"And you really mean that you are going in for that sort of thing?"
"I do," Keith insisted, while the whole class watched him in a hush that might easily turn either into derision or into approval.
"There isn't much exploring left to be done," Dally mused, looking intently at the small boy at the other end of the room. "Most of the globe is mapped already."
"There is a lot left in Africa," Keith retorted eagerly.
"And what does your father say about it," was Dally's next question.
There was a long pause broken only by some gigglings by the irrepressibles down at the bottom of the class.
"I have not asked him," Keith admitted at last. "But I am going to be an explorer just the same."
"In these days that means you have to become a scientist," Dally remarked in a changed tone. "It is your only chance, and so I advise you to choose Latin. It is what I think a boy with your head should take anyhow."
"All right, Sir," assented Keith, flattered by the last part of Dally's remark and utterly ignorant of what his choice implied.
That evening he told his father that he had been asked whether he wanted to enter the Latin or the English branch of the fourth grade, and that he had chosen the former.