That night the whole world seemed to him khaki-colored. That day marked the beginning of a new Johnnie Smith.
IN the morning, he was very stiff. When he discovered this, he made up his mind that he was ill enough to stay in bed, which (it being Saturday) would let him out of having to do the scrubbing. But when, on second thought, he consulted Cis, he changed his mind, instantly scrambled up, put the scrubbing water on to heat, and started breakfast. For he dared not allow Big Tom to know the truth about his condition. And the truth was, he gathered, that his stiffness was due to those exercises—also to the baleful effects of the bath!
"Maybe I losttoomuch skin," he suggested. "Y' think I'm any worse off for it, with all that skin gone?"
"Oh, you keep it up!" returned Cis. "You won't be stiff as soon as you've moved around a little. And, oh, Johnnie, don't ever, ever,everwait so long before you bathe again! I'm justsickabout what happened yesterday! I dreamed about it!—though, of course"—catching at a straw of comfort—"it would've been a lot worse ifHehad been here instead of the scout man."
Deep-breathing and exercises regularly punctuated, or, rather, regularly interrupted, the morning program of work. And bath water took the place of the scrubbing water in the tub directly the floor was mopped up. Then Johnnie could not deny himself the pleasure of showing himself to Mrs. Kukor while he still bore evidences of his unwonted, and unspotted, state. Blowing and excited,and looking yellower than usual, he displayed his freshly washed neck, a fringe of wet hair, and a pair of soapy ears. "And ain't I shiney as a plate?" he demanded. "It's my second in two days!"
She turned him round and round, marveling. "Pos-i-tivvle!" she declared.
For a very long time Johnnie had been making a point of skimping the Saturday noon meal, this because Barber came home to eat it. Furthermore, as hot biscuits and gravy made a combination dish of which the longshoreman was particularly fond, Johnnie had seen to it that hot biscuits and gravy did not appear on the table except rarely. But this Saturday his inner man was demanding more food than usual. His appetite was coming up, exactly as Mr. Perkins had said it would! So Johnnie set about preparing a good dinner.
He used a cup of Grandpa's milk for biscuit-dough. And when the biscuits—two dozen of them—were browning nicely in the oven, he concocted a generous supply of bacon-grease gravy, and set it to boiling creamily. There were boiled potatoes, too, and two quarts of strong tea. Not only because he was hungry, but also because he dreaded to let Big Tom know just how hungry he was, Johnnie ate half of his dinner before the others returned. At the regular meal, he ate his ordinary amount.
"Gee! Water and air'll fix me all right!" he boasted to Cis. "Who'd ever b'lieve it!" He was too happy even to fret about One-Eye.
"Haven't I advised you lots of times to wash yourself all over?" she reminded him. "My! I'd bathe if all I had to bathe in was a teacup! And now I've a mind to start in on the exercises!" She was too pleased over the change in him to bring up just then the matter of that first bath.
There was no mistake about Johnnie's improving. Mr. Perkins noted it the moment he stepped through the doorone morning early in the next week. He had brought with him a quart-bottle of delicious, fresh milk, and Johnnie drank it, slowly, cup by cup, as they talked. What had helped most, Mr. Perkins declared, was the open window at night, the fresh air. And Johnnie must have even more fresh air.
"But how're we going to manage it?" Mr. Perkins wanted to know. "Because you can't very well go out for long walks and leave Grandpa alone"—which showed that Mr. Perkins felt as One-Eye did about it. "If there was a fire, say, what could the poor, old, helpless man do?"
"I never thought of that!" admitted Johnnie. "But"—with clear logic—"when Big Tom's home, and Grandpa's safe's anything, why, even then I ain't ever 'lowed to go for a walk. Big Tom and Mustapha, they're both against me and Aladdin playin' in the street."
"What about the roof?" asked Mr. Perkins.
Strangely enough, Johnnie had never thought of that, either. "But Aunt Sophie wouldn't 'low me to go up on her roof," he remembered. "And I don't b'lieve the jan'*-tress would on this one."
He was right. Though Mr. Perkins called personally upon that lady, and laid before her the question of Johnnie's health, she was adamantine in her refusal. Even the sight of a two-dollar bill could not sway her, offered, as Mr. Perkins explained, not in the hope of bribing her to do anything that was forbidden, but as pay in case Johnnie proved to be any trouble; for she had explained, "Kids is fierce for t'rowin' trash 'round, and I can't swip the roofonlyonce a year."
Mr. Perkins was keenly disappointed. But he tried to make light of their set-back, and distracted Johnnie's thoughts from the roof by producing two wonderful presents. One was an unframed picture of Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, looking splendid and soldierlike in a uniformand a broad hat turned up at one side, and a sword that hung from his belt. The second gift was a toothbrush.
Johnnie pinned the picture above Cis's dressing-table box in the tiny room. The toothbrush (it had a handle of pure ivory!), he slipped inside his shirt. Mr. Perkins suggested delicately that, when it came to the care of the teeth, there was no time like the present. But Johnnie begged for delay. "I want Cis t' see it while it's so nice and new," he argued, "—before it's all wet and spoiled."
Cis was fairly enraptured when he showed her the brush. "Oh, I've been wanting to own a good one for years!" she cried; "and not just the ten-cent-store kind! Oh, Johnnie—!" She tipped her sleek head to one side entreatingly.
Johnnie had foreseen all this. He bargained with her. "I'll swop y' the brush," he declared.
"Swop for what?—Oh, Johnnie! Oh, isn't itsweet!"
Grandpa was in the room. Johnnie raised on his toes to whisper: "For you not t' tell Mister Perkins n'r anybody else when I sneak up on the roofs of nights."
"You wouldn't lean over the edge, Johnnie, and go all dizzy, and fall?"—the brush was a sore temptation.
Johnnie belittled her fears. "Couldn't I jus' as easy fall out of our window?" he demanded.
The bargain was struck; the brush changed hands.
In the face of those two gifts, Cis could never again doubt the existence of a real Mr. Perkins. "I didn't care awfully whether he was a truly person or not," she confided to Johnnie now. "But as long as heisalive, I think I'd like to meet him. So the next time he comes, you get him to come the time after that between twelve and one, and I'll run home. I can eat my lunch while I'm walking."
Johnnie considered the suggestion. "You won't give 'way on me 'bout the swop, though."
"Cross my heart!"
After she had used the brush (thoroughly, too), and could not, therefore, retreat out of her bargain, he offered an argument which he felt sure would clinch her silence. "You wouldn't want Mister Perkins t' find out that y' didn't have a good brush of your own," he reminded her, "and that y' took mine away."
"Oh, I wouldn't!"—fervently. Then, recalling how she had already been mortified in the matter of his first bath, and returning, girl-like, to that worn-out subject, "Johnnie, are you positive Mr. Perkins didn't see you empty the tub that day? and did he see the bottom of it when the water was all out? and in the bottom wasn't there a lot of grit?"
He reassured her. "But, my goodness, Cis, you're terrible stuck-up," he declared.
Certainly she felt more comfortable. For at once, with a haughty and precise air, which was her idea of how the socially elect bear themselves, with a set smile on her quaint face, and modulating her voice affectedly, she took Mr. Perkins's arm and went for a walk around Seward Park (the table), discussing the weather as she strolled, the scenery, and other impersonal subjects. And there was much bowing and hand shaking to it all, while Johnnie stood by, scarcely knowing whether to be pleased or cross.
"When you come home, and Mister Perkins is here, what'll I say?" he asked; "—just at first?"
"You introduce us," instructed Cis. "You tell him what my name is, and you tell me what his name is."
"But you know his name!" argued Johnnie. "And he knows yours."
"I can't help it," she returned. "It sounds silly, but everybody does it that way, and so you must, or he'll think you're funny."
"Well, all right." It was important that Mr. Perkinsshould not think him funny, lest that invitation to become a scout be withdrawn.
That night, so soon as Big Tom was asleep, Johnnie made his first trip to the roof; and understood, the moment he emerged from the little house which was built over the top of the stairs, why Mr. Perkins had recommended it as being more desirable than the street. Of course it was! The confinement of the past week or more helped to emphasize its good points. Ah, this was a place to breathe! to exercise! Above all, what a place from which to see! With the night wind in his hair, and swelling the big shirt, Johnnie stood, high and lonely, like Crusoe on his island, looking up and around, enchanted.
How much sky there was!—joined to his own square. The clouds, enormous and beautiful, had plenty of space in which to drift about, by turns hiding and uncovering the stars. Lifted almost into those clouds were the spars of ships, the tallest of the city's buildings, the black lace-work of two bridges. Oh, how big, how strange—yes, and even how far removed—seemed this New York of the night!
When he could say good-by to the flat for the last time, could leave it behind him forever, oh, how many sights there would be for him to see in this great city! "I'll just go and go!" he promised himself. "In ev'ry direction! And look and look and look!" Going had brought him One-Eye's friendship, and Mr. Perkins's. Somewhere in all those miles of roofs were other friends, just waiting to be found.
The cold in the night wind cut short his reflections. He fell to exercising, and drinking in big draughts of the sea air; then hastened down on soft foot to his bed. Cis was waiting in her door to see him come, and he knew she had been anxious, and thoroughly resented it.
"I didn't hurt the old roof," he whispered. But he feltvery happy, in spite of his irritation, and genuinely sorry for any boy who did not have a roof.
Every morning now he enjoyed his splash in the tub; every night he glorified in his taste of the real outdoors. On the following Sunday, he combined the two pleasures. Big Tom was in and out all day, making it impossible for Johnnie to bathe even in the seclusion of Cis's tiny room, which she generously offered to loan him for the ceremony. He did not accept her offer. He was as sure as ever that Barber would not only put a stop to all baths if he discovered they were being taken (on the ground that they used up too much soap), but the longshoreman might go further, and administer punishment which would be particularly trying—with Johnnie in a clothesless condition.
He waited for nightfall. The day was unseasonably warm. By sundown the patch of sky framed by the window was solidly overlaid with clouds, among which the thunder was rolling. A shower was brewing, and Johnnie had an idea. He took the soap and a wash rag to bed with him.
The others were asleep when the storm broke. But Johnnie was just inside the little house on the roof, shedding his clothes under cover. As the rain came lashing upon the warm, painted tin, he rushed forth into it, letting it whip his bare skin as he soaped and rubbed.
It was glorious! And though he dared not shout, he leaped hither and thither in an excess of joy, and did his calisthenics, the lightning flashing him into his own sight. And he took in from the rain, through tossing arms and legs, the electricity that he lacked—cut off as he had been so long from even the touch of a pavement.
Next, naked though he was, he played scout; and as he romped other scouts came to romp with him, dropping over the edge of the roof in all directions, or poppingout from behind the chimney and the little house. And all were as naked as he, and as full of joy, and they danced in a circle with him, and marched, and went through the exercises.
When at last his yellow hair was streaming, and his breath was spent, he dried himself, standing on the stairs, and using the long tails of the big shirt; then, trousered once more, he crept down and in, to sleep an unbroken, dreamless sleep, wrapped from head to toe in just nothing but his quilt. Only his small unfreckled nose showed, drawing in the rain-washed breeze that came swirling upon his bed through the open window.
"It's my beach!" he told Cis proudly the next morning. "I waded—honest, I did! And I pretty nearswimmed!"
He felt stronger, and consequently did not hate his housework so much. As for his appearance, Mr. Perkins was more than ever struck with its improvement when he saw Johnnie again; also, the leader was a trifle puzzled. But other things than breathing and bathing and exercises were helping Johnnie. He had something to look forward to now—a goal. Indeed, the greater part of his betterment was the result of that fresh interest Mr. Perkins had given him, his pride, and his hope.
"But I'd like t' learn more things 'bout scouts," he told the leader. "Is all I have t' do jus' git strong and grow t' be twelve?"
"Steady, old man!" counseled Mr. Perkins.
He failed to see, he said, that Johnnie's teeth looked any whiter. He acted almost as if he doubted Johnnie's use of the brush. Luckily Johnnie remembered that meeting which Cis had proposed, and this served to change the subject. By advice from Cis, later on, he was insured against Mr. Perkins's being so disappointed again. Cis gave him some powder; and he got fair results from her old brush.
So far as he was concerned, the meeting between Cis and Mr. Perkins proved utterly profitless. To begin with, in his pride and excitement, he forgot to follow out her instructions regarding the introduction. Instead of pronouncing the two names politely, he ran to Cis, and "Here he is!" he cried. "This is him! Mister Perkins!"
She stood against the hall door, smiling shyly. Mr. Perkins rose, looking more red than brown, and gave her a soldierly bow, though that day he was not wearing a uniform, but a gray business suit.
"I'm so glad to meet you," he said. "Johnnie's told me so much about you."
"I—I've got to go right back," was what she said. "Two of the girls 're waiting for me downstairs."
"Aw, Cis!" pleaded Johnnie. "Wait! Ain't y' goin' t' exercise with us?"
She went. And though she darted a smile at their visitor, to Johnnie she seemed all indifference, and he was staggered by it; only to be more than gratified by her complete change of attitude when she got home at suppertime. "Oh, he's handsome!" she declared. "My! The girls wouldn't believe how noble and splendid he is! He just can't be as young as you say, Johnnie, because he's been a soldier in the big war! I know it by that little button-thing in his coat! Oh, Johnnie, he's nicer than you said! Thousands and thousands of times!"
Johnnie swaggered a bit over that. "Allmy friends is nice," he observed. "Only I wish I could have One-Eye and Mr. Perkins here both at the same time!"
He had to give a minute account of Mr. Perkins's visit, and not once, but as often as he could manage to go over the subject before Big Tom came in. After supper, as they hung in the window together, looking up at the night sky, he had to review all previous visits, as well as that memorable, history-making meeting under the Elevated.
"He's like a young gentleman in a story!" she whispered. "And he's awful stylish! Did you notice?—his handkerchief to-day had a teeny brown edge to it!"
In the morning, she did an unprecedented thing: rose earlier than usual and helped Johnnie set the flat to rights. The dish cupboard came in for the most of her attention, a fact which brought loud protests from him, for she used up the whole of Mr. Maloney's precious newspapers, this in making fancifully cut covers for the shelves.
"Oh, let's look civilized!" she cried.
She came home at noon, her girl friends accompanying her, but waiting, as before, in the area. She was not so shy as she had been the first day; instead, she was dignified as she viewed the arm- and leg-work, praised Johnnie with sweet condescension, and thanked Mr. Perkins for all his trouble with quite a grown-up air.
The noon following, she arrived alone (Mr. Perkins had remarked the day previous that he would be coming regularly now). As he had appeared early, and the exercising was over and done, he and Cis went down the stairs together. Johnnie stood outside the door to watch them, and marveled as he watched. When had he ever seen Cis smile so much? chatter so freely? Now she did not seem afraid of Mr. Perkins at all!
In the hall overhead some one else was watching—Mrs. Kukor. As he looked up, she nodded at him. "Ah-ha-a-a-a!" she whispered, and laid one finger along her nose mysteriously. Johnnie understood that she was thinking of Big Tom. He nodded back, and put a finger to his lips.
All that afternoon he was so proud, just thinking of Cis threading the crowds with Mr. Perkins at her side. Yet she herself was evidently not impressed by the great compliment the leader had paid her. For the next day she did not invite a similar experience by coming home at noon; nor the next. In fact, she never again dropped into see the drill. She had lost interest in it, she told Johnnie—which was natural enough, seeing that she was a girl.
But! She seemed also to have completely lost all interest in Mr. Perkins!
BUT for some reason which Johnnie could not fathom, Cis suddenly began to show a great deal of interest in the flat. Indeed, she was by way of making his life miserable, what with her constant warnings and instructions about keeping the rooms neat and clean. And she proved that her concern was genuine by continuing to rise early each day in order to help him with the housework.
In her own tiny closet she brought about a really magnificent improvement. This took place mainly on Decoration Day, a day which, just because of its name, Johnnie regarded as particularly suitable for the happy task in hand. Cis's ceiling and walls had never been papered (she explained this by pointing out that paper would only have made the little cubby-hole just that much smaller, and there was not even a mite of room to spare). By dint of extra violet-making, she bought a can of paint and a brush. Then borrowing a ladder from the janitress, she first cleared her bedroom of its contents, and next wiped every inch of plaster—sides and top—by means of a rag tied over the end of the broom. After that, in her oldest dress, with her head wrapped up, she tinted her retreat, the mop-boards included, a delicate blue.
Now, however, she was far from done. The paint dry, she restored her two pieces of furniture to their rightful places. The dressing-table box she skirted with cheesecloth dipped in blued starch; and covered the top of it with a roll of crinkly, flower-sprinkled tissue paper. To the general effect, her cretonne-encased pillow gave the final touch. It was Johnnie's opinion that the pillow was one of the most beautiful things in New York. When it was stood up stiffly against the wall at the end of the narrow bed shelf; when the picture of Colonel Roosevelt was again in its place of honor beside the bit of mirror, with the handsome Edwarda leaned negligently just beneath; and when Cis had lavished upon her bed and box the delicious scent of a whole nickel's-worth of orris root, Johnnie, wildly enthused, signaled the flat above.
"I'll bet there ain't any room that's nicer'n this in the whole Waldorf 'Storia!" he vowed to the little Jewish lady when she came rocking down to marvel over the transformation, hands uplifted, head wagging. "Don't you think it's fine, Mrs. Kukor? and don't it smell 'zac'ly like Mrs. Reisenberger?"
"Pos-i-tivvle!" agreed Mrs. Kukor.
Next, in her housewifely zeal, Cis started in to improve the kitchen. Keeping the ladder an extra day by special permission she climbed it to wash the eight small panes of the window, after which she hung at either side of them a strip of the blue-tinted cheesecloth. But when Barber saw the curtains, he called them "tomfoolery," and tore them down. So nothing happened to the rest of the flat.
That rebuke of Barber's seemed to deflect Cis's interest from the rooms to herself. For now upon her own person she wrought improvements. These did not escape Johnnie, who accepted them as a part of the general upheaval—an upheaval which she informed him was "Spring cleaning." Each night before retiring she pressed her one dress, and freshened its washable collar; she also brushed her hair a full hundred times,conscientiouslycounting the strokes. As for her teeth, Johnnie warned her that she would wearout both them and the ivory-handled brush in no time, since, night and morning, she used the brush tirelessly. Also she wasted valuable hours (in his opinion) by manicuring her fingernails when she might better have been threading a kitchen jungle all beast-infested.
Next, another, and the most startling change in her. She came out of her blue room one morning looking very tall, and odd. At first Johnnie did not see what was wrong, and stared, puzzled and bewildered.
But Barber saw. "What's the idea?" he wanted to know, and none too pleasantly.
"I'm almost seventeen," Cis answered.
Almost seventeen! Johnnie looked at her closer, and discovered the thing that made her different. It was her hair. Usually she wore it braided, and tied at the nape of her neck. But now that shining braid was pinned in a coil on the back of her head!
"Y' look foolish!" went on Barber. "And y' can't waste any more money 'round here, buyin' pins and combs and such stuff. Y' can jus' wear it down your back for another year or so."
"All the other girls have their hair up," she argued. "And I've got to have mine out of the way."
She did not take that coil down. Yet she was by no means indifferent to the attitude of Big Tom. Johnnie, who understood so well her every expression, noticed how, when the longshoreman sometimes entered unexpectedly, Cis would go whiter than usual, as if frightened; she would start at the mere sound of his voice, and drop whatever happened to be in her hand.
When Big Tom was out she would walk about aimlessly and restlessly; would halt absentmindedly with her face to a wall and not seem to see it. She did not want to talk; she preferred to be let completely alone. She was irritable, or she sighed a good deal. She took to watchingthe clock, and wishing it were to-morrow morning. And if, giving in to Johnnie's entreaties, she consented to take part in a think, all she cared to do was bury the unhappy Cora, or watch lovely, and love-smitten, Elaine breathe her last.
At other times she laughed as she had never laughed before in all the five years or more that Johnnie had lived in the Barber flat; and broke out in jolly choruses. If Big Tom came in, she did not stop singing until he bade her to, and the moment he was gone, she was at it again, with a few dance steps thrown in, the blue eyes sparkling mischievously, and dimples showing in cheeks that were pink.
She also had dreamy spells; and if left undisturbed would sit at the window by the hour, her eyes on the sky, her slender hands clasped, a smile, sweet and gentle, fixing her young mouth. And Johnnie knew by that smile that she was thinking thinks—that the kitchen was occupied by people whom he did not see. He guessed that one of these was of Royal blood; and came to harbor hostile thoughts toward a certain young Prince, since never before had Cis failed to share her visions with Johnnie. For the first time he found himself shut out.
Once he caught her talking out loud. "I wish," she murmured, "I wish, I wish—"
"Who're you talkin' to?" he asked.
She started, and blushed. "Why—why, I'm talking to you," she declared.
"Well, then, what is it y' wish?" he persisted. "Go ahead. I'm listenin'."
But it had slipped her mind, she said crossly. Yet the next moment, in an excess of regret and affection, "Oh, Johnnie, you're so dear! So dear!" she told him, and gave him a good hug.
He worried about her not a little those days; and thoughfrom a natural delicacy he did not discuss her with Mr. Perkins, he did ask the leader an anxious question: "Could a girl be hurt by pinnin' a hot wad of braid right against the back of her brain?"
Mr. Perkins looked surprised. "They all do it," he pointed out. (Evidently he did not surmise whom Johnnie had in mind.)
"But s'pose a girl ain't used to it," pressed Johnnie.
"They get used to it," assured Mr. Perkins.
But Cis got worse and worse. One day soon after this, Johnnie came upon Edwarda, face down on the blue-room floor, and in a harrowing state of dishevelment—Edwarda, the costly, the precious, the not-to-be-touched! And when, on Cis's return, he tested her affection for the new doll by swinging it unceremoniously by one leg in Letitia fashion, "Don't break her," Cis cautioned indifferently; "because I'm going to give her away one of these days to some poor little girl."
He gasped. She was going to give awayHis namesake!
Then his eyes were opened, and he found out the whole sad truth—this one Sunday afternoon. Big Tom was out, and Cis was more restless than usual. She would not hunt in goat skins with Johnnie and Crusoe, nor capture the driftingHispaniolaalong with Jim Hawkins. She had no taste even for a lively massacre. And as Johnnie was equally determined neither to bury Cora again nor float upon a death barge with the Maid of Astolat, they compromised upon Aladdin and the Princess Buddir al Buddoor.
The occasion selected was that certain momentous visit to the bath, with Aladdin and Johnnie placed behind a door in order to catch a glimpse of the royal lady's face as she came by. Cis was in attendance upon the Princess, the dismantled blue cotton curtains trailing grandly behind her and getting trodden upon by the Grand Vizier (in awheel chair). A great crowd of ladies and slaves surrounded these celebrities as they wound through silent streets, between shops filled with silks and jewels and luscious fruits. The air was heavy with perfume. David, Goliath and Buckle bore aloft palms with which they stirred this scented breeze. Going on before, were the four millionaires, likewise a band dispensing music——
It happened—even as the Princess lifted the mist of her veil to display her sweet, pale beauty. Cis came short unexpectedly. A strange, sorrowful, and almost frightened look was in her blue eyes. She held out helpless, trembling hands to Johnnie. "Oh, what's the use of my trying to pretend?" she cried. "Johnnie, I can't see them any more! I can't see them! I can't see them!"
Then, a burst of weeping. Old Grandpa also began to weep. At that Cis stumbled toward the door of her room, colliding on the way with the end of the cookstove, since one slender arm was across her eyes, and shut herself from sight. For some minutes after that the sound of her muffled sobbing came from that closet over which she had so recently been proudly happy.
Johnnie first quieted the little old soldier by rolling him to and fro between Albany and Pittsburgh. Then he went to stand at Cis's door, where he listened, his head bent, his heart full of tender concern. Very wisely he said nothing, asked no questions. It was not till the sobbing ceased that he strove to comfort her by his loving, awkward, boyish attentions.
"Cis, can't I fetch y' a cup of nice, sugared cold tea?" he called in. "'R a saucer with some hot beans?"
"Oh, no," she quavered.
Now he knew what had brought about all those differences in her; he understood what her grief was about. It was indeed the hair. Yet the hair was only an outwardsign of the hidden tragedy—which was that, for good and all, for ever and ever, she was to be shut out from all wonderful, living, thrilling thinks.
"She's gittin' grown-up," he told himself sorrowfully.
OUT of a hip-pocket one morning Mr. Perkins produced a book—a small, limp, gray-colored volume upon the cover of which were two bare-kneed boy scouts, one of whom was waving a pair of flags. Also on that cover, near its top, were the words,Boy Scouts of America. "I wonder if you wouldn't like to look through this," he observed.
"Oh, gee!" Up from the sagging neckband of the big shirt swept the red of joy, and out leaped Johnnie's hands. "Does this tell all 'bout 'em, Mister Perkins? And, my goodness, don't I wish you could leave it here over night!" For some time he had been feeling that there was a lack of variety in his long program of preparation to be a scout; but here was something more definite than just the taking of a bath or the regular working of his muscles.
"I'm giving it to you," explained Mr. Perkins.
"Oh!" Johnnie pinched the gray book hard. "It's my own? Aw, thank y'! And ain't I lucky, though! This is seven I got now, countin' the d'rect'ry! And I'll learn ev'ry word in this one, Mister Perkins!"
To emphasize this determination to be thorough, before they started to look through the handbook he had to know all there was to tell about the picture on the front cover. "What's this one kid standin' on?" he asked. "And what's the scraggly thing behind him? And what's theother boy holdin' against his eyes? And what country do the flags belong t'?"
When at last Mr. Perkins began to turn the pages, he went too fast to suit Johnnie, who was anxious not to pass over any scrap of scout knowledge, hated to skip even a sentence, and wanted full time on each engrossing picture. They touched on the aim of the scout movement, the knowledge all scouts should have, their daily good turns (an interesting subject!), their characteristics, how troops are formed and led, the scout oath, and the laws. This brought them to merit badges, which proved so attractive a topic, yet discouraged Johnnie so sadly at the first, that they got no farther.
Johnnie was cast down because, on looking into the badge question, he believed he could never qualify for merit in any particular line. For certainly he knew nothing about Agriculture, or Angling, Archery, Architecture, Art, Astronomy, Athletics, Automobiling, or Aviation. "And so I don't see how I'll ever be a merit-badger," he told Mr. Perkins wistfully, when he had gone through the list of the A's.
Sometimes of late, in Johnnie's opinion, the scout leader had seemed to be as absentminded as Cis; and now he was evidently not thinking of the matter in hand, for he asked a question which appeared to have nothing whatever to do with merit badges. Also, it was a most embarrassing question, since it concerned a fact which Johnnie had been careful, all these past weeks, to suppress. "Can you cook?" he inquired.
For a moment Johnnie did not answer, being divided in his mind as to what to say, but sat, his very breath suspended, searching a way out of his dilemma. Then he remembered the laws Mr. Perkins had just read to him—in particular he remembered one which deplored the telling of lies. He understood that he must live up to thatlaw if he were ever to hold any badge he might be able to earn. "I—I help out Cis sometimes," he admitted. "Y' see, she goes t' the fac'try awful early. And—and if I didn't know how t' cook, why, maybe—if I was t' go 'way from here—maybe I'd almost starve t' death."
"At the same time," reminded Mr. Perkins, "you're doing Miss Narcissa a daily good turn."
That aspect of the matter had not occurred to Johnnie, who at once felt considerably better. "And also I earn my keep," he added proudly.
"Earning your keep comes under the ninth law," pointed out Mr. Perkins. "A scout is thrifty. He pays his own way."
Now the leader seemed to be in the proper mood to hear even the worst, and this Johnnie decided to admit. "I—I sweep, too," he confessed; "and make beds, and—and wash dishes." Then he set his small jaws and waited, for the other was again thoughtfully turning the pages of the book. He could hear the hard thump-thumping of his own heart. He began to wish that he had not been tempted to tell. He saw himself forever barred out of those ranks he so yearned to join just because he had been guilty of doing girl's work.
Mr. Perkins stopped turning pages and looked up with a smile. "With some study, you might be able to get the Personal Health Badge," he said; "but I guess, after all, that the easiest one for you will be the merit badge for cooking."
The merit badge for cooking?Then without a doubt cooking was something which boy scouts deigned to do! And it was not just girl's work! Nor did he have to be ashamed because he did it! On the contrary, he could be proud of his knowledge! could even win honors with it! Oh, what a difference all this made!
Something began to happen to the amazed Johnnie. Relieved at the thought that he was neither to be dropped nor despised for his kitchen work, happy with the realization that he was not unlike those boys of the never-to-be-forgotten marching twos, suddenly he felt a change of attitude toward cooking. What he had hated so long now did not seem hateful. "I can cook mush," he boasted with satisfaction, "and meat, and beans, and potatoes, and cabbage, and biscuits and gravy, and tea and coffee, and—and prunes."
"Great!" said Mr. Perkins. "I don't believe one of my scouts can cook as well as you can. Why, you'resureto get your badge on that list of yours!" And pointing to a small and very black picture at the middle of a page, "This is the device," he explained. "When a boy gets it, he's allowed to wear it on his blouse."
Johnnie looked. And looked closer. Next, to make certain that he was not mistaken, he pinned the picture with a calloused forefinger. "A—a kettle?" he asked incredulously. "Scouts wear a pitcher of a—akettle?"
"Dandy idea, isn't it?" returned Mr. Perkins; "—the big, black, iron kettle that soldiers and miners and hunters have used for hundreds of years! Like yours over there!"
Slowly Johnnie faced round. On the back of the stove was the bean-kettle, big, black and of iron, heavy to lift, hard to wash, and for years—by Cis as well as Johnnie—cordially loathed. "Soldiers and miners and hunters," he repeated, as if to himself; "and scout kids wear pitchers of 'em." That remarkable change of attitude of his now included the kettle. He knew that he would never again hate it. When he turned back to the leader, he was his old confident self. "Do boy scouts ever wear aprons?" he inquired. "And does anybody laugh at 'em?"
"Laugh?" said Mr. Perkins. "They do not! When a scout's round the house like you are, helping his mother,perhaps, he puts on an apron if he's smart. Remember that thrifty law? Well, a boy mustn't ruin his clothes. Out on the hike, of course, where there aren't any aprons, he generally uses a piece of sacking—especially when he's washing dishes." Then, opening the little book again, "Here are directions for dish washing," he added.
As before Johnnie stared while he used a forefinger. Directions for dish washing? in the scouts' own book? Would wonders never cease? Then without a doubt this newest possession of his contained many another unsuspected salve to his pride. "My goodness!" he exclaimed happily, "what all more is there in here 'bout cookin'?"
"Well, there's a recipe for griddle cakes, and bacon, and salmon on toast," said Mr. Perkins; "also roast potatoes, and baked fish, and hunter's stew. But eggs and biscuits, of course, you know."
After an hour of that kind, it was quite natural that Johnnie, when he found himself alone again, should straightway devise a cooking think—and this for the first time in his life. He saw himself in the center of a great group of splendidly uniformed scouts, all of whom were nearly famished. He was uniformed, too; and he was preparing a meal which consisted of everything edible described in the Scouts' book. And as he mixed and stirred and tasted, his companions proclaimed him a marvel, while proudly upon his breast he displayed that device of the kettle.
Till the clock warned him at five that it was time to get ready for Big Tom, the Handbook was not out of his hands. To a boy who had made easy reading even ofThe Last of the Mohicans, Mr. Perkins's present offered few problems. There was not a little in what he read that, cooped up as he had been during the last five years, he did not understand. But starting at the first page, and eating his way through the first chapter, not missing oneof the paragraphs skipped during the morning, studying each illustration thoroughly, and absorbing both pictures and print like a sponge, he got a very real glimmering of what it meant to a boy to be a scout; and not only so far as the body, its strength and its growth, was concerned, but also in relation to character. And just that first chapter made him understand that there was, indeed, something more to scouting than looking plump-chested, having good blood, and cultivating strong muscles.
That evening supper achieved a dignity and a pleasure. Glad now that he knew how to get a meal, he baked potatoes, made biscuits and gravy, and boiled coffee. He realized that Big Tom would enjoy such a good supper, and this, of course, was a decided drawback. Yet the fact remained that if he (Johnnie) was to win a badge by his cooking, the longshoreman must profit. It could not be helped. He set about preparing a dessert—an unheard-of climax to any previous evening meal. Fashioning small containers of some biscuit dough, he first put the pulp of some cooked prunes through the tea strainer—then filled the containers with the sweetened fruit and baked them. All the while he visioned Cis's surprise and delight over the tarts. He even anticipated some complimentary remark from Big Tom.
"I'll get a merit badge," he vowed, "even if I have t' do a lot o' things I hate!"
Luckily Cis arrived ahead of her stepfather. Having borrowed Grandpa's Grand Army hat, Johnnie greeted her, first with a snappy salute; after that he bowed and bared his head as if to the Queen or the Princess Buddir al Buddoor—all this as per an illustration in his book which showed a scout uncovering to an elderly lady in a three-cornered shawl. "A scout's always p'lite t' women and children," he explained as he offered her the kitchen chair. "And some day Boof is goin' t' go mad, and I'm goin' t'protect y' from him! There's a pitcher in my new book that shows how t' do it!"
He showed her his new present. However, she gave it only a glance, exactly as if she had seen it before. She rarely even mentioned Mr. Perkins any more, and now only remarked that to have given Johnnie the book "was nice of him," adding that sport socks which showed a boy's knees (she was referring to the cover of the Handbook) were "as stylish as Fifth Avenue."
With Johnnie bustling hither and thither in a proud and entirely willing manner, the longshoreman could not fail to remark a new spirit in the flat. But in spite of the well-cooked, tasty meal, Big Tom was not moved to speak any appreciation.
After a time, Johnnie decided to invite a comment. "I made y' biscuits and gravy again," he pointed out.
"It's about time," returned Barber.
Biscuits and gravy, however, were an established combination. The desired effect, then, might better be gotten with something never before served. "And I fixed somethin' for y' t' finish up on," he announced. Then opening the oven door to display the browning prune tarts, "Lookee! Baby pies!"
"Mm!" breathed Big Tom, suspicion flashing whitely in that left eye. "You're gittin' too good t' live! What y' been doin' t'-day? Breakin' somethin'?" But later he ate four of the little confections with loud smacks.
Johnnie, standing at his plate (as he had always stood at it since coming to the flat, for there was no chair for him), ate his own small pie and cogitated philosophically. Big Tom had not repaid a good turn with gratitude. But then at least he had been no uglier than usual; had not stormed about wasting biscuit dough and sugar, as he might easily have done. He had been just his ordinary self, which was something to be thankful for.
"Would y' bring home a can of salmon fish for t'morrow supper when y' come in t'night?" Johnnie asked. (He longed to try that scout recipe!)
To that, Barber did not commit himself.
When Johnnie and Cis were left alone, old Grandpa being already abed, Johnnie did not try to win her interest in the Handbook, or share with her the new and absorbing thinks it inspired. Since that unhappy ending to the procession of the bath, with its wailing protest, and its tears, with nice consideration he had not again so much as broached a pretend to her. She sat at the window in the warm twilight, busy—or so it seemed—with her fingernails, which these days consumed a great deal of her time. Johnnie took down the clothesline and fell to making Knots Every Scout Should Know.
But that night on the roof! What a revel there was of brave scout doings, of gentlemanly conduct!—all witnessed by a large, fat moon. He wigwagged messages of great portent to phantom scouts who were in dire need. He helped blind men across streets that ran down the whole length of the roof. He held back pressing crowds while the police were rendered speechless with admiration. He swept off his scout headgear to scores of motherly ladies in three-cornered shawls; wrapped up the sore paws of stray dogs; soothed weeping children; straightened the blankets on numbers of storm-blown horses standing humped against the bitter wind and rain; and pointed out the right road to many a laden and bewhiskered traveler.
But when his bed claimed him, and he was free to do a little quiet thinking, it occurred to him that he had not strung a single bead that day, nor made one violet. Did this not number him among the breakers of that first law?—"by not doing exactly a given task." There was not the least doubt of it! "My!" he exclaimed. "I'm 'fraid them laws 're goin' t' be a' awful bother!"
Nevertheless, the following day, he did not fail to keep them in mind. Though Barber had so ill repaid his efforts to please, though no can of salmon had been forthcoming as requested, he did not punish the longshoreman that morning. Life seemed very full to him now, what with his regular duties and the fresh obligations laid upon him by the Handbook.
He skimped nothing. What did the housework amount to, now that he felt a sudden liking for it? And he found that he could memorize the laws while he was stringing beads. When he paused, either in one line of effort or the other, it was to do a good turn: put crumbs on the window sill for the sparrows, feed Boof, take Mrs. Kukor up one of the small pies (lifting off Grandpa's hat to her at the door), and give the little old veteran not one, but several, short railway journeys. And all the while he made sure, by the help of Cis's mirror, that his mouth was turned up at each end like a true scout's mouth should be.
"I got t' git my lips used to it," he declared, "so's they'll stay put."
And the things he did not do! For example, he discontinued his clothesline telephone service; for another, he wasted no minute by introducing into the kitchen territory either foreign or domestic. For he was experiencing the high joy of being excessively good. Indeed, and for the first time in his life, he was being so good that it was almost painful.
Finding Johnnie in this truly angelic state of mind when he arrived, Mr. Perkins grasped his opportunity, skipped all the chapters of the Handbook till he came to that one touching upon chivalry, and sat down with Johnnie to review it. And what a joy it proved to the new convert to find in those pages his old friends King Arthur and Sir Launcelot, together with Galahad, Gareth, Bedivere and all the others! and to make the acquaintance ofAlfred the Great, the Pilgrim Fathers, the pioneers, and Mr. Lincoln!—especially Mr. Lincoln, that boy who had traveled from a log cabin to the White House!
"And I'll tell y' what!" he vowed, when Mr. Perkins rose to take his leave, "I've made up my mind what I'm goin' t' be when I grow up. I've thought 'bout a lot of things, but this time I'm sure! Mister Perkins, I'm goin' t' try t' be President of the United States!"
Later on, he made a second vow to himself. "Good turns for Grandpa don't 'mount t' much," he declared. "He's so handy as a good-turner. So I'm goin' t' do one that'll count. I'm goin' t' good-turn Big Tom!"
He took down the bag of dried beans from the cupboard and searched out certain nine small buttons. From time to time, in the past, he had, on what he felt was just provocation, subtracted these nine buttons from Big Tom's shirts. Now with painstaking effort, pricking his fingers many times, he sewed the buttons back where they belonged. The task finished, he was in nothing short of an exalted state of mind. So that again for supper he made biscuits and gravy.
Then came the bombshell. It was Big Tom who cast it, figuratively speaking, among the supper plates. He had come scuffing his way in, his look roving and suspicious—if not a little apprehensive. But what he had to say he had saved, as was his habit, for meal time. "Sa-a-ay!" he began, helping himself to a generous portion of his favorite dish; "who's that dude that's been hangin' 'round here lately?"
Johnnie's tongue felt numb, and his throat dry. He thought of the laws, hoping he might remember one that would help him. He could remember nothing. There was a spy in the house—a spy as evil as Magua. And that spy deserved to be killed. He resolved that, later on, up on the roof, he would have a splendid execution.
Meanwhile Cis had come to the rescue. "You mean Mr. Perkins, the scoutmaster?" she asked. She was white, Johnnie noticed, and did not look at Barber.
"Scoutmaster!" repeated the longshoreman. "So that's it, is it? I guessed you was up to some deviltry!"—this to Johnnie. "And let me tell you somethin': none of them crazy idears 'round here! D' y' understand?" (This was how much he appreciated biscuits and gravy!)
"Yes, sir," murmured Johnnie. But he thought what a pity it was that some one had not made a scout out of Big Tom.
"None o' that foolish business," went on Barber; then to Cis, noticing her paleness, perhaps. "What's eatin'you?"
"Nothing. I feel tired to-night," she answered weakly.
"Go t' bed."
She went, and as if she was grateful to get away, though the sun was still shining on the roofs of the houses opposite. She did not even glance at Johnnie, and shut herself in.
"What time t'morrow will that guy come?" the longshoreman wanted to know as soon as Cis was gone.
"'Bout 'leven." Johnnie could not help but wonder how he was ever to get on if the laws bound him so tight to the truth, and the truth would prove the undoing, the wrecking of all his dearest plans.
"'Leven," mused Barber. "Hm!—Well, y' needn't t' put up no lunch for me in the mornin'. I'll come home for it. I jus' want t' take a look at that scout gent."
A TERRIBLE dread filled Johnnie's heart—that heart which had always known so much dread. It took away his desire to go upon the roof; it kept him awake long into the night, tugging at his hair, twisting and turning upon his mattress, sighing, even weeping a little out of sheer helplessness. Having his normal amount of the reserve, dignity and pride that is childhood's, his dread was not that Big Tom, when he returned to meet Mr. Perkins, would be rude to the scoutmaster (it did not occur to him that the longshoreman would dare to go that far); it was that, in the presence of the new friend whose good opinion Johnnie longed to keep, Barber would order him around, jerk him by a sleeve, or shove him rudely—treat him, in fact, with that lack of respect which was usual, and thus mortify him.
The full moon was again lifting above the city and touching all the roofs with silver. From where he lay he looked out and up, trying to forget his wretchedness, but living the coming encounter again and again. His ears grew hot as Barber seized one of them and wrung it, or brushed his face with a hard, sweaty hand. Imagining insult upon insult, his chest heaved and his wet eyes burned.
"Oh, One-Eye!" he whispered to a dear image that seemed to fill the morris chair, "ifyouwas only here! Gee, Big Tom never dast treat me bad before you!" It was not that he felt for a moment that the cowboy was the betterfriend of the two whom he revered and loved; they held equal places in his affections. But Mr. Perkins was too much of a gentleman to be awe-inspiring. The Westerner, in his big hat and his hairy breeches, was the man to be feared!
At breakfast he was given no chance to talk matters over with Cis. And she neither saw his signals nor heard them, though he arranged both the stove and the table to warn her that something had happened, and coughed croupily till Barber told him roughly to shut up. He comforted himself with reflecting that it would have done him no good had they threshed the coming crisis out.
It was a shaken, hollow-eyed, miserable, unbathed little boy that greeted Mr. Perkins when the scoutmaster rapped. And the sight of the latter only made Johnnie's spirits sink lower. He had hoped with all his heart that the leader would come in all the grandeur and pride of his uniform; and here was Mr. Perkins in a light suit, a straw hat, and white socks. The fact that he had on a lavender tie and was carrying brown gloves made things just that much worse. Steadily, during the past fortnight, the scoutmaster had been dressing better and better. This morning he was finer than ever before. It was awful.
"You'll see," mourned Johnnie, his eyes on the clock as he talked. "He'll be awful mean t' me. Here he says I can't listen t' scoutin' no more! N'r nothin'! Say, Mister Perkins, if he shoves at me, would y' ever give him biscuits and gravy again?"
Mr. Perkins thought it over. "Well, under the same circumstances," he said finally, "what do you think Theodore Roosevelt would do?"
Johnnie could not decide. He felt that a look at the picture would help. Hunting a match, he disappeared into the blue room, struck a light, and gave the likenessa searching look. "I don't 'xac'ly know," he declared when he came out; "but, Mister Perkins, I b'lieve maybe he'd justlickhim!"
A queer gleam came into those eyes which were a coffee-brown. "I shouldn't be surprised," said Mr. Perkins, "if that isn't precisely what the Colonel would do."
The door opened. It was Big Tom. His cargo hook hung round his great neck. His hat was pushed back, uncovering a forehead seamed and sweaty. To Johnnie he looked bigger and blacker than usual—this in comparison with Mr. Perkins, so slim, if he was fully as tall as Barber, and so immaculate, even dainty!
The older man had an insolent smile in those prominent eyes of his, and a sneer bared his tobacco-stained teeth. Slamming the door, he came sauntering toward the scoutmaster, who had risen; he halted without speaking, then deliberately, impudently, he stared Mr. Perkins from head to foot.
The latter glanced back, and with much interest, not staring, yet seeing what sort of looking man the longshoreman was. To judge by the expression in the brown eyes he did not like the kind. For suddenly his eyelids narrowed, and the lines of his mouth set. "Introduce me, Johnnie," he said.
Anxious, alert, and not hopeful, Johnnie had been watching the two, this from the farther side of the table, so that he should not be handy in case his giant foster father wanted to maul him. "This is Mister Barber," he began, speaking the name as politely as he could, but forgetting to complete the introduction.
"Tommie's home! Tommie's home!" piped up old Grandpa, suddenly waking from his morning nap, and evidently not happy over his discovery.
"My name is Perkins," said the scoutmaster to Barber.He spoke courteously, but there was no cringing in his manner.
"Perkins, huh?" returned Barber, grinning. He was so close to the other that they all but touched. "And when did the cat bringyouin?"
In very horror those lead-pipe legs of Johnnie's almost gave way beneath him, so that he clung to the table for support. "Oh!" he breathed.
But Mr. Perkins was smiling. "The cat brought me in just before he brought you in," he answered quietly.
The reply wrought an instant and startling change in Big Tom. The smile went from the bloodshot eyes, giving place to that white flash of rage. The heavy nose gave a quick twist. Every hair in the short beard seemed to bristle. "Now there's somebody in this room that's gittin' fresh," he observed; "and freshness from a kid is somethin' I can't stand. I don't mention no name, but! If it happensagain"—he paused for emphasis—"I'll slap the fancy eyeglasses right off his face!"
There was a tense pause. The two at the center of the room were gazing straight at each other; and it seemed to Johnnie, wavering weakly against the table, that he would die from fear.
However, Mr. Perkins was not frightened. His hat was in his left hand. He let it drop to the floor. But he did not move back an inch, while those well-kept hands curled themselves into knots so hard that their knuckles were topped with white. "You wanted to see me?" he said.
"Y're wrong!" declared Big Tom. "I didn't want t' see y'. I had t' see y'."
"I note the distinction," returned Mr. Perkins.
"Y' do! Well, just listen t' me a second," counseled Barber, "before we git started on to what I've got t' say." Now his anger flamed higher. He began to shake a bigfinger. "Don't you put on no fancy airs with me! Y' git that? For the good and simple reason that I won't stand for 'em!" He chawed on nothing.
"I was not aware that Iwasputting on any fancy airs," answered Mr. Perkins. "Airs are something that I don't—waste."
"Any high-falutin' stuff would be wasted 'round here," went on Barber. "We're just plain, hard-workin', decent people.—And now we'll git down to brass tacks." He passed in front of Mr. Perkins and settled himself heavily in the morris chair.
The scoutmaster faced about, found the kitchen chair, and sat. "I'm listening," he said. He was businesslike, even cordial.
"You seem t' hang 'round here about two-thirds of your time," commented Big Tom, hunting his pipe.
"No," contradicted Mr. Perkins, easily. "Lately, I've been coming here one hour a day."
"And just what's the idear?" The big fingers plucked blindly at the strings of a tobacco-bag, for Big Tom did not take his eyes from the younger man.
"I've been giving the boy setting-up exercises," explained Mr. Perkins.
"Y' have!"—sarcastically. "Ain't that sweet of y'!" Then with an impatient gesture that scattered tobacco upon the floor, "Exercises!" Big Tom cried wrathfully. "Exercises!As if he can't git all the exercises he needs by doin' his work! I have t' feed that kid, and feed costs money. He knows that. And he earns. Because he ain't no grafter."
In sheer amazement, Johnnie's look strayed to Mr. Perkins. He had expected mistreatment and insult for himself, and here he was receiving praise!
"There's a difference in exercising," said Mr. Perkins. "Johnnie gets one kind while he's doing his work. But hiswork is all inside work, out of the fresh air that every boy needs. And certain of his muscles are not developed. I've been correcting that undevelopment by giving him the regular setting-up that we give all boy scouts."
"Shucks, your boy scouts!" sneered Big Tom. "We got no time for 'em. We're poor, and we're busy, and we got a' old, sick man on our hands. That's scoutin' enough!"
"Many men who have boys think as you do," acknowledged Mr. Perkins, serenely. "That is, at first."
"I think it first and second," returned Big Tom, raising his voice. "And also I know it."
"I promise you that it won't hurt Johnnie," urged the scoutmaster.
"Yeh? But I know whatwouldhurt Johnnie, and that's growin' up t' look likeyou!"
At that, Mr. Perkins burst out in a laugh. It was both good-natured and amused. "Well, my looks suit me," he declared.
"Which is more'nIcan say of 'em," retorted Barber. "They don't suit me alittlebit!"
Mr. Perkins laughed again. "Sorry," he said, but his tone entirely contradicted his assertion.
Barber kept on: "Your looks don't suit me, and neither does your talk. You're altogether too slick, too pink-and-whity, too eye-glassy, and purple-shirty, and cute-socky, and girl-glovy."
"I see."
"T' put it plainer, y' don't look t' me like a real man." Out now came the underlip, threatening, aggressive.
"Indeed?" Dire as the insult was, Mr. Perkins was still smiling, was even a trifle bored. "And what kind of a chapdoyou think is a real man?"
"Somebody," answered Big Tom, "that's ev'rything you ain't. Why, honest, you look too nice t' me t' be out inbad weather. Y' know, one of these days you'll melt, 'r git streaked."
"Mm! Perhaps I'm too clean." Those coffee-colored eyes were cool. With one swift up and down they examined Big Tom's apparel.
The longshoreman squirmed under the scrutiny. "Y' don't look like y've ever done a lick of honest work in your whole life!" he declared hotly. "Y' look like your pink face was made o' dough, and the balance of y' out o' putty! Y' look as if the calf'd licked y'!"
Again that amused, bored smile. "No," said Mr. Perkins, "that hasn't happened yet."
"No? Well, y' never can tell. Y'mightgit licked by somethin'besidesa calf."
Another of those pauses which seemed so terribly long to Johnnie, and so fraught with direful possibilities. Then, "I might," agreed the scoutmaster, carelessly; "but again I—might not."
Now Barber showed that he did not possess the self-control that distinguished the younger man. His heavy, hair-rimmed mouth working as if with unspoken words, he rose, pocketed the pipe, and took a long step toward the table, upon which he planted both his huge hands. As he leaned there, it was plain that he longed for trouble. "I might not!" he mocked, disgusted. "Sure, y' might! For the reason that you ain't the kind that's got a wallop in your fist!"
Mr. Perkins got up, too. But only as if it were the well-bred thing to do. The bronze of his face was considerably darker than usual; and his eyes were black, and shone like great beads. "Ah!" he exclaimed, as amused as ever. "Now I think I know what it is that you respect most in men. Brute force. Am I right? Muscle! The power to give a hard blow."
"Dead right!" answered Barber, striking the table withhis open hand. "I hate a mollycoddle! a cutie! a reg'larpill!"
Mr. Perkins nodded in the friendliest way. "So do I," he declared heartily. "And that's just why I want to train Johnnie's muscles, and teach him how to use his hands."
Big Tom straightened and went round the table. "I'll train Johnnie's muscles," he said; "and I'll teach him what t' do with his hands, too. And you keep your nose out of it. Understand?" Then deliberately reaching out, with one finger he gave Mr. Perkins a poke in the chest.
That chest swelled under the neatly buttoned light coat. Yet Mr. Perkins continued to smile. But he did not move back by so much as an inch. And presently, with a low "Bah!" of anger and disgust, the longshoreman loafed away. "All right," he drawled, in a tone of dismissal; "and now I'll ask for your room."
"My room?" The scoutmaster did not appear to understand.
"Yes! Yes!"—loudly, and facing round. "I'm askin' y' not t' bother us any more this mornin' with your ever-lastin' talk!"
"Oh. You wish me to go." Mr. Perkins took up his hat and gloves.
"My, but you're smart!" exclaimed Barber, sarcastically. "You can understand plain English!—Yes,dearMister Perkins, I mean that I don't want y' round." With that he continued on to the hall door, and opened it. "This way out," he said flippantly. The brown teeth showed again.
Mr. Perkins gave Johnnie a cheery smile. "Good-by, old chap," he said. He went to the wheel chair and laid a gentle hand on Grandpa's shoulder. "Good-by, Grandpa!"
"Good-by, General!" quavered the old man. "Good-by!" A shaking hand lifted in a salute.
Mr. Perkins gave Barber a courteous nod as he passed him. "Good-by," he said pleasantly.
"Good-by," returned Barber. "And good riddance!" He slammed the door.
Then something strange happened—something that had never happened before. Without giving Johnnie a look, Barber lifted down the lamp, lighted it, carried it into Cis's room, and closed the door.
Rooted to the floor, alert as any frightened mouse, Johnnie listened. He could hear the longshoreman moving about, and the scrape of the dressing-table box as it was lifted from its place, then shoved back. What was Barber hunting? Fortunately the books were wound up in Johnnie's bedding, a precaution taken by their owner in view of Barber's spoken determination to return and take a look at Mr. Perkins. By any chance did the longshoreman know about the Handbook? If he did, and if he found it, what would happen then?
After what seemed a long time, Barber appeared. Except for the lamp, his hands were empty. He blew into the top of the chimney and set the lamp back in its place. "Tea," he ordered.
Startled, Johnnie fairly rose into the air. When he touched the floor again, he was halfway to the stove. He set the table for one, mustering the food which Big Tom was to have had in the lunch pail. Barber ate, occasionally growling under his breath; or blew fiercely at the full saucer from which he was drinking. His look roved the room as if he were still searching. His meal finished, he found his hat, hung the cargo hook about his neck, and slouched out.
Then for the first time Johnnie relaxed, and slumped into the morris chair. He was not only weak, he was sick—too sick with bitterness and hate and shame and rage even to care to go into Cis's room to see in what conditionBig Tom had left it. He knew now that the rough handling that he had feared for himself, though it would have been hard enough to endure, was less than nothing when compared with what he had suffered in seeing Mr. Perkins insulted, and ordered out.
He began to talk to himself aloud: "Good turns don't work! I'm sorry I ever done him one! I'll never do him another, y' betcher life!" Black discouragement possessed him. What good did it do any one to treat a man like Barber well? "Why, he's worse'n that mean Will Atkins that Crusoe hates!" he declared. "And the first time I git a chance, away I'll go, Mister Tom Barber, and this time I won'tnevercome back!"
"Sh!" whispered old Grandpa. "Sh!" The faded blue eyes were full of fear.
Johnnie fed the old soldier and got him to sleep. Then he tapped the basket signal up to Mrs. Kukor's. He had found the bed roll undisturbed, and knew that Big Tom had not discovered his treasures. But he would not take any further chances. When the basket came swinging slowly down, he called a brief explanation to the little Jewish lady. When the basket went up, it swung heavily, for his six precious books were in it.
Now he had no time, and no inclination, for reading. And he had no patience for any law that aimed to stand in his way. (Big Tom had driven Mr. Perkins from the flat; also, he had just about swept the place clean of every good result that the scoutmaster had worked.) What Johnnie felt urged to do seemed the only thing that could lessen all that rage and shame, that hate and bitterness, which was pent up in his thin little body.
"So I can't ever be a scout, eh?" he demanded. "Well, you watch me!" He planted the kitchen with a trackless forest through which boomed a wind off Lake Champlain. The forest was dark, mysterious. Through it, stealingon soft, moccasined feet, went Johnnie and the cruel Magua, following the trail of the fleeing and terrified longshoreman.
They caught him. They bound him. And now theHispaniolacame into sight across the Lake, her sails full spread as she hurried to receive her prisoner. Johnnie and Magua put Barber aboard. The latter pleaded earnestly, but no one listened. Again the ship set sail, bound for that Island which had yielded up its treasure to Captain Smollet's crew. On this Island, Big Tom was set down. And as theHispaniolaset sail once more, her prow pointed homeward, Johnnie looked back to where the longshoreman was kneeling, hands appealingly upraised, beside those certain three abandoned mutineers.