“Good! Good!” exclaimed Mr. Barton Swift. “I see you have been thinking this thing out, at least. A great many people have excuses for what they want to do; but you, Tom, have a reason. What else?” Tom Swift laughed again. He was a boyish fellow, in spite of all his experiences of the past few years; and a boy finds it difficult at most times to take older people into his confidence, especially about his dreams and hopes. “I do not know that my suggestion should seem an impossibility,” Tom said, soberly. “See what the Swift Construction Company has done in the past. Of course, I am counting on your help, father, to carry such a thing to a successful conclusion.” “You actually talk as though you had conceived a plan and would put it into effect, Tom!” cried his father. “I don’t know but I have—and will,” said Tom, smiling once more. “At any rate, I have been revolving the scheme in my head for a long time. I admit it. A flying boat, as the storybook fellows write now, has ‘intrigued’ my interest. I’m coocoo about it, to use Ned Newton’s slang.” “So you lay your knowledge of the argot to Ned?” laughed Mr. Swift. “But this flying boat?” “A lot has been accomplished by other people. We would not be the first in the field, by any means. But I believe I have some ideas about such an invention that would put us ahead of everybody else. And that is the main thing.” “The main thing, I should say, would be to have a working hypothesis of the idea in question,” observed Barton Swift dryly. “What would you build a flying boat for? To what particular use is it to be put? Therefore, in making plans for the boat, they must fit the needs of the craft as devised. “In other words, Tom, what in the world do you want a flying boat for? You have your air scout, your aerial warship that you sold to the Government during the war, your air glider which as yet has not been equaled, your sky racer, and your old _Red Cloud_ which scarcely any newer airship marvel has surpassed. You have been up in the air enough, it seems to me. Why not tackle the practical inventions of peace, as I pointed out in your last marvel, the electric locomotive?” “Give me an idea,” grumbled Tom. “What shall I build—a new plough? Huh!” “Say, Mist’ Tom! tells yo’ what,” burst into the controversy an altogether unexpected voice. The Swifts had been talking on the side piazza of their house near the works of the Swift Construction Company at Shopton. Just inside one of the rear windows a grizzled old colored man was busy preparing vegetables for dinner. “I tells yo’ what!” repeated Eradicate Sampson, the old serving man who had been with the Swifts for years and considered himself quite one of the family. “I tells yo’ what! Yo’ want to invent somethin’ practical like yo’ fader says, yo’ make a machine that’ll scoop the eyes out o’ ’taters widout wastin’ none o’ de meat. Dat wot yo’ do. Den yo’ sho’ nuff do somethin’ wuth while.”