"I remember about it now," said Earle, "and I guess what you mean about the committee. There lots of giants around nowadays, aren't there?"
"Plenty of them!" said his father. "Look out that none of them scare you away from an opportunity."
Earle laughed, and went back to his book. He knew he was the sort of boy of whom the other boys said that he did not "scare worth a cent."
It was nearly twenty-four hours afterward that he was in the dining-room, which was his evening study, bent over his slate, his pencil moving rapidly. His friend and classmate, Howard Eastman, sat on the arm of the large rocker, tearing bits from a newspaper wrapper and chewing them, while he waited for Earle.
"I do wish you would come on!" he said, between the bites of paper. "The boys will be waiting for us; I told them I would bring you right along, and the fun will all be over before we get there."
"Bother!" said Earle, consulting his book. "That is not anywhere near right."
"Of course it is not. I knew it would not be. There is not a fellow in the class, nor a girl, either, for that matter, who has got that example. Why, I know, because I heard them talking about that very one; and haven't I done that seventy-five times myself? My brother Dick tried to do it for me, and he did not get it either; he said there was some catch about it."
"I would like to find the catch," said Earle, wistfully.
"Well, you can't. I tell you there is not one of them who can. You need not think you are smarter than anybody else. We won't get marked on that example; they do not expect us to have it. I heard Professor Bowen tell Miss Andrews that there would not be a pupil in the room who could conquer it."
"Is that so?" said Earle, running his fingers through his hair, and looking wearily at the long rows of figures on his slate.