'd proposed to try to get on the
'reportorial staff' of a city newspaper you'd all smile approval, as at
a thing suited to my genius. I'd have to live in town to do that, and
what little I earned would go to fill my own hungry mouth. Now at the
shops--you needn't look so top-lofty! Dozens of fellows who are taking
engineering courses put on the overalls, shoulder a lunch-pail and go to
work every morning during vacation at seven o'clock. They come grinning
home at night, their faces black as tar, their spirits up in Q, jump
into a bath-tub, put on clean togs, and come down to dinner looking like
gentlemen--but _not_ gentlemen any more thoroughly than they have been
all day."

Jeff looked at his brother seriously. "Lanse," he said, "if you go into
one of the locomotive shops won't you get a place for me?"

But Celia interposed. "Whatever the rest of us do," she said, "Jeff and
Just must keep on with school."

Jeff rebelled with a grimace. "Not much!" he shouted. "I guess one
six-footer is as good as another in a boiler-shop. You don't catch me
swallowing algebra and German when I might be developing muscle. If
Lanse puts on overalls I'm after him."

Celia looked at her father. "What do you think of all this, sir?" she
asked. "If I stay at home, dismiss Delia, and do the housework myself,
and Lanse finds some suitable position, can't we get on? Charlotte can
put off the school of design another year. We will all be very
economical about clothes----"

"Being economical doesn't bring in cash to pay bills," interrupted Jeff.
"Do the best he can, Lanse won't draw any hair-raising salary the first
year. He could probably get clerical work at one of the banks, but
what's that? He'd fall off so in his wind I could throw him across the
room in three months."

They all laughed. Jeff's devotion to athletics dominated his ideals at
all times, and his disgust at the thought of such a depletion of his
brother's physical forces was amusing.

Celia was still looking at her father. He spoke in the hearty tone to
which they were accustomed, his face full of satisfaction.

"You please me very much, all of you," he said. "It will be the best
tonic I can offer your mother. Her greatest trial is this very
necessity, which she foresaw the instant the plan was formed--so much
sacrifice on the part of her children. Yet she agreed with me that the
experience might not be wholly bad for you, and she said"--he paused,
smiling at his elder