swer. 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 heritag