Page:St. Nicholas (serial) (IA stnicholasserial321dodg).pdf/539



and with a strapful of books slung across his shoulder, Jack Parker turned a little out of his homeward way to go down to the river, where the great piers of the new railroad bridge were rising higher each day.

All around the bridge the air was full of clanging and grinding and creaking noises. Several men were working near him, and Jack looked up to find another man watching him in quiet amusement. He did not have to be told that this was Mr. George Heath, the civil engineer under whose watchful eye the bridge was being built, and Mr. Heath remembered that nearly every day he ran across this bright-looking boy somewhere around the bridge.

“Well, young man, what do you think of it?”

Taken by surprise, Jack reddened suddenly. What he had been thinking was not entirely complimentary, “Oh, I—I like it pretty well,” he said slowly.

“Then you don’t like it altegether? What seems to be wrong?”

The engineer seemed interested and rather entertained. “What is it?” he repeated encouraginely, and Jack told him.

“I was just wondering what will happen in the spring, with all that stonework to fill the channel up. I don’t know mach about bridges, but it seems as if there were a great many piers for this kind of a river.”

“You mean when the ice breaks up?”

“Yes,” said Jack, eagerly, all enthusiasm in telling the idea which had been simmering in his brain for several weeks. “It seems funny that the railroad company should want a fifteen-pier bridge, which will catch the ice and jam it, and force the water back over its own tracks. This end of the city is pretty low, and when the ice comes down it comes in an awful hurry, and wants lots of room to get through.”

Jack stopped, half embarrassed, as he remembered that this was a strange way to talk to the engineer who was responsible for the building of this bridge; but Mr. Heath seemed rather to enjoy it. His eyes twinkled behind his glasses.

“We don’t expect the ice to jam,” he explained kindly. “If this city were in a colder part of the country, your criticism would be all right. Since you are interested, I will tell you that there are engineering reasons why a fifteen-pier bridge is better adapted to the company’s uses at this point. Circumstances might give us trouble with the ice, such as a break-up on the upper river and its tributaries before the ice began to move here, but it would take such a winter as you have n’t had in twenty years,”

Jack said nothing. He knew that his knowledge of bridge construction was limited, but he had grown up beside this river and felt that he knew its habits pretty well.

“Perhaps you will be a civil engineer yourself some day,” Mr. Heath added, turning away as his foreman came up to him.

“I ’d like to,” said Jack, soberly, “but I ’ll