"Let the sad-eyed fellow have it, if he is the better man," Dick
agreed heartily. "But fear of defeat isn't going to hold me back.
Don't let it stop you, either, Greg!"

"It's going to be Annapolis for mine---the United States Naval
Academy and a commission in the United States Navy!" Darry declared,
his eyes snapping.

"I'd rather like that, too," Danny Grin declared.

"Then go after it," urged Dick Prescott. "Get some real plan
in your mind of what you're going to do in life, and then follow
that plan, night and day, until you either win or drop from exhaustion."

"Wouldn't I be a funny-looking lamb in a midshipman's uniform?"
queried Dalzell blinking fast.

"No funnier looking than any of the rest of us," Dick retorted.
"Now, Tom isn't talking much, but we all know what he's going
to do, for he has already been working at it. He has been studying
surveying, for he means to make a great civil engineer of himself
one of these days."

"And I'm going into the game with him," declared Hazelton.

"That's because you've always had Tom about to tell you what to
do, and to keep you from butting your head into things in the
dark," jeered Danny Grin. "Hazy, you're going to become an engineer
just because you shiver at the thought of trying to do anything
in life without having old Tommy Long-legs to advise you when