n are looked down on for doing
physical work? I understood you to say that Jack Alwin said every fellow
at Burrton stood on his merits, and that real scholarship really
counted. If I thought there was a spirit of toadyism or aristocracy at
Burrton, I wouldn't let you go there."

"They are measured by scholarship," said Walter, in alarm now, lest his
father would decide to withdraw his consent to the Burrton plan. "But,
of course, if I go in with the stewards I can't expect to go out much,
or--but I'm willing to apply for a place, father, I want to go. Don't
change the plan, will you?"

"I want you to go, Walter. But I don't want you ever to think that the
work of your hand is any less honorable than the work of your head. What
little you do won't hurt you at all. And it makes no difference what
others think. If you go to Burrton, you go to get an education. And
perhaps one of the best parts of it will be in the training you receive
outside of the classroom."

So Walter's ambition, so far as his school was concerned, was finally
met, though secretly he chafed at the conditions imposed by his father,
and when the day came for him to say goodbye and start on his journey of
fifteen hundred miles he was not as happy as he should have been,
anticipating his position in the school and feeling restless over the
task it imposed. At the same time he was so eager to get on with his
engineering that he would endure many hard and disagreeable experiences.
Paul and Esther took leave of him at the station with a feeling, which
they kept from being too sad on the boy's account, that he was going to
face a new world and meet some overturning events in the course of the
school year.

Helen Douglas, their second child, was eighteen, just entering Hope
College, and beginning to face some questions that gave Paul and Esther
much thought. She was a girl blessed with her mother's vigorous health,
so overflowing with vitality that her mother said to her one day,
"Helen, if you feel so strong and outbreaking, I don't know but I will
let Jane go and put you in the kitchen."

"That's all right, mother," replied Helen, calmly. "You know I am going
to be a professor of domestic science and I would just as soon practice
on you and father and the boys as anybody. But I feel so well all the
time I believe I would like to join a circus."

"Helen Douglas!" Esther said, shocked at her daughter's remark. And then
she thanked God for the girl's abou