“Well, why not, J.W.?  Maybe you will go to China some day, and have a hand in it all,” suggested the pastor, to try him out.

The boy shook his head.

“No, I don’t think so.  I am certainly getting a new line on foreign missions, but I don’t think there’s missionary stuff in me.  I’ll have to go at the proposition some other way.”

Then Pastor Drury set him going on another subject.

“What do you think of the young folks who are here?” he asked.

“Well, at first I thought they were all away ahead of our bunch at home, and some of them are; but you soon find out that the majority is pretty much of the same sort as ours.  I think I’ve spotted a few slackers, but mighty few.  Most of the crowd seems to be all right, and I’ve already made some real friends.  But do you know which one of them all is the most interesting fellow I’ve met?”

The pastor thought he did, but he merely asked, “Who?”

“Why, that Greek boy, Phil Khamis.  He is from Salonika, you know.  He knows the old country like a book, and he’s going back some day, maybe to be some kind of missionary to his people, in the very places where the apostle Paul preached.  Honest, I never knew until he told me that his Salonika is the town of those Christians to whom Paul wrote two of his letters; those to the Thessalonians—­’Thessalonika,’ you know.  Well, you ought to hear Phil talk.  He came over here seven years ago, and learned the English language from the preacher at Westvale.”

“Yes, I have heard about him,” said Mr. Drury.  “They say he lived in the parsonage and paid the preacher for his English lessons by giving him a new understanding of the Greek New Testament.  Not many of us have found out yet how to get such pay for being decent to our friends from the other side.”

“Well, he is a thoroughbred, anyway; and do you notice how he is right up in front when there is anything doing?  The only way you can tell he isn’t American born is that he is so anxious to help out on all the unpleasant work.  When I look at Phil it makes me boil to think of fellows like him being called ‘Wop.’”

By this time the two had swung back into the campus, and J.W. found himself drafted to hold down second base in the Faculty-Student ball game.  But that is a story for others to tell.

On the steps of the library Marcia Dayne and some other girls were holding an informal reception.  Joe Carbrook, with one or two of his friends, was finding it agreeable to assume a superior air concerning the Institute.  The impression the boys gave was that their coming to the Institute at all had been a great concession, but that they were under no illusions about the place.

“All this is all right,” Joe was saying, “for those who need it, but what’s the good of it all to us?  For instance, what do you get out of it, Marcia?”

“What do you think I want to get out of it?  If you cared for the young people’s work at home, I should think you could see how ‘all this,’ as you call it, would help you to do better work and more of it at Delafield.”