“I believe you’ll make it,” Frederick Edrington declared as he seated himself upon a boulder near and continued to look approvingly at the lad. “You remember what I used to tell you about getting what you want?”
The boy nodded his red-brown mop of hair. “Yeah,” he said, lapsing unconsciously into the speech of the mountaineers. “First fix a definite goal, it doesn’t matter how far ahead or how rough the road in between, and then keep going toward it.”
“Even if you slip back two steps for every one that you forge ahead,” his companion put in.
Ken laughed. “Gee, I hope it won’t be as hard as all that for me to get to be a civil engineer.”
The eyes of the older man lighted. “Still holding that for a goal, boy?” he asked, his voice showing his real pleasure.
Ken nodded. “Bet I am,” he replied.
“Worked hard at math?” was the next query. “Pretty quick at doing sums?”
Ken flushed. “I don’t know as I’m a crackerjack at it, but I told Miss Bayley all about how I want to grow up to be just like you, and when she found I wanted to get along faster in arithmetic, she stayed after school to help me whenever the sums were extra hard. I say, Mr. Edrington, our new teacher, she’s a trump!”
The young civil engineer, who had been leaning back, hands locked behind his head, sat up with sudden interest.
“Kind of a thin, skinny, old-maid sort of a person, is she?” he asked with a smile lurking away back in his gray eyes.