"Heard from your old man yet?" asked Joe, dropping into a chair and stretching his long legs across the floor.
"Meaning my father?" asked Myron stiffly.
"No, unless he's sent a night message. He might. Sometimes he doesn't get back from the yard until rather late."
"Oh, boatyard, you mean. I know a fellow in Portland has a boatyard. Makes some crackajack sloops."
"We build ships," corrected Myron patiently. "Battleships, passenger ships, cargo carriers and such. Some of them are whopping big ones: sixteen and eighteen thousand tons."
"Gosh! I'd like to see that place. I suppose you'll be going to work with him when you get through here."
"Not exactly. I shall go through college first, of course."
"Oh! Well, say, honest injun, Foster, do you think a college course cuts any ice with a fellow? The old man says I can go to a college--if I can get in,--but I don't know. I wouldn't get through until I was twenty-two or twenty-three, and seems to me that's wasting a lot of time. What do you think?"
"Depends, I suppose, on--on the individual case. If you feel that you want to get to work in the chewing-gum factory and can't afford to go through college----"
"Where do you get that chewing-gum factory stuff?" asked Joe.
"Why, I thought you said your father made spruce gum."
"No, the Lord makes it. The old man gathers it and sells it. Spruce gum is the resin of spruce trees, kiddo."
"Oh," said Myron vaguely. "Well, I dare say he will need you to help him gather it. In your case, Dobbins, going through college might be wasting time."
"What's the joke?" asked the other suspiciously.
"Well, I was having what you call a mind picture of the old man and me picking that gum. Know how many tons of the stuff he handles in a year? Nearly a hundred and thirty: about two hundred and fifty thousand pounds! He has over a hundred pickers employed, and buys a lot from fellows who pick on their own hook."
"Oh!" said Myron. "Well, how was I to know? You distinctly said the Lord made it and your father gathered it, didn't you?"
"Sorry; I forgot. Well, I don't have to worry about college just yet, do I? We'll see first if I can stick here long enough to get my time! I wouldn't mind playing football on a good college team, though: Harvard or Yale or Dartmouth or one of those big 'uns."