"John!"
"No," he went on—"but maybe my name is, too, after all. I should have said 'perhaps.' My father's name is not. It is Adamowski——" He heard her little quick in-taking of breath and looked away.
"You have never heard of such things before, have you?" he asked. "But it is a custom with Polish young men nowadays. Their names handicap them in their work, in their advancement, so they often change them."
"Yes, I understand," she murmured.
"Well," he went on, "until I was ten years old I attended the parochial school——"
"John, you're not a Catholic!" she exclaimed.
"No—you needn't be afraid of that either—I'm not—now," he answered. "And then," he continued as calmly as before, "I was sent to the public schools. It was the superintendent who wrote my name 'Adams.' He did it perhaps by accident; anyway it has been my name ever since. Plain 'John Adams.' I don't suppose I could make you understand the relation between parents and an only son among my people, so I shan't try, but it is to the son that the parents look for the fulfilment of all their happiest hopes. That I should have been sent here to college is not so surprising as you may consider it. I was sent here. I was sent here by my father who works in the sand of the moulding room; by my mother who, to help, has for three years taken in washing; and by my little sister, Pauline, who sits all day at a bench and tears the stems out of tobacco leaves in a great, gray factory. They are the ones who have sent me here to college—to study, to learn, to make something of myself——"
Thus far to the girl, save for little moments when from the narrative she had suffered twinges of pain, it was as though she were listening to a story of one whom she knew not. She had been moved and strangely thrilled at times and now leaning forward eagerly she exclaimed:
"And you have made something of yourself; you have, John! Oh, don't you see how brave you are—what you can do with the education they have given you; what you can accomplish for yourself, and so, for them?"