CHAPTER II
INGRAMS PRESENT
THE boys were together in Mark's room. They had finished their studying and sat characteristically—Mark sprawled in a big chair, Alan perched on the edge of the table. The room, talk as the aunts might, was always more or less a confusion of the materials of Mark's latest hobby. At present the desk was strewn with half-breadth plans of patent steel merchant vessels and hastily whittled hull-models of wooden ones. Blocks and boards lay upon the floor and leaned in several of the chairs. Where there are boards and planes and jack-knives there are very probably chips and shavings also, though these were not evident in the lamplight which now illuminated the room. Mark had rather neatly cornered them all behind the door and hoped fervently that the aunts would not make too thorough
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