“What’s that?”
“I’m going to cut the baseball nine, if I can. It takes too much time from our studies.”
“Won’t that be easy?”
“I don’t know. I made quite a record, you know. Maybe the crowd will insist on it that I play. Of course, I don’t want to see Oak Hall lose any games. But I guess they’ll have players enough—with all the new students coming in.”
“And if you do graduate, Dave, what then?” asked Jessie, after a pause. This question had been on her mind a long time, but she had hesitated about asking it.
“To tell the honest truth, Jessie, I don’t know,” answered Dave, very slowly. “I’ve thought and thought, but I can’t seem to hit the right thing. Your father and Professor Potts seem to think I ought to go to college, and I rather incline that way myself. But then I think of going to some technical institution, and of taking up civil engineering, or mining, or something like that. Uncle Dunston knew a young fellow who became a civil engineer and went to South America and laid out a railroad across the Andes Mountains, and he knew another young fellow who took up mining and made a big thing of a mine in Montana. That 30 sort of thing appeals to me, and it appeals to Dad, too.”
“But it would take you so far from home, Dave!” and Jessie caught hold of his arm as she spoke, as if afraid he was going to leave that minute.
“I know it, but—er—but—would you care, Jessie?” he stammered.
“Care? Of course, I’d care!” she replied, and suddenly began to blush. “We’d all care.”
“But would you care very much?” he insisted, lowering his voice. “Because, if you would, I’d tell you something.”