The Rich Little Poor Boy Part 37

"No-o-o-o!"

"Honest!"

"Galahad, too!--him with the grand scarlet robe, and the chain mail t'

the knees, and the locks as bright as yer own! Well, I'm that glad t'

hear it! and that _excited_!"

Breathing a warning, Johnnie sped to the sink, rapped once, then twice, then once again. A short wait, followed by soft pad-pads on the floor overhead. Next down into sight at the window came the basket, filled to the top with books.

At sight of the basket, for some reason Father Pat suddenly seemed anxious; and as Johnnie drew it to the window sill, the priest pried himself up out of the big chair. "Shure, 'tis divvlement!" he p.r.o.nounced. "Yet still 'tis grand! Only keep 'em all right there, lad dear, and I'll come over t' be introduced."

Proudly and impressively Johnnie proffered first his _Aladdin_. Nodding delightedly, the Father took it. "Yes, 'tis the very same Aladdin!" he declared. "Ye know, I was afraid maybe the Aladdin I know and this one were two diff'rent gentlemen. But, no!--Oh, in the beginnin' weren't ye afraid, little reader dear, that this friend o' ours would end up wrong?

and be lazy and disobedient t' the last, gaddin' the streets when he ought t' be helpin' his mamma?"

"But he turned out fine!" reminded Johnnie.

Now the other precious volumes had their introduction. And, "All bread--_rale_ bread!" said the Father as he looked at them. "Not stones!

No!" But he handed them back rather too quickly, according to Johnnie's idea. However, the latter was to know why at once; for with a sharp glance toward the hall door, "Now, who d' ye think was sittin' on a step in front o' the house as I came in--his dinner pail 'twixt his two feet?" asked the priest. "The big ogre himself!"

"Oh!" The pipe rang to Johnnie's hurried knockings, which he repeated in such a panic that Mrs. Kukor could be heard rocking about in excited circles. And it seemed minutes (though it was not half of one) before the basket-strings tightened and the books went jerking up to safety.

Then, "My! What if he'd walked in while they was down!" Johnnie exclaimed. "And why didn't he go t' work? What's he waitin' for?"

They had the same explanation at the same moment. _Mr. Perkins!_ So what might not happen, down there in the area, when the longsh.o.r.eman, lying in wait for his victim, stopped the giver of bouquets?

Something besides the heat of midday made Johnnie feel very weak of a sudden, so that he had to sit down. "Now, shush! shush!" comforted the Father. "Shure, and the ogre'll not be eatin' up anny scoutmaster this day. No, no. There'll be nothin' more than a tongue-lashin', so breathe easy, lad dear!"

"But Mister Perkins won't come any more!" argued Johnnie, plaintively.

"And so how'll I finish learnin' t' be a scout? Oh, Father Pat!"

While the next hour went by, it was an anxious little figure that sat opposite the priest, listening, listening--for some loud angry words out of the area, or heavy steps upon the stairs. That entrance below could not be seen from the window. And Johnnie could not bring himself to go down. One o'clock came and pa.s.sed. But Mr. Perkins did not come. So, undoubtedly, Big Tom had seen the scoutmaster. But whatever had happened, all had been quiet. That was some consolation.

"It's funny about my friends," observed Johnnie at last. He shook a discouraged head. "Some way, I never have more'n one at a time."

The Father set about cheering him up. "Ah-ha, now, and let's not worry a bit more!" he urged. "Shure, and I've climbed up here this day t' ask ye a question, which is: if Father Pat was t' say t' ye that he'd bring ye a new book the next time he chanced by, why, then, little lover o'

readin', just what kind o' a book would ye best like t' have?"

Here was something to coax the mind away from concern! "Oh, my!" said Johnnie. "_Another_ book? A _new_ one?" Getting up to think about his answer, he chanced to glance out of the window. And instantly he knew what he should like. "Oh, Father Pat!" he cried. "Has--has anybody ever made up a book about the stars?"

"The stars!" the Father cried back. "Shure, lad dear, certain gentlemen called astronomers have been writin' about the stars for hundreds o'

years. And they've named the whole lot! And weighed and measured 'em, Johnnie,--think o' the impudence o' that! Yes, and they've weighed the Sun, and taken the measure o' the Moon! Also, there's the comets, which're called after the men who first find 'em. And, oh, think what it's like t' have yer name tied t' the tail o' a comet for a million years! Ho-ho! ho-ho! That's an honor! Ye never own the comet, still 'tis yours!"

"My! I'd like t' find a Johnnie Smith comet!" declared Johnnie. "And after all"--solemnly--"I think I won't try t' be President; nope, I'll be a 'stronomer."

"Faith," rejoined the Father, the green eyes shining roguishly, "and there's points o' resemblance 'twixt the two callin's. Both o' them, if I ain't mistaken, are calculated t' keep a conscientious man awake o'

nights!"

"I'll be awful glad t' have a star-book," decided Johnnie. "Thank y' for it."

The priest smiled fondly at the ragged little figure silhouetted against the window. "Shure, and that's the book I'll be buying for ye," he promised. "And in the crack o' a hen's thumb!"

The Father ended his visit to the building by going upstairs, which fact Johnnie knew because of the walking around he could hear overhead, and the chair sc.r.a.pings. But before Father Pat left the Barber flat Johnnie told him about going up on the roof (though he did not confess that Cis knew about it, or that he had bought her silence with the toothbrush).

His new friend listened without a word of blame, only looking a trifle grave. "And what do ye think ye ought t' do for Madam, the janitress?"

he asked when Johnnie had finished his admission. "For as I see it, she's the one ent.i.tled t' complain."

"I'll tell y'," answered Johnnie, earnestly; "I've swept off the roof twice, good's I could, and I've swept the stairs that go up t' the roof.

And once I swept this hall."

"A true scout!" p.r.o.nounced the Father. "And I'm not doubtin' that if ye'd promise t' go on doin' the same, Madam'd be glad t' let ye go up.

Suppose ye try the suggestion."

Johnnie promised to try.

Late that afternoon the saddest thing happened: the roses died. They had been looking sick, and not at all like themselves, since before noontime. As Johnnie, preparing to set his supper table, lifted the quart milk bottle which held the bouquet, intending again to place it on Cis's dressing-box, the flowers, with a sound that was almost like a soft sigh, showered their crumpling petals upon the oilcloth. Shocked, Johnnie set the bottle quickly down. But only seventeen bare stalks were left in it. The last sweet leaf had dropped.

He stood for a little looking down. The first shock past, his whole being became alive with protest. Oh, why should beautiful flowers ever have to die? It was wrong! And there swept over him the hated realization that an end comes to things. He could have wept then, but he knew that scout boys do not give way to tears. For the first time in his life he was understanding something of life's prime tragedy--change.

Girls grow up, dolls go out of favor, roses fade.

He could not bear to throw the petals away. Very gently he gathered them up in his two hands and put them into a shallow crockery dish, and sprinkled them with a little cool water. "Gee! What'll Cis say when she sees them!" he faltered. (How live and st.u.r.dy they had seemed such a little while ago!)

"Cis," he told her sadly when she came in (just a moment before Big Tom returned from work), "Blanchfleur, and Cora, and Elaine, and Gertie, and all--they fell t' pieces!"

She was not cast down by the news or the sight of the bowl. She had, she said, expected it, the weather being warm and the flat hot. After that, so far as he could see, she did not give the flowers another thought.

When he told her that Father Pat had discovered the longsh.o.r.eman waiting for Mr. Perkins in the area, she was not surprised or concerned. In the usual evening manner, she brushed and freshened and pressed, smiling as she worked. She seemed entirely to have forgotten all the unhappy hours of the day before. True, she started if Barber spoke to her, and her quaint face flushed. But that was all.

"Clear grown-up!" Johnnie told himself as he put the petals out of sight on a cupboard shelf, laying the stems beside them.

"Everything's going to be all right," she a.s.sured him when she told him good night, "now that we've got Father Mungovan." (So that was why she was so happy! Or was it because she was engaged? Johnnie wondered.)

In the days that followed Father Pat became a familiar figure in and about the area building. (And this was fortunate for Johnnie, since Mr.

Perkins's visits had suddenly come to an end.) Almost at any hour the priest might be seen slowly crossing the brick pavement, or more slowly climbing the stairs on his way to the Barber flat. When he was not at Johnnie's, reading aloud out of the book on astronomy while Johnnie threaded beads, he might be found overhead in Mrs. Kukor's bright kitchen, resting in a rocker, a cup of tea nursed in both hands, and holding long, confidential and (to Johnnie) mysterious conversations, which the latter wished so much he might share, though he always discouraged the wish, understanding that it was not at all polite to want to be where he was not invited.

He and the priest, of course, had their own lengthy and delightful talks. Sometimes it would be Johnnie who would have the most to say.

Perhaps he would tell Father Pat about one of his thinks: a vision, say, of high roof-bridges, built far above the crowded, noisy streets--arched, steel bridges, swung from the summit of one tall building to another like the threads of a spider's web. Each bridge was to be lighted by electricity, and "I'll push Grandpa's wheel chair all across the top o' N'York!" he declared.

Father Pat did not laugh at this think. On the contrary, he thought it both practical and grand. Indeed, he laughed at none of Johnnie's ideas, and would listen in the gravest fashion as the boy described a new think-bicycle which had arrived from Wanamaker's just that minute--accompanied by a knife with three blades and a can opener. The Father agreed that there were points in favor of a bicycle which took up no room in so small a flat, and required no oiling. And if Johnnie went so far as to mount the shining leather seat of his latest purchase and circle the kitchen table (Boof scampering alongside), the priest would look on with genuine interest, though the pretend-bicycle was the same broomstick which, on other occasions, galloped the floor as a dappled steed of Aladdin's.

As a matter of fact, Father Pat entered into Johnnie's games like any boy. Unblushing, he telephoned over the Barber clothesline. More than once, with whistles and coaxings and pats, he fed the dog! He even thought up games of his own. "Now ye think I'm comin' in alone," he said one morning. "That's because ye see n.o.body else. But, ho-ho! What deceivin'! For, shure, right here in me pocket I've got a friend--Mr.

Charles d.i.c.kens!"

On almost every visit he would have some such surprise. Or perhaps he would fetch in just a bit of news. "I hear they're thinkin' o' raisin' a statoo o' Colonel Roosevelt at the Sixth Avenoo entrance to Central Park," he told Johnnie one day. "And I'm informed it's t' be Roosevelt the Rough Rider. Now at present the statoo's but a thought--a thought in the minds o' men and women, but in the brain o' a sculptor in particular. However, there'll come a day when the thought'll freeze into bronze. Dear me, think o' that!"

At all times how ready and willing he was to answer questions! "Ask me annything," he would challenge smilingly. He was a mine, a storehouse, yes, a very fountain of knowledge, satisfying every inquiry, settling every argument--even to that one regarding the turning of the earth. And so Johnnie would constantly propound: How far does the snow fall? Why doesn't the rain hurt when it hits? Do flies talk? What made Grandpa grow old?

Ah, those were the days which were never to be forgotten!

There came a day which brought with it an added joy. So often Johnnie had mourned the fact that he did not have more than one friend at a time. But late on a blazing August afternoon, just as the Father was getting up to take his leave, the hall door squeaked open slowly, and there on the threshold, with his wide hat, his open vest, watchchain, furred breeches and all, was One-Eye! ("Oh, two at a time, now!" Johnnie boasted to Cis that night. "Two at a time!")

Yet at first he was not able to believe his own eyes. Neither was Father Pat. The priest stared at the cowboy like a man in a daze. Then he looked away, winking and pursing his lips. Once more he stared. At last, one hand outstretched uncertainly, he crossed to One-Eye and cautiously touched him.