“Yes,” replied Phil, “and I read in a newspaper the other day of a man who paid five hundred dollars for a bouquet to give to the girl he was about to marry. But we aren’t young men with ‘liberal allowances’ and we aren’t bouquet buyers. Listen to me. I have figured it all out carefully. At many colleges there is no charge at all for tuition. At others there are scholarships that can be made to cover tuition. At most of the colleges in the West and South the tuition fees are very small, even if we must pay them. The principal things we’ve got to look out for are board, clothes, and books. We can wear the same clothes at college that we should wear at home, and our parents will provide them, or if they can’t, we can earn them during vacations. Our necessary books for the whole course won’t cost us more than fifty or sixty dollars apiece if we work together as I’m going to suggest. That leaves only the question of board.” “Well, board will cost us five dollars a week apiece or two hundred a year, at any decent boarding-house,” said Irv. “Of course,” answered Phil. “But I propose that we shan’t live at any decent boarding-house.” “How, then?” “Why, you see we’re an exceptional lot of young fellows in some respects. Our classmates in college, when we go there, may know a great deal more than we do about many things, and probably they will. But we know some very valuable things that they do not. We know how to take care of ourselves. For a good many weeks now we have bought and cooked our own food and washed our own dishes, and even our own clothes. At college we could hire the laundry work done, but why shouldn’t we do all the rest for ourselves?” “Go on,” cried Irv when Phil paused. “I for one am interested, and it’s obvious you’ve thought out the whole thing, Phil. Tell us all about your plan.” Phil hesitated a little, abashed by the approval and admiration which he easily detected in Irv’s eager tone and in the faces of his comrades. At last he resumed:-- “Well, you see, we five fellows not only know how to cook and all that sort of thing, but we know how to live together without quarrelling, and how to work together for a common purpose. Why shouldn’t we go to some college where there are no tuition fees, or very small ones, hire two rooms, one to cook and eat in, and the other to sleep in, buy the ten or twenty dollars’ worth of plain furniture necessary, and board ourselves just as we are doing now?” The other boys paused, interested in the idea. Presently Constant asked:-- “How much apiece do you reckon the cost of board to be?” “I haven’t figured it out in detail,” said Phil. “I’ve left that for Ed to do. You remember he made a calculation away up the river as to how much it costs to feed a man for a year.”