The Rich Little Poor Boy Part 25

That night the whole world seemed to him khaki-colored. That day marked the beginning of a new Johnnie Smith.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE ROOF

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 Sat.u.r.day) 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 lost _too_ much 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, _ever_ wait so long before you bathe again! I'm just _sick_ about what happened yesterday! I dreamed about it!--though, of course"--catching at a straw of comfort--"it would've been a lot worse if _He_ had 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 Sat.u.r.day noon meal, this because Barber came home to eat it.

Furthermore, as hot biscuits and gravy made a combination dish of which the longsh.o.r.eman was particularly fond, Johnnie had seen to it that hot biscuits and gravy did not appear on the table except rarely. But this Sat.u.r.day his inner man was demanding more food than usual. His appet.i.te 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 door one 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 roof only once 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 uniform and 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 it _sweet_!"

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 he _is_ alive, 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 rea.s.sured 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. Perkins should 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 s.p.a.ce 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 felt very happy, in spite of his irritation, and genuinely sorry for any boy who did not have a roof.