LITMIR.BIZ

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up into his face and said:

      "I was horrid, Still Jim. You were so bossy. But you were right; it was no place for me."

      Jim's arm tightened round her soft waist. "Pen," he said, "promise me you'll shake Sara and the rest and walk home from the boat with me tonight."

      Pen hesitated. She would rather have walked home with Sara, but she was very contrite over Jim's lonely afternoon, so she promised. Sara left the boat at the Battery to get a subway train home. When the others reached 23rd street, it was not difficult for Jim and Pen to drop well behind Uncle Denny and Jim's mother. Jim drew Pen's arm firmly within his own. This seemed very funny to Penelope and yet she enjoyed it. There had come a subtle but decided change in the boy's attitude toward her that day, that she felt was a clear tribute to her newly acquired young ladyhood. So, while she giggled under her breath, she enjoyed Jim's sedulous assistance at the street crossings immensely.

      But try as he would, Jim could say nothing until they reached the old brownstone front. He mounted the steps with her slowly. In the dimly lighted vestibule he took both her hands.

      "Look up at me, Pen," he said.

      The girl looked up into the tall boy's face. Jim looked down into her sweet eyes. His own grew wistful.

      "I wish I were ten years older," he said. Then very firmly: "Penelope, you belong to me. Remember that, always. We belong to each other. When I have made a name for myself I'm coming back to marry you."

      "But," protested Pen, "I'd much rather be a duchess."

      Jim held her hands firmly. "You belong to me. You shall never marry Saradokis."

      Pen's soft gaze deepened as she looked into Jim's eyes. She saw a light there that stirred something within her that never before had been touched. And Jim, his face white, drew Penelope to him and laid his soft young lips to hers, holding her close with boyish arms that trembled at his own audacity, even while they were strong with a man's desire to hold.

      Penelope gave a little sobbing breath as Jim released her.

      "That's my sign and seal," he said slowly, "that kiss. That's to hold you until I'm a man."

      The little look of tragedy that often lurked in Pen's eyes was very plain as she said: "It will be a long time before you have made a name for yourself, Still Jim. Lots of things will happen before then."

      "I won't change," said Jim. "The Mannings don't." Then with a great sigh as of having definitely settled his life, he added: "Gee, I'm hungry! Me stomach is touching me backbone. Let's see if there isn't something in the pantry. Come on, Pen."

      And Pen, with a sudden flash of dimples, followed him.

      It was not long after Pen's birthday that the college year ended and Jim and Sara went to work. Jim had spent his previous vacations with the family at the shore. Saradokis was planning to become a construction engineer, with New York as his field. He wanted Jim to go into partnership with him when they were through college. So he persuaded Jim that it would be a good experience for them to put in their junior vacation at work on one of the mighty skyscrapers always in process of construction.

      They got jobs as steam drillmen. Jim liked the work. He liked the mere sense of physical accomplishment in working the drill. He liked to be a part of the creative force that was producing the building. But to his surprise, his old sense of suffocation in being crowded in with the immigrant workman returned to him. There came back, too, some of the old melancholy questioning that he had known as a boy.

      He said to Sara one day: "My father used to say that when he was a boy the phrase, 'American workman' stood for the highest efficiency in the world, but that even in his day the phrase had become a joke. How could you expect this rabble to know that there might be such a thing as an American standard of efficiency?"

      Sara laughed. "Junior Economics stick out all over you, Still. This bunch does as good work as the American owners will pay for."

      Jim was silent for a time, then he said: "I wonder what's the matter with us Americans? How did we come to give our country away to this horde?"

      "'Us Americans!'" mimicked Saradokis. "What is an American, anyhow?"

      "I'm an American," returned Jim, briefly.

      "Sure," answered the Greek, "but so am I and so are most of these fellows. And none of us knows what an American is. I'll admit it was your type founded the government. But you are goners. There is no American type any more. And by and by we'll modify your old Anglo-Saxon institutions so that G. Washington will simply revolve in his grave. We'll add Greek ideas and Yiddish and Wop and Bohunk and Armenian and Nigger and Chinese and Magyar. Gee! The world will forget there ever was one of you big-headed New Englanders in this country. Huh! What is an American? The American type will have a boarding house hash beaten for infinite variety in a generation or so."

      The two young men were marching along 23rd street on their way to Jim's house for dinner. At Sara's words Jim stopped and stared at the young Greek. His gray eyes were black.

      "So that's the way you feel about us, you foreigners!" exclaimed Jim. "We blazed the trail for you fellows in this country and called you over here to use it. And you've suffocated us and you are glad of it. Good God! Dad and the Indians!"

      "What did you call us over here for but to make us do your dirty work for you?" chuckled the Greek. "Serves you right. Piffle! What's an American want to talk about my race and thine for? There's room for all of us!"

      Jim did not answer. All that evening he scarcely spoke. That night he dreamed again of his father's broken body and dying face against the golden August fields. All the next day as he sweated on the drill, the futile questionings of his childhood were with him.

      At noon, Sara eyed him across the shining surface of a Child's restaurant table. Each noon they devoured a quarter of their day's wages in roast beef and baked apples.

      "Are you sore at me, Still?" asked Sara. "I wasn't roasting you, personally, last night."

      Jim shook his head. Sara waited for words but Jim ate on in silence.

      "Oh, for the love of heaven, come out of it!" groaned Sara. "Tell me what ails you, then you can go back in and shut the door. What has got your goat? You can think we foreigners are all rotters if you want to."

      "You don't get the point," replied Jim. "I don't think for a minute that you newcomers haven't a perfect right to come over here. But I have race pride. You haven't. I can't see America turned from North European to South in type without feeling suffocated."

      The young Greek stared at Jim fixedly. Then he shook his head. "You are in a bad way, my child. I prescribe a course at vaudeville tonight. I see you can still eat, though."

      Jim stuck by his drill until fall. During these three months he pondered more over his father's and Exham's failure than he had for years. Yet he reached no conclusion save the blind one that he was going to fight against his own extinction, that he was going to found a family, that he was going to make the old Manning name once more known and respected.

      It was after this summer that the presence of race barrier was felt by Jim and Sara. And somehow, too, after Pen's birthday there was a new restraint between the two boys. Both of them realized then that Pen was more to them than the little playmate they had hitherto considered her. Jim believed that the kiss in the vestibule bound Pen to him irretrievably. But this did not prevent him from feeling uneasy and resentful over Sara's devotion to her.

      Nothing could have been more charming to a girl of Pen's age than Sara's way of showing his devotion. Flowers and candy, new books and music he showered on her endlessly, to Mrs. Manning's great disapproval. But Uncle Denny shrugged his shoulders.

      "Let it have its course, me dear. 'Tis the surest cure. And Jim must learn to speak for himself, poor boy."

      So the pretty game went on. Something in Sara's heritage made him a finished man of the world, while Jim was still an awkward boy. While Jim's affection manifested itself in silent watchfulness,

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