“Oh, boatyard, you mean. I know a fellow in Portland has a boatyard. Makes some crackajack sloops.”
“We build ships,” corrected Myron patiently. “Battleships, passenger ships, cargo carriers and such. Some of them are whopping big ones: sixteen and eighteen thousand tons.”
“Gosh! I’d like to see that place. I suppose you’ll be going to work with him when you get through here.”
“Not exactly. I shall go through college first, of course.”
“Oh! Well, say, honest injun, Foster, do you think a college course cuts any ice with a fellow? The old man says I can go to a college—if I can get in,—but I don’t know. I wouldn’t get through until I was twenty-two or twenty-three, and seems to me that’s wasting a lot of time. What do you think?”
“Depends, I suppose, on—on the individual case. If you feel that you want to get to work in the chewing-gum factory and can’t afford to go through college——”
“Where do you get that chewing-gum factory stuff?” asked Joe.
“Why, I thought you said your father made spruce gum.”
“No, the Lord makes it. The old man gathers it and sells it. Spruce gum is the resin of spruce trees, kiddo.”