"Oh, you can?" laughed Mr. Gifford. "Well, I don't need you, but I need an engineer. I wish you knew enough to run a small steam-engine."
"Why, I can run a steam-engine," said Jack. "That's nothing. May I see it?"
Mr. Gifford pointed at some machinery behind the counter, near where he stood, and at the apparatus in the show-window.
"It's a little one that runs the coffee-mills and the printing-press," he said. "You can't do anything with it until a machinist mends it—it's all out of order, I'm told."
"Perhaps I can," said Jack. "A boy who's learned the blacksmith's trade ought to be able to put it to rights."
Without another word, Jack went to work.
"Nothing wrong here, Mr. Gifford," he said in a minute. "Where are the screw-driver, and the monkey-wrench, and an oil-can?"
"Well, well!" exclaimed Mr. Gifford, as he sent a man for the tools. "Do you think you can do it?"
Jack said nothing aloud, but he told himself:
"Why, it's a smaller size but like the one in the Eagle office. They get out of order easily, but then it's easy to regulate them."