d while she said very deliberately:

"You are a good man, Michael Dennis. I thank you for me and mine and
I'll be a comfort to you as you are being to me. I'm not going to
pretend I'd do this if it wasn't for Jim. I can't love you, but you love
Jim and that's enough for me."

And so Jim was given his chance.

He spent the rest of the summer at the shore and entered school in the
fall with a new interest. With the unexpected lift of the money burden
from his shoulders, Jim began to make up for his lost play. Football and
track work, debating societies and glee-clubs straightened his round
shoulders and found him friends. Most important of all, he ceased to
brood for a time over his Exham problems.

Jim's stepfather, whom the boy called Uncle Denny, took a pride and
interest in the boy that sometimes brought the tears to his mother's
eyes. It seemed to her that the warm-hearted Irishman gave to Jim all
the love that the death of his family had left unsatisfied. And Jim, in
his undemonstrative way, returned Mr. Dennis' affection. He shared with
his Uncle Denny his growing ideals on engineering. He rehearsed his
debating society speeches on his Uncle Denny, who endured them with
enthusiasm. He and his Uncle Denny worked out some marvelous football
tactics when Jim as a senior in the high school became captain of the
school team. Often of an evening Jim's mother would come upon the two in
the library, flat on their backs before the grate in a companionship
that needed and found no words.

At such times she would say, "Michael, you didn't marry me. You married
Jim."

And Dennis would look up at her with a smile of understanding that she
returned.

When Jim was a freshman in Columbia, he acquired a chum. It was not a
chum who took the place of Phil Chadwick. Nothing in after life ever
fills the hollow left by the first friendship of childhood and Phil was
hallowed in Jim's memory along with all the beauties of the swimming
hole and the quiet elms around the old Exham mansions.

But Jim's new chum gave him his first opportunity at hero-worship, which
is an essential step in a boy's growth. The young man's name was George
Saradokis. His mates called him Sara. His mother was a Franco-American,
his father was a Greek, a real estate man in the Greek section of New
York. Sara confided to Jim, early in their acquaintance, that his father
was the disinherited son of a nobleman and that he, the grandson, would
be his grandfat