"You are quite right, Miss Nellie," answered the stroke; "it is awfully easy compared with some things—cramming for a final in mathematics, for instance."
"Oh, Derrick!" exclaimed the other young lady, "you can't call that hard work. I'm sure it doesn't seem as though you had spent your time anywhere but on the river for the past two months. If you can do that, and at the same time graduate number one in your class, with special mention in mathematics, the 'cramming,' as you call it, can't be so very difficult."
"All things are not what they seem," chanted Derrick. "It may be, sister Helen, that there are some things in heaven and earth not dreamt of in your philosophy, after all!"
"Oho!" laughed Nellie Halford. "Pinafore and Shakespeare! What a combination of wit and wisdom! It's quite worthy of a U. P. Senior."
"He's not even a U. P. Senior now," said the coxswain, from the stern of the barge. "He has gone back in the alphabet, and is only an A. B."
"An idea for your next cartoon, old man," cried Derrick. "The downfall of the Seniors, and their return to the rudimentary elements of knowledge. By-the-way, Polly," he added, more soberly, "do you remember that to-day is the anniversary of your entering upon the career of breaker-boy five years ago?"
"It is a day I never forget, Dare," answered Paul Evert, gravely, as he gazed into the handsome sun-tanned face in front of him, with a look in which affection and pride were equally blended.
THE END
[1] A law of the State of Pennsylvania forbids the employment of boys less than twelve years old in breakers, or less than fourteen in mines. This law is not, however, strictly enforced.