“But your marks were higher, last month, than they had been for a year.”

“That was Cicely.”

“Cicely?”

“Yes, she helped me.  I was warned, and would have been conditioned; but she found it out and went at me till she pulled me through.  That was how she found out about it.”

“About what?”

“This.”

“Then Cicely knows?”

“Yes; but nobody else.  I let it out to her, one day, and she made me show her my drawings.  Then she told me that, if I wanted you to listen to me, I’d have to do a good deal better work in school than I had been doing.”

The doctor nodded approvingly.

“Cicely has a level head of her own,” he said; “but how do I know you aren’t trying to shirk school, Allyn?”

Allyn faced him proudly.

“I never lie, and I promise you I’ll do my best.”

“Well, that’s all right.”  The doctor was coming down to the practical side of the question, and all of a sudden he found that it was not going to be an easy thing for him to relinquish the hope of having one of his sons follow him in his profession.  “Do you know what it means, though, Allyn, to be an engineer?”

“I think so.”  The boy spoke with a quiet dignity which was new to him.

“What?”

“To work eight or ten hours a day in a factory; to begin at the bottom and work up; maybe, at last, to invent a machine of my own.”

“Yes.”  In spite of himself, the doctor’s voice was encouraging, for he could not help realizing that the boy had weighed the situation carefully.  “But do you know that your work would be in heat and dirt and noise, among men who are not your equals in family and training?”

“Is Jamie Lyman my equal in family?” Allyn demanded.  “Or Frank Gavigan, or Peter Hubbard?  You don’t seem to mind putting me into school with them.”

“That is only for a short time.  The other would be for life.”

“Not if I work up.”

“Perhaps not; but there is no upper class in a shop.  But you said something about some drawings.  Have you made some?”

“Yes.”

“What are they?”

“These.”  And Allyn offered a half-dozen sheets of paper to his father.  Dr. McAlister glanced at them; then he put the reins into Allyn’s hand.

“Here,” he said; “you can drive.  I want to look at these.”

For some moments, there was a silence, while the doctor turned over the papers and Allyn’s heart thumped until it seemed to him as if it could be heard distinctly.  Then deliberately the doctor took off his glasses, shut them into their case and put the case into his pocket.

“Allyn,” he said slowly; “I don’t know much about such things; but I rather think that you have found your work.  Some of these drawings are well done.  Where did you get your machines?”

“I made them up.”