Mrs. Manning looked horrified. The _Companion_ was as much a family institution as the dictionary. "How do you think you are going to be really educated, Jimmy, unless you read good things? Your father and I were brought up on the _Companion_ and you'll keep right on with it. I'll get cheaper coffee, Papa, and we can give up cream. Ten per cent. That will make a difference of twenty cents a day. I'll turn my winter suit." "I'll give up tobacco for a while," said Big Jim. "I was thinking about it, anyhow. It's got so it bites my tongue. I don't need any new winter things, but Jimmy's got to look decent. My father would turn over in his grave if he thought I couldn't keep the last Manning dressed decent. Maybe we ought to give up this cottage, Mama. The Higgins cottage is pretty good but it hasn't got any bathroom." "If you think I'm going to let Jimmy grow up without a bathroom, you're mistaken," replied Mrs. Manning. "I've got a chance to send jelly and preserves to Boston and I'm going to do it. Don't worry, Papa. We'll make it." When Little Jim took his father's dinner to him the next day, 'Masso's boy Tony was sharing 'Masso's lunch. His face was dust smeared. "I gotta job," announced Tony. 'Masso nodded. "He bigga kid now. Not go da school any more. Boss, he giva da cut. I bringa da Tony, getta da job as tool boy. Boss, he fire da Yankee boy. Tony, he work cheaper." "He's too small to work," said Big Jim. "You'd ought to keep him in school and give him a chance." "Chance for what?" asked 'Masso. "Chance to grow into a decent American citizen," snarled Big Jim with the feeling he had had so often of late, the sense of having his back to the wall while the pack worried him in front. Tony looked up quickly. He was a brilliant faced little chap. "I am an American!" he cried. "I'll be rich some day." Big Jim looked from 'Masso's child to his own. Then he looked off over the browning summer fields, beyond the quarry. There lay the land that his fathers had held in grant from an English king. But the fields that had built Big Jim's flesh and blood were dotted with Italian huts. The lane in which Big Jim's mother had met his father, returning crippled from Antietam, was blocked by a Polish road house. Little Jim didn't like the look on his father's face. He spoke his first thought to break the silence. "Can't I stay for a while, Dad, and watch you load the big stones?" "If your mother won't worry and you'll keep out of the way," answered Big Jim, rising as the whistle blew. To industry, the cheapest portion of its equipment is its inexhaustible human labor supply. It was Big Jim who was sufficiently intelligent to keep demanding a new derrick. It was Big Jim who was adept in managing the decrepit machinery and so it was he who was sent to the danger spots, he having the keenest wits and the best knowledge of the danger spots.