I fear he hasn't the least idea of accepting any invitations, while
he is down here. I will try to get him; but you may be driven into
taking a piano down on the beach and discoursing sweet music to him,
while he bathes."

"Bathes!" Cicely's tone was a faint echo of Phebe's. "He doesn't bathe;
he paddles. No matter! Some day, I'll get what I want." But happily she
had no foreknowledge of the circumstances under which she would talk of
music with Gifford Barrett.

An hour later, Allyn and his father were driving away across the moors.
It takes good seamanship to bear the motion of a Quantuck box cart; it
requires still better seamanship to navigate one of them along the rutted
roads. For some time, it took all of Dr. McAlister's energy to keep from
landing himself and Allyn head foremost in the thickets of sweet fern and
beach plum. By degrees, however, he became more expert in avoiding
pitfalls and in keeping both wheels in the ruts, and he turned to Allyn
expectantly.

"Well, Allyn, what was it?"

For two days, Allyn had been preparing himself on various circuitous
routes by which he might approach his subject and slowly prepare his
father's mind for the plea he wished to make. Now, however, his father
had taken him by surprise, and accordingly he blurted out the whole
plain truth.

"Papa, I don't want to go to college. I want to be an engineer."

Back in the depths of Dr. McAlister's eyes, there came an expression
which, under other conditions, might have developed into a smile. The
boy's tone was anxious and pleading, out of all proportion to the gravity
of his subject; but Dr. McAlister wisely forbore to smile. All his life,
he had made it his rule never to laugh at the earnestness of his
children, but to treat it with the fullest respect.

"A civil engineer?" he asked, thinking that Allyn was attracted by the
profession of his brother-in-law.

"No; just a plain, everyday engineer that runs machinery. I wish you'd
let me. There's no use in my going through college; I'm too stupid about
lots of things, and I never could make a decent doctor."

"What makes you think you could make a decent engineer?" the doctor
questioned keenly.

"Because I love it. I like wheels and beams and valves so much better
than I like syntax and subjunctives," he urged. "I'd be willing to work
for it, papa; it's interesting and it really counts for something, when
you get it done."

"Perhaps. Is it a new idea, Allyn?"

The bo