but I do wish I could learn to swing
my nice Indian clubs without cracking the back of my head."

"I got a medal for club swinging," said Biff diffidently. "I'll teach
you any time you like. It's easy. Come right over to the gym on
Tuesday and Friday forenoons. Those are ladies' mornings, and I've got
nothing but real classy people at that."

The entrance of Mr. Platt interrupted Biff just as he was beginning to
feel at ease, and threw that young gentleman, who always appropriated
and absorbed other people's troubles, into much concern; for Mr. Platt
was hollow-eyed and sunken-cheeked from worry. His coat was very
shiny, and his hat was shabby. The dusty and neglected drawing on his
crude drawing-table told the story all too well. The engineering
business, so far as Mr. Platt was concerned, seemed to be a total
failure. Nevertheless, he greeted Mr. Bates warmly, and inquired after
Mr. Burnit.

"He's always fine," said Biff. "He had me come up here to meet him."

"I should scarcely think he would care to come here after the
unfortunate outcome of the work I did for him," said Mr. Platt.

"You mean on old Applerod's Subtraction?"

"You couldn't hardly call it the Applerod Addition, could you?"
responded Jimmy with a smile. "That was a most unlucky transaction for
me as well as for Mr. Burnit."

Biff looked about the room comprehendingly.

"I guess it put you on the hummer, all right," said he. "It don't look
as if you done anything since."

"But very little," confessed Mr. Platt. "My failure on that job hurt
my reputation almost fatally."

Biff gravely sought within himself for words of consolation, one of
his fleeting ideas being to engage Mr. Platt on the spot to survey the
site of Bates' Athletic Hall, although there was not the slightest
possible need for such a survey. In the midst of his sympathetic gloom
came in Mr. Ferris and Bobby.

"Jimmy, how would you like to be chief construction engineer of the
new waterworks?" asked Bobby, with scant waste of time, after he had
introduced Ferris.

Mr. Platt gasped and paled.

"I think I could be urged, from a sense of public duty, to give up my
highly lucrative private practice," he said with a pitiful attempt at
levity, though his voice was husky, and his tightly clenched hand,
where the white knuckles rested upon his drawing-table, trembled.

"Don't build up too much hope on it, Jimmy; but if what we surmise is
correct you will have a chance at it," and