"By Jove!" exclaimed Roger, with a startled air. "I guess I'd better beat it back to Eagle's Wing until I get out of swaddling clothes. I supposed the firm that would take this up would take care of the patents. I don't know anything about patents myself."
"Better learn," said McGinnis. "Many of your ideas are clever and need protection."
Roger laughed ruefully. "I thought," he confessed, "that I'd have the thing marketed in a couple of months."
"Listen," said the old man. "On the average the man who has an invention that is of fundamental significance gives his life to perfecting and marketing it, then dies hungry. Do you get me?"
"But there are exceptions, aren't there?" insisted Roger.
"Yes, but no such pipe dream as you have there," pointing to the drawings, "could be an exception."
"Would you advise me to give it up?" Roger asked curiously.
"I would not. That's your job. Civilization owes its existence to chaps like you."
Roger, face flushed, black hair rumpled, blue eyes glowing, rose to go.
"I can't exactly thank you," he mumbled. "Only," his voice strengthening, "if I hadn't met you, I'd have gone back home discouraged and almost as ignorant as I left. As it is, I feel in bully fighting trim."
Old John McGinnis got to his feet. "God bless you, my lad. When I'm twanging a harp, up above, I'll be having an interested eye on you."
Roger started back to Eagle's Wing that evening. Ernest and Dean Erskine were both deeply interested in Roger's report, which he gave in the Dean's library the night he reached home.
"Pshaw! I should have told you a lot of things that would have helped you," exclaimed the Dean when Roger had finished. "But one forgets up here in the classroom how the war rages out in the industrial world."
"Will patents cost a lot?" inquired Ernest. "You know I don't use all my salary. Draw at will, old man."
"Thanks, old top," replied Roger. "Since I cut out girls and golf, I've been saving a bit myself."
"The patents won't cost a great deal, if you do the work yourself, Roger," said the Dean. "But it's going to take time to learn the patent game."
"Well," said Roger, with a sigh, "if I've got to become a patent attorney in order to patent my ideas, I suppose I can. But gee, I am glad I don't want to get married. You were wise in not letting me give up that instructorship, Dean, as I wanted to."
Dean Erskine smiled ruefully. "Seems to have been about the only sane advice I've given you."