“Hello!” said the foremost. “’Fraid you would be in bed.”
“No, just picking up loose ends,” said David. “Glad you happened along. Take an end of this trunk, will you, and let’s heave it into the hall.”
“What’s in it, bricks?” asked one, as they placed the trunk in the corridor. They came in, and shut the door.
“I suppose you want to go to bed,” said the tall boy, “but we have a plan to put up to you, and we were afraid that there would be so much confusion in the morning that you might not see it straight. And I’m doing the talking now, so you’ll kindly shut up until I am all through. And be reasonable! Fact is, old man, we want you to borrow the cost of your college course from us. Now wait!” he demanded, as David shook his head. “Try to listen, you blithering idiot! We all have plenty of money, and we want to stake you; just as if you were our own brother, Dave. Listen! It’s like this: take the money, and keep the jobs you have planned on. They will float you, and you can send the cash home, and the girls can go to college, and everything will be jake. See?”
“I can’t take it,” said David, touched and amused at the same time. “If that is what brought you, just save your breath. You are the best friends a fellow ever had, and it is worth giving up more than I have given up to find it out. But I don’t want your money. I can’t take anybody’s money. I haven’t a cent of my own beside my car fare and ten dollars for meals, and I am going to start square with myself and the whole world.
“Get this, fellows; I am just as grateful as I can be, and I’ll never forget it. But I’m not going to be carried along by my friends. I won’t be a sap, or a sucker, or a leech. I’ll work my own way up, and boy! just watch my dust!” He shook each one by the hand and somehow, before they knew it, they were in the hall.
Davie, ready for bed, tired with their kindly insistence, wondered if they would come in the night, and pin large checks on his pajama coat!
“Well, I won’t borrow, and I won’t sponge on my mother,” David declared grimly to himself. “I’ll show what I can do. I won’t be carried along. I’ll arrive somewhere, some day, on my own two feet, and not on the shoulders of somebody else. I’ll make those fellows darned proud of me yet!”
Outside David’s door lay his boyhood, his flaming hopes, his fondest memories. All his life he had meant to be an aviator. He had thought of it, studied for it, and concentrated on it; but his skies were empty now. No majestic forms floated grandly across his horizon. Vanished were the dream-ships which he had meant to make real. Gone were his shining hopes, his resolves to follow in his father’s footsteps. Not for him, in future days, to build ships such as the world had never seen. He determined to destroy all the careful plans and experiments he had so neatly drawn. In the bottom of his trunk were a score of technical books on dirigibles, past and present, bought at long intervals with hard-earned money. For it was the dirigible toward which David’s heart yearned. The great majestic balloons held a charm for him that the busy, flitting airplanes were powerless to wield. But he knew that he had made the right decision; and knowing it, slept well.
Reaching home, it took much argument on David’s part before his adoring family was resigned to his change of plans; but he was all the more determined when he saw how worn his mother’s still lovely face had grown.