"Wouldn't we have the dandy time
snowballing each other, and snowballing old Horsehair?"

"So we would, Ben," answered Dave, his eyes gleaming. "We sure did
have some good times at that school."

"How are you and Roger getting along with your civil engineering
course?"

"All right, I think. Mr. Ramsdell says he is greatly pleased with our
work."

"That's fine. I almost wish I had taken up civil engineering myself.
But dad wants me to go into real estate with him. He thinks there is a
big chance in that line these days, when Crumville is just beginning
to wake up."

"Hasn't your dad got a big rival in Aaron Poole?"

"Oh, no! Poole isn't in it any more when it comes to big deals. You
see, he was so close and miserly in all his business affairs that a
great many people became afraid of him."

"What has become of Nat Poole?" questioned Laura. "Did he go back to
Oak Hall?"

"For a short while only. When his folks found out that he had failed
to graduate they were awfully angry. Mr. Poole claimed that it was the
fault of the school and so he took Nat away and told him he would have
to go to work. I think Nat is working in some store, although where, I
don't know."

"I don't think it's in Crumville or we should have seen him," said
Dave.

"I never want to meet that boy again," pouted Jessie. "I'll never get
over how meanly he acted toward us."

"It's not so much Nat's fault as it is his bringing up," remarked Ben.
"His father never treated him half decently. But I hope Nat makes a
man of himself in spite of the way he used to treat us," went on the
youth generously.

"By the way, Ben, didn't you say your father had gone away?" queried
Dave, a few minutes later.

"Yes, he has gone to Chicago on very important business. It seems an
old friend of his--a Mr. Enos, who was once his partner in an art
store--died, and now the lawyers want to see my father about settling
up the Enos estate."

"An art store?" queried Dave. "I never knew that your father had been
in any such business."

"It was years ago--before my folks came to Crumville. You see, my
father and this Mr. Enos had been chums from early boyhood. My father
says that Mr. Enos was a very peculiar sort of man, who was all
wrapped up in pictures and painting. He got my father to advance a
thousand dollars he had saved up, and on that money the two opened an
art store. But they couldn't make a go of it, and so they gave it up,
and while Mr. Enos went West