The Rich Little Poor Boy Part 32

"CIS BAR-R-BER-R-R! Cis Bar-r-r-ber-r-r! Cis Bar-r-r-ber-r!"

It was the shrill voice of the Italian janitress, calling up from the area, and the summons was peremptory and impatient.

The day was Sunday, so that Cis, as well as Big Tom, was at home. At the moment the longsh.o.r.eman was humped over the sink, rinsing his bluish jowls after a shave. Cis was beside him, standing at the kitchen window.

The day before she had been told by a girl friend that one side of every person's face is always better-looking than the other side; and now she was holding up in front of her the broken bit of mirror while, as she turned her head delicately, now this way, now that, she tried to decide between the merits of the two views.

"Cis _Bar_--rber!" sounded the call again, this time with an added note of annoyance.

Cis transferred her attention to her nose. Recently a certain somebody had told her one or two things about that nose. She was considering this, aided by the gla.s.s. "My! That janitress is getting bossier and bossier!" she remarked somewhat languidly.

Johnnie, bent over his violets, paused with a flower half done. He marveled at her lack of curiosity, envying her for it. How grandly grown-up she was! As for him, he was fairly on pins and needles to know what it was the janitress wanted. "St! st!" he hissed cautiously (Barber's head being just then buried in the roller towel). He tried hard to catch her eye.

"Cis _BAR-BER_!"--it was a shriek.

"I've told that woman, over and over, that my name _isn't_ Barber," went on Cis, touching her hair with deft fingers.

Barber took his head out of the towel. "Go and see what she wants," he commanded irritably. "She'll wake the old man."

"She wants me to be running up and down three flights of stairs,"

returned Cis, calmly. (It was astonis.h.i.+ng the att.i.tude she took these days with Big Tom, the tone of equality she used.) "She thinks I'm still one of the youngsters in this building, and that she can order me around like she used to do. But I'm going to remind Madam Spaghetti that I'm seventeen to-day." She gave a toss of her head as she went out.

Seventeen! Sure enough! Johnnie pondered her good fortune. It would be quite a little more than six years before he would be seventeen. How remote that fortunate day seemed! And how the time would drag! Oh, if there were only some scheme for making it go faster!

"Let your hair alone!" scolded Big Tom, who was raking his own at the window, his legs spraddled wide in order to lower himself and thus bring his head on a level with Cis's mirror.

A scout is obedient. Down came Johnnie's hand. Also, a scout is cheerful when obeying; so up went the corners of his mouth. And there was one more point to cover: courtesy. "Yes, sir," he answered politely. He proceeded with his petals of violet cotton and his little length of stem. For what had Mr. Perkins said so often about all these matters of conduct?

"Get the habit of doing them, old fellow. If being a scout means anything, it means living up to the laws, sticking close to the spirit of the whole scout idea, and following out what the Handbook teaches.

Put the question of Big Tom out of your mind. Whether he likes what you do or not; and whether or not you please him when you live by the laws, those aren't the main considerations. No! It's yourself you must think of! your character! Remember that you're not trying to make over Tom Barber. Body and soul, you're making over Johnnie Smith!"

And these days Johnnie Smith was getting on by leaps and bounds with his preparation, his training to be a scout. Fortunately that meeting between Mr. Perkins and Big Tom had made no difference whatever in his program. The morning after it took place, the scoutmaster had made his appearance as usual at eleven o'clock. "I can't let Mr. Barber drive me away," he explained. "Why, that would be deserting you, old fellow, and you're counting on me, aren't you? No, we'll go right ahead."

"But if he finds out!" Johnnie ventured, happy, yet somewhat apprehensive.

"He'll order me out again probably," returned Mr. Perkins, calmly. "Of course, if he could understand what I'm trying to do for you, I'm sure he'd look at the whole matter in a friendlier way." (Mr. Perkins never came closer than this to a criticism of the longsh.o.r.eman.) "Well, he can't understand, because, you see, the poor chap never had the right thing done for him.--Yes, we'll go right ahead."

However, as Johnnie continued to feel nervous on the score of what his foster father might do to this good friend if the latter was again discovered at the flat, the scoutmaster, for Johnnie's sake, and to make the boy's mind more easy, agreed to change the time of his call to a little after one o'clock of each afternoon, it being decided that this hour was the safest.

Johnnie had wanted to say something about the ring, and the engagement--something to the effect that he was happy over the news, only Mr. Perkins was taking his (Johnnie's) job away from him, since he had planned, when he grew up,--yes, and even before--to take care of Cis himself. But for some reason he did not find it easy to broach the subject; and since the scoutmaster did not begin it (he looked ruddier and browner than ever before, Johnnie thought), the upshot of it was that the engagement did not get discussed at all.

Instead, the Handbook took up the whole of the hour. A mysterious signal on the sink pipe brought all of the books down to them, descending in the basket as if out of the sky. Mrs. Kukor had to be thanked then, from the window, after which Mr. Perkins and Johnnie settled down to a chapter treating of the prevention of accidents, first-aid, and lifesaving. And that afternoon, when the scoutmaster was gone, Let.i.tia was several times rescued from drowning, and carried on a stretcher; and that evening Cis, on coming in from work, found Grandpa's old, white head bandaged scientifically in the dish-towel, this greatly to the veteran's delight, for he believed he had just been wounded at the Battle of s.h.i.+loh.

The chapter for the next day after proved even more exciting. It was all about games--the Treasure Hunt, and Let 'er Buck, Capture the Flag, and dozens more, but each as strange to Johnnie as another, since he had never played one of them. Mr. Perkins added his explanations to those in the Handbook, and showed Johnnie and Grandpa how c.o.c.k-fighting was done, gave a demonstration of skunk tag, and proved that the soft, splintery boards of the kitchen floor were finely adapted to mumbly peg.

That night on the roof, Johnnie hailed to him a score of scouts, along with Jim Hawkins and David, Aladdin, and several of the younger Knights of King Arthur. Then went forward a great game of duck on a rock, followed by a relay race and dodge-ball. The roof had come to mean more and more to Johnnie of late, but now he felt especially glad that he had it to go to. During the past few weeks he had frequented it under every sort of summer-night sky. It was his weather station, his observatory, his gymnasium, his park, his highway, his hilltop, his Crusoe's Island.

In the thinks he conjured up there, it was also his railroad station, for he traveled far and wide from it on trains that went puffing away from that little house built at the top of the stairs; and it was his wharf, to which tall-masted s.h.i.+ps came with the swift quiet of so many pigeons. But now the roof was for him still another place--besides a health resort: it was his playground for all those scout games.

But he and Mr. Perkins had not stopped at that chapter on Games. From cover to cover Johnnie absorbed the Handbook, reading even the Appendix and the Index! He read the advertis.e.m.e.nts, too, and came to own a kodak, a junior rifle, a watch, a scout axe, and various other desirable things. But the merit badge he did not own. He meant to earn that, to have it really--not just as a think; for which reason he never lagged in the matter of his meal getting.

Big Tom profited through this determination of Johnnie's. Night after night he had biscuits and gravy. He had apple sauce where formerly Johnnie would have let the longsh.o.r.eman eat his green apples uncooked.

Barber profited, too, in the amount of work Johnnie did every day, promptly and thoroughly, and in those good turns which served to make old Grandpa happier.

Now as Johnnie waited for Cis to return from the area, he pondered on the difference between Big Tom and Mr. Perkins. The latter had often pointed out to Johnnie that it did not cost anything to be either polite or cheerful, and the boy liked being both. Why was Big Tom neither?

"Mister Barber, what does 'Birds of a feather flock t'-gether' mean?" he inquired.

Barber had on a white collar and his best coat. His shoes were laced, too. This was the Sunday-morning longsh.o.r.eman that was the pleasantest to look at. "Where d' y' git hold of such stuff?" was his retort. (Yet Barber smiled as he put on his hat. The boy was coming to time in great shape these days, behaving himself, doing his work, learning to answer a man right. A blind person could see the improvement. Who could say truthfully that he was not raising the boy first-cla.s.s?)

As the hall door shut behind Barber, Johnnie could scarcely keep himself down in his chair. He wanted to look out of the window to try if he could not see Cis. But he stayed where he was, and twisted away busily.

Barber might be at his old tricks; might open the door at any moment.

But also, just so many violets must be made of a Sunday, and just that many would be made. A scout is trustworthy.

Yet just so many violets were not to be made, thus proving how uncertain life is. For here came Cis, switching her way in importantly. She was panting. She was flushed. Cautiously she shut the door behind her. "I've been up on Mrs. Kukor's stairs, waiting," she half whispered. Under one arm she was carrying a long, satiny-white box.

"_Another_ doll?" demanded Johnnie, astonished and disappointed. To him any long, white box could mean nothing else. However, he rose, unable to be entirely indifferent even to a new doll.

"Doll!" cried Cis, scornfully. She dropped the box on the table.

Then Johnnie saw that it was not a doll; for out of one end of the box--an end that was open--extended a handful of long, slender, green stems. The gift was flowers, tied, not with common string, but with a flat, green tape which looked fully as expensive as ribbon, and nearly as handsome. "Oh, gee!"--this as he seized the stems, not being able to wait, he was so excited, and tried to draw the flowers from the box.

"Oh, Cis, d'y' s'pose these 're from One-Eye? D'y' think maybe One-Eye is back?--Oh, hurry!"

"Wait!"--speaking gently, yet with something of a high-and-mighty air.

"Johnnie, you've got One-Eye on the brain." The cord untied, she slipped the cover off the box. Next she swept aside a froth of crisp tissue-paper which was still veiling the gift. Then together they looked down.

"O-o-o-o-h!" It was a chorus.

Roses! Pink roses! A very pile of them, snuggling in the cool, delicate greenery of ferns! Up from them lifted a fragrance that rivaled even that of orris root. Cis leaned to breathe. Next, Johnnie leaned, all but swelling to the bursting point that flat little chest of his to take in the delicious perfume. Thus for a while, and without speaking, they dipped their heads, alternating, to the box.

Presently, Cis lifted the bouquet--almost with reverence. The cups of the flowers were narrow, looked into from directly above, as if each flower had just opened. And, oh, how young each seemed! and how beautiful! When, in all the years since the tenement had been built, had it sheltered such loveliness! Bravely enough the dark, smudgy kitchen, with its scabby walls and its greasy, splintery floor, grew knots of violets. But here were flowers not made by hands: flowers which had come up out of the earth!--yet with a perfectness which was surely not of the earth; certainly not, at any rate, of this particular corner of it situated in the Lower East Side.

"My first roses!" Cis said. Her tone implied that they were not her last.

"They're fine!" p.r.o.nounced Johnnie, solemnly.

"_Fine?_ They're darling! They're precious! They look as if they'd just come down from Heaven!" Out of the long, white box Cis now took a small, square envelope. She handed it to Johnnie. "Open it, please," she bade, and rather grandly, her air that of one who has been receiving boxes of roses all her life. Then once more she buried that complimented nose among her flowers.

The envelope was not sealed. That was because, Johnnie concluded, there was no letter in it. What it contained was a narrow, stiff card. On the card, written in ink, was "Many happy returns of the day!" This Johnnie read aloud. "But there's no name," he complained. "So how d'y' know these didn't come from One-Eye? I'll just bet they did! I'll----"

"Read the other side," advised Cis calmly. She fell to counting the roses.

Over went the card. "Oh, yes; you're right--Mister Algernon G.o.dfrey Perkins, it says. Gee! but he must've spent a pile of money! And what day's he talkin' about? How can a day return?"

"Your birthday can return--every year, the way Christmas does. To-day is seventeen times my birthday has returned; and there's just seventeen roses here. That's one for each year I've lived." She began to whisper into the buds, touching in turn each pink chalice with her pink lips.

"This is the rose for the year I was one, and this is the rose for the year I was two, and this is the rose----"

Johnnie proceeded, boylike, to acquire some intimate and practical knowledge of her gift. He opened one flower a little, carefully spreading its petals. "My! ain't they soft!" he marveled. "Gee! I'd like t' make some 'xac'ly like 'em out o' silk! And, ouch! What's _this_?"

"This" was a thorn, the first he had ever seen. Learning that the roses had many thorns, he begged hard for one, whereupon Cis broke off for him that particular needlelike growth which was the farthest down on any stem. He received it gratefully on a palm, carried it to the window, and there split it open with a thumb-nail; and having been a.s.sured by Cis that it was a safe enough thing to do, he finally put the divided thorn into his mouth and chewed it up. And found it good!

Next, he begged a bit of stem. At first, Cis demurred, arguing that to cut a stem might injure the rose at its top; but was won over when Johnnie pointed out that all of the stems had been already cut once--"and maybe it was good for 'em!" But then the question was, which of the seventeen stems could best spare a bit of its length? This took consideration; also, measuring--with a string. At last the longest stem of all was found. Cis held it tenderly while Johnnie did the cutting.