ny he's right."

The Irishman's reply was indirect. "Remember, me boy, that the chief
value of a college education is to set your standards, to make your
ideals. These four years are the high-water mark of your life's
idealism. You never'll get higher. Anything else you are taught in
college you'll have to learn over another way after you get out to buck
real life."

Jim thought this over for a time, then he said: "Do you ever talk to Pen
like you do to me? It would do her good."

Uncle Denny sniffed. "Don't you worry about Pen's ideas. She's got the
best mind I ever found in a girl. When she gets past the giggling age,
you'll learn a few things from her, me boy."

Penelope chummed with the two boys impartially as far as Dennis or Jim's
mother could perceive. The girl with her common sense and her
foolishness and her youthfulness was an inexpressible joy to Jim's
mother, who always had longed for a daughter. She had dreams about Jim
and Pen that she confided to no one and she looked on Penelope's
impartiality with a jealous eye.

Until Pen was sixteen the boys were content to share her equally. They
were finishing their junior year when Pen's sixteenth birthday arrived.
It fell on a Saturday, and Jim and Sara cut Saturday morning classes and
invited Penelope to a day at Coney Island. Uncle Denny and Jim's mother
were to meet the trio for supper and return with them.

It was a June morning fit to commemorate, Sara said, even Pen's
birthday. The three, carrying their bathing suits, caught the 8 o'clock
boat at 129th street, prepared to do the weather and the occasion full
justice. The crowd was not great on this early boat until the Battery
was reached. Then all the world rushed up the gang plank; Jew and
Gentile crowded for the best places. Italian women, with babies, dragged
after husbands with lunch baskets. Stout Irish matrons looked with scorn
on the "foreigners" and did great devastation in claiming camp stools.
Very young Jewish girls and boys were the most conspicuous element in
the crowd, but there were groups of gentle Armenians, of Syrians, of
Chinese and parties of tourists with field glasses and cameras.

"And every one of them claims to be an American," said Jim.

Penelope nudged Sara. "Look at Jim's New England nose," she chuckled. "I
don't see how he can see anything but the sky."

Jim did not heed Pen's remarks. Pen and Sara laughed. They were thrilled
by the very cosmopolitan aspect of the crow