mmer after summer, until he had his education. They seemed to him so
dirty, so stupid, like so many chattering monkeys. To get to know them,
to try to understand them, never occurred to him.

Jim liked the darky, Hank, better than he did the others. To Hank the
others were foreigners as they were to Jim.

"Don't talk so much. I can't hear ma drill!" yelled Hank in Jim's ear
one afternoon when the din was at its height.

Jim flashed his charming smile. "I talk English, anyhow," he shouted
back, "when I do talk."

"You'se the stillest white man I ever see. I'se callin' you Still Jim in
my mind. Pretty quick whites and colored folks can't get no jobs no more
in this country. Just Bohunks and Wops and Ginnies. Can you watch the
drill one minute while I gits a drink?"

Jim nodded and glanced up at the red spider web that was dotted clear to
the eighteenth floor with black dots of workmen. He looked up at the
street edge of the gray pit. Black heads peered over the rail, staring
idly at the workmen below. Jim felt half a thrill of pride that he was a
part of the great work at which they gazed, half a hot sense of
resentment that they stared so stupidly at his discomfort.

Far above gray stone and red ironwork was the deep blue of the summer
sky. Jim wondered if the kids in the old swimming hole missed him. He
wished he could lie on his back and talk to Phil Chadwick again. As he
stared wistfully upward, a girder on the 18th floor twisted suddenly and
swept across a temporary floor, brushing men off like crumbs. Jim saw
three men go hurtling and bounding down, down to the street. He could
not hear them scream above the din. He felt sick at his stomach and
lifted his hand from the drill, expecting the steam to be shut off. But
it was not.

Hank came back, the whites of his eyes showing a little. "Killed three.
All Wops," he said. "Morgue gets a man a day outa this place. They just
sticks 'em outside the board fence and a policeman sends fer a
ambulance. The blood on these here New York buildings sure oughta
hoo-doo 'em. There, you Still Jim, you get a drink o' water. You look
white. The iron workers quit fer the day. They always does when a man
gits killed."

That evening Jim did an errand to the tobacco shop for Mr. Dennis. On
his return to the library with the cigars, Dennis looked at the boy
affectionately. Jim interested him. His faithfulness to his mother, his
quiet ways, his unboyish life, touched the Irishman.