Page:Dave Porter at Oak Hall.djvu/47

Rh. "Even as it is, I'm going to do what I can."

"And after that?"

"I'd go to college and learn all I could."

"And then what, Dave?"

"Then I'd like to travel, if I could afford it, to broaden my mind, as the professor puts it, and after that I'd go in for some profession like law or civil engineering. I was reading the other day of a young fellow who was a civil engineer and was laying out railroads through the mountains of Mexico. That work would suit me exactly." Dave's face began to glow with enthusiasm. "I just wish I had the chance to go ahead! I'm going to make the chance, too,—if I can," he added, stoutly.

The outburst interested Oliver Wadsworth more than he was willing to admit. Then of a sudden a pang shot through his heart, as he remembered the son he had lost through drowning. He looked at Dave and fancied he could trace a resemblance between the two. His dead boy had had that same clean-cut chin, and those same honest, earnest eyes.

"We'll have to see about this later," he said, in a husky voice. "Let us look over the rest of the farm."

In ten minutes more they returned to the house, and there the manufacturer explained to Caspar Potts just what he intended to do. The old