“Come on inside, Nevins. You seem to have the right stuff in you. We’ll have a talk.”
And with a wide-eyed youth behind him, Jack led the way into the workshop. Sam Hinkley viewed his young employer and the latter’s companion with marked disfavor from his work bench.
“Wormed your way into the place already, have you?” he muttered. “I’ll keep my eye on you, young fellow, and don’t you forget it.”
[CHAPTER II.]
AN INVENTION DESCRIBED.
Ned Nevins had told nothing but the simple truth when he stated that he had endured many hardships and much rough travel under unpleasant conditions in order to obtain an interview with the Boy Inventors.
He was a boy of singularly firm character and persistency or he would never have triumphed over the obstacles he had conquered in order to gain his ambition. When Ned’s uncle, Jeptha Nevins, had died, he had entrusted to the boy the tin box which we have seen Ned guarding with so much care. It contained plans and specifications of an invention upon which the elder Nevins had spent all his spare time for many years.
Whether the invention was a practical one or not, Ned, skillful as he was in the line of mechanics, did not know. But his uncle’s faith in the value of his invention was so great that he had inspired his nephew with almost implicit confidence in the soundness of his judgment.
Ned might have stayed in his home town and awaited a more favorable opportunity for setting out on his travels but for one thing. Jeptha Nevins had a son, a hulking ne’er-do-well sort of lad, or rather young man, for he was some years the senior of Ned, who was sixteen.
Following his father’s death, “Hank” Nevins, as he was known among his cronies, made a big fuss when he learned that Ned had been left the plans of Jeptha Nevins’ invention. There was little else but the furniture in the house and a small sum of money in the savings bank; and so Hank Nevins laid formal claim to the plans of the invention from which Jeptha Nevins had hoped so much.