"Why, Tip, if I had ten pounds of nails, and they were worth eight cents a pound, they would stand me just so much,—that is, they would be worth that to me; and if I should sell them I'd get so much for them. Don't you see?"
Light began to dawn on Tip's mind.
"Then it means," he said, "that the man didn't sell his sixteen sheep; he just counted them worth two dollars apiece. Yes, I see; if that's it, I'll try it." And he rushed to his work again.
And Tip will never forget the eagerness with which he presently turned to the answer in his arithmetic, and from that back to the one on the slate, nor the way in which the blood bounded through his veins when he found that they agreed perfectly.
"It's exactly it," he called out to his father, in a hearty, grateful voice. "I've got it, and I've been at work on it this whole morning."
Ellis Holbrook, about that time, conquered a most puzzling example in algebra; but he felt not prouder than did Tip.
"Thomas," said Mr. Burrows to the head boy in Tip's arithmetic class, "you may take the twenty-third example to the board."
"Can't do it," answered Thomas promptly.
"Henry may do it, then."
"I couldn't get it either," was Henry's answer. So on down the class; Tip's heart meantime beating eagerly, for the twenty-third example was about his troublesome, but by this time very much-beloved sheep.