ps make
a model." He paused, then rose and Roger rose too while the Dean put a
hand on his broad young shoulder. "You've launched on the finest, most
thankless, most compelling, most discouraging, most heart thrilling game
in the world, Roger. You'll probably be poverty stricken all your life,
but Lord! Lord! what riches of the mind will be yours!"

Roger flushed and lifted his head in a gesture that was infinitely
young.

"I'm used to poverty, sir."

"I know you are and so am I. Good night, Roger!"

"Good night, Dean! Thank you!" and Roger, in spite of his grief,
returned to the Wolfs' with his face set triumphantly toward the
future.

The next morning he deposited his suitcase in old lady Winkler's most
meager and coldest bedroom and after he had stoked the furnace and
shoveled the walks he bolted for the college drafting room.

It was not until the fall of his senior year that Roger completed a
design of a solar engine which Dean Erskine was willing to turn over to
the University shops, that a model might be made. Roger had taken Ernest
into his confidence and that faithful friend undertook to make all
drawings for him. Ernest had no originality of mind, but he was an
excellent workman and a first class mathematician and laboratory man.
Early in January, the model was completed, and on a cold Saturday
afternoon, the test was made. Roger and Ernest came home to the Wolfs'
for supper deeply discouraged.

"But why wouldn't it work?" asked Elsa, as the boys wiped the supper
dishes for her.

"If I knew that, I wouldn't be blue, would I?" grunted Roger.

"I wish I understood the stuff you talk," Elsa went on. "I don't see how
on a cold day like this you'd expect to run an engine with heat from the
sun."

"We didn't try to," said Ernest.

"Didn't try to!" echoed Elsa. Then she banged the tea kettle angrily
back on the stove. "I do think you boys are disgusting! Here I'm so
interested in your work and you treat me as if I were a baby! And I'd
like to know who does more for you two great hulks than I do. You simply
disgust--"

"Hold on, Elsa," roared Roger. "For the love of Mike! I'll confide the
inmost secrets of my being to you if you'll stop jawing. Now listen!
You can see that we can't get as high temperatures out of the sun's rays
as we can out of burning coal or gasolene?"

Elsa, much mollified, leaned against the sink and fastened her violet
eyes on Roger's face.

"I understand that," she said.

"