g and I are getting so much social mail
that we fear we shall have to hire a secretary for the summer."

"Nobody will bother _us_, I guess," grimaced Tom. "Most people
here probably think that, because we're engineers, we run locomotives.
That's what the word 'engineer' suggests to ignoramuses. Now,
the man who runs a locomotive should properly be called an
engine-tender, or engineman, while it's the fellow who surveys and
bosses the building of a railroad that is the engineer. You get a
smattering of engineering work at West Point, don't you?"

"We've been at math. and drawing, so far," Dick explained. "That
all leads up to the engineering instruction that we shall have to
take up in September."

"Oh, I dare say you'll get a very fair smattering of engineering,"
assented Tom. "It's nothing like the real practice that we get,
though, out in the field with the survey and construction parties.
I guess you fellows, after your grind in the High School, found
West Point math. pretty easy, didn't you?"

Dick laughed merrily before he answered.

"Tom, the math. that a fellow gets in High School would take up
about three months at West Point. How are you on math., now?"

"Oh, not so fearfully rotten," replied Reade complacently. "Harry
and I have had to dig up a lot of new math. since we've taken
on with an engineering corps in the field. Harry, trot up some
of the kind of mathematics that we have to use."

"Wait a moment," put in Dick. "Greg, sketch out an easy one from
the math. problems we have to dig into at West Point. Give 'em
something light from conic sections first."

Cadet Holmes sketched out, on the back of an envelope, the
demonstration of a short problem.

Tom and Harry looked on laughingly, at first. Then their eyes began
to open.

"Do you really have to dig up that sort of stuff at West Point,"
demanded Reade.

"Yes," nodded Dick. "And now I'll show you another easy one,
belonging to descriptive geometry."

The two young engineers looked on and listened for a few moments.

"Stop!" commanded Hazelton, at last. "My head is beginning to
buzz!"

"If that's the sort of gibberish you have to learn, I'm more than
ever glad that I didn't go to West Point," proclaimed Reade.

The old-time chums had eaten their fill of ice cream some time
before, but they still sat about the table, chatting gayly.

"There's one thing you never really told us about in your letters,"
muttered Tom. "You wro