urself how your
time should be spent! If you win a scholarship, I'll manage to help you
through a 'Varsity course, but I can't afford to keep you there
unassisted. Remember it is your whole career which is at stake."

"All right, father, I _will_ work," said Jack easily.

He was an affectionate boy, who disliked disappointing his parents, but
unfortunately he disliked work even more. He was rather sorry now that
he had mentioned his easy victory over the redoubtable Johnston. The
pater would expect him to be top every day, whereas he had only just put
on a spurt to show what he could do if he chose. Suppose he did lose
the scholarship, it wouldn't be so bad after all, he could still play
footer on Saturday afternoons!

The doctor's glance had wandered, as if for consolation, to his elder
son--Miles the strenuous, the indefatigable, who had a passion for work
for work's sake. He was going through the practical stage of an
engineer's training, and left the house at six o'clock each morning, to
return in the afternoon clad in workman's clothes, incredibly greasy and
dirty. Betty suffered agonies in case "they"--that wonderful impersonal
"they" who overclouded her life--should think he was really and truly an
ordinary workman! On one occasion Miles had joined her on the doorstep
as she was returning from an afternoon walk, and she had distinctly seen
the curtains of the Pampered Pet's drawing-room move, as if someone were
peeping out from behind, when, as she confided to Jill later on, "her
cheeks turned k-r-rimson with mortification!"

"Well, Miles, my boy, did you take your little invention with you to-
day, and were you able to show it to the manager?"

"Yes, I took it all right."

"And what did he say?"

"He said it was all right."

"Does that mean that he acknowledged that it was an improvement on the
present method? Did he feel inclined to give it a trial?"

"Oh yes, it went all right. He said it would do."

"But that's capital! Capital! I congratulate you heartily! Didn't Mr
Davidson seem pleased that you should have hit on such a bright idea?"

"Oh, he said it was all right."

Miles made a determined attack on his plate, as if pleading to be left
alone to enjoy his dinner in peace. Since the days of his babyhood he
had shown a strong inventive genius, and now it was his delight to spend
his spare moments working in his little cupboard sanctum at home,
striving to improve on any bit of mac