shoulders and elbows. Peter Cope, Jr. and Hilary Matlack
were skinny kids, too. The three were of an age and were all tall for
ten-year-olds.

I had the impression during that first meeting that they looked rather
alike, but this wasn't so. Their features were quite different. Perhaps
from association, for they were close friends, they had just come to
have a certain similarity of restrained gesture and of modulated voice.
And they were all tanned by sun and wind to a degree that made their
eyes seem light and their teeth startlingly white.

The two on my right were cast in a different mold. Mary McCready was a
big husky redhead of twelve, with a face full of freckles and an
infectious laugh, and Tommy Miller, a few months younger, was just an
average, extroverted, well adjusted youngster, noisy and restless,
tee-shirted and butch-barbered.

The group exchanged looks to see who would lead off, and Peter Cope
seemed to be elected.

"Well, Mr. Henderson, a junior achievement group is a bunch of kids who
get together to manufacture and sell things, and maybe make some money."

"Is that what you want to do," I asked, "make money?"

"Why not?" Tommy asked. "There's something wrong with making money?"

"Well, sure, I suppose we want to," said Hilary. "We'll need some money
to do the things we want to do later."

"And what sort of things would you like to make and sell?" I asked.

The usual products, of course, with these junior achievement efforts,
are chemical specialties that can be made safely and that people will
buy and use without misgivings--solvent to free up rusty bolts, cleaner
to remove road tar, mechanic's hand soap--that sort of thing. Mr.
McCormack had told me, though, that I might find these youngsters a bit
more ambitious. "The Miller boy and Mary McCready," he had said, "have
exceptionally high IQ's--around one forty or one fifty. The other three
are hard to classify. They have some of the attributes of exceptional
pupils, but much of the time they seem to have little interest in their
studies. The junior achievement idea has sparked their imaginations.
Maybe it'll be just what they need."

Mary said, "Why don't we make a freckle remover? I'd be our first
customer."

* * *

"The thing to do," Tommy offered, "is to figure out what people in
Ridgeville want to buy, then sell it to them."

"I'd like to make something by powder metallurgy techniques," said Pete.
He fixed me with