. I got a big piece of pipe and a gauge that might work. Guess I
might begin to make a engine. Aren't I a pretty good inventor, Papa?"

"I don't know, Son. Nothing you've ever said or done makes me think
you're one yet. In the first place an inventor is the most patient
animal in the world. An inventor just can't lose his temper. Why don't
you begin by inventing a way to control your temper, Son?"

Roger subsided into his bowl of bread and milk.

Mr. Moore was smoking on the front porch when Mrs. Moore joined him
after putting Roger to bed. She sat down on the steps beside him while
she told him of Roger's day.

"He's so contrite and so sweet, after one of his passions!" she said.
"And yet, well, maybe it's his age, but he's so sort of casual about his
temper. To-night, for instance, after he'd said the Lord's Prayer, he
added, 'And please God, help me to find some pipe to make that engine
and some rails too. And bless Charley, she's so little. And bless Mamma
and Papa. And Lord, you might do something about my temper if you have
time. Amen.'"

The father and mother laughed together, then Mr. Moore said, "I do hope
the boy will keep up his interest in mechanics. It's the coming game for
real he-men. The world's going to turn into a big machine. The way
things are going now with me, I'll have a real place for the boy when he
finishes school. Dean Erskine's about persuaded me to let him go to
college. I've been dead set against a college engineer until I met
Erskine. He's made me feel as I'd have had less of an uphill pull if I'd
gone to engineering school, and he says I've made him feel as if he
never had enough shop practice."

Moore stopped to chuckle. Then he went on, after refilling his pipe,
"Yes, machinery is the greatest thing in the world. I took on five more
men to-day, Mamma. All union men. I've decided to give in on that point
and have a strictly union shop."

"I think you're right," said Mrs. Moore. "After all the union is the
working man's only protection."

Moore grunted. "I don't care so much about the right of it as I do the
expediency. And I haven't time to buck the union."

"You've changed a lot since you left off working with your hands,"
commented his wife, noncommittally.

"A man has to change his point of view when he becomes an employer
ins