MR. PERKINS
HE was real! He had come! In a uniform, too, and boots, and a
hat!--looking, in fact, even more wonderful than he had under the
Elevated.
"Oh!" breathed Johnnie, so glad and proud all at once that he forgot the
apron and his hair, or that the table was still strewn with the
breakfast dishes. He fell back a step. "Oh, Mister Leader!"
The young man entered, lifting his hat from his head as he came, and
displaying short, smooth, dark hair that glistened even in that poorly
lighted room. "How are you, Johnnie!" he said heartily. They shook
hands.
"I'm fine!" answered Johnnie, smiling his sunniest.
"Good!" The other gave a swift glance round. And certainly he was
neither shocked nor delighted with the kitchen, for he acted as if he
was seeing the sort of place he had expected to see--until he spied the
wheel chair. Then he seemed surprised, and greatly interested. He laid
his hat among the breakfast cups and crossed the room softly to look
down at the little old man crumpled, sleeping, in the folds of the
moth-eaten coat, the doll on one arm.
"Grandpa Barber," explained Johnnie, speaking low. "I took him on a long
trip down the Miss'sippi this mornin', and he's awful tired."
The young man nodded. A curious wrinkle had come between his brows, as
if some thought were troubling him. Also, even his forehead was red
now. Suddenly he took out a handkerchief, turned, and walked to the
window, where he used the handkerchief rather noisily, shaking his head.
When he came about once more, and emerged from behind the square of
white linen, not only did he look as if he were blushing violently, but
even his eyes were a little red.
"Are you going to ask me to sit down?" he asked, smiling.
"Oh, I am! I do! Oh, what's the matter with me t'day! I forgit
ev'rything!"
The young man chose the morris chair.
It was then that Johnnie realized how untidy the kitchen was, remembered
that he had not washed the old soldier's face, or his own, or got rid of
that apron. With fumbling fingers and mounting color, he slipped the
apron strings over his tangled hair. "How'd I come t' have _this_ thing
on!" he exclaimed, and looked at the apron as if he had never seen it
before.
The young man seemed not to notice either Johnnie's confusion or the
soiled badge of girlish service. "You can call me Mr. Perkins, if you
like," he said pleasantly. "And tell me--what've you been doing with
yourself since I saw you?"
Again sunlight focused upon Johnnie's face. "Well, mostly," he replied,
"--mostly, I been jus' waitin' for you." He seated himself on the
kitchen chair.
"Now, you don't mean it!" cried Mr. Perkins, blushing again. "Well,
bless your heart, old fellow! Waiting for me! I wish I could've come
sooner. But I've been, pretty busy--up to my ears!"
"Oh, that's all right," Johnnie assured him. "'Cause I filled in the
wait good 'nough. I jus' kept thinkin' you here, and ev'ry mornin'
Grandpa and me'd have you 'long with us when we went t' Niaggery, or
anywheres else; and ev'ry night, Cis'd take you with us, callin' on the
Queen, or buyin' at the stores, or goin' t' grand balls."
After that, Mr. Perkins did not have anything to say for as much as a
whole minute, but sat looking earnestly at his small host, and blinking
a good deal. Then, "I see," he said finally. "That's nice. Mighty nice.
I'm glad. And--and I hope I conducted myself all right."
"Oh, you was fine! Always!" declared Johnnie, his voice breaking, he was
so emphatic. "Cis never could dance with One-Eye, and not jus' 'cause he
wears spurs, neither. No, she thinks One-Eye's too homely to dance, or
go callin', or take t' Wanamaker's. But, oh, she says you're jus' fine!
Maybe not as grand as the Prince of Wales, she says, but then she's
awful silly about him."
More steady looking; more blinking. "Well,--er--what did you say the
little girl's name is?"
"Her full name's Narcissa Amy Way," answered Johnnie. "It's pretty long,
ain't it? And if Grandpa and me called her that, Big Tom'd think we was
wastin' time, or tryin' t' be stylish, and he hates ev'rything that's
stylish--I don't know why. So round the flat, for ev'ry day, we call her
Cis--C-i-s."
"Well, Miss Narcissa is right about me," said Mr. Perkins. "I'm _not_ as
grand as the Prince of Wales--not by a good deal! But now suppose you
tell me all about yourself, and--and the others who live here."
Johnnie did so. And since he spoke low, and evenly, Grandpa did not
wake, to interrupt. At the end of an hour, Mr. Perkins knew all that
Johnnie was able to tell--about himself, his parents, his Uncle and
Aunt, Mike Callaghan, the policeman, and the Fifty-fifth Street
millionaire; about Cis and her mother, Barber and his father, Mrs.
Kukor, One-Eye and the other cowboys, Buckle, Boof, David, Goliath
(mingling the real, the historical, the visionary and the purely
fictional), young Edward of England, that Prince's numerous silk-hatted
friends, the four millionaires, the janitress, Mrs. Reisenberger and her
baby, the flea-bitten mare, the postman, Edwarda (he showed the new
doll), then, in quick succession, his favorite friends out of his five
books.
Mr. Perkins listened, sitting on the small of his back, with his elbows
on the arms of the morris chair, and his fingers touching. And when
Johnnie came to the end of his story (with King Arthur, and those three
Queens who kneeled around the king and sorely wept and wailed), all the
visitor said was, "Good boy! And now tell me more about your reading."
Johnnie's eyes danced. He stood up, fairly quivering with happy
excitement. Enthusiastically he explained that directly under Mr.
Perkins was his oldest book, whereat Mr. Perkins got up, lifted the old
chair cushion, and discovered the telephone directory. However,
astonishing as it may seem, he had one just like it, so Johnnie did not
lift the big book out to show its chief points of interest. Instead, he
brought forth from Cis's closet his other treasures in binding, laying
them very choicely on the table, and handing them over one by one--the
best-looking of the lot first.
The books were put away again very soon, Johnnie explaining why. "But y'
can keep the newspaper out," he declared. "Big Tom's seen it, and didn't
try even t' tear it up."
"That was nice of him!" asserted Mr. Perkins, as he noted the date on
the paper. "But what about school?"
"Oh, gee! I forgot all about Mister Maloney!" regretted Johnnie. He
filled in the gap promptly, including night school, and the matter of
his not having suitable clothes. "But when Mister Maloney heard how I
can read," he concluded, "he seen I didn't need t' go t' school the way
other kids do. Or anyhow"--remarking a curious light in those
coffee-colored eyes--"that's what Big Tom says. And I can write good.
Watch me, Mister Perkins! I'll write for you on the plaster--big words,
too!"
"Oh, I'm sure you write well," Mr. Perkins agreed. "So I'd rather you'd
talk. Tell me this: what do you eat?"
Johnnie answered, and as correctly as possible, being careful all the
while not to give so much as a hint of the shameful truth that he,
himself, did most of the cooking. As he talked, he kept wishing that the
conversation would swing round to scouts and uniforms. He even tried to
swing it himself. "Mrs. Kukor says that scouts make picnics," he said,
"and have awful good things t' eat."
But Mr. Perkins passed that over, hint and all. He wanted to know
whether or not Johnnie got plenty of milk.
"Oh, the milk we buy is all for Grandpa," Johnnie protested. "A big kid
like me----"
Mr. Perkins interrupted. "I take a quart a day," he said quietly, "and
I'm a bigger kid than you are; I'm twenty-one. Milk's got everything in
it that a man needs from one end of his life to the other. Don't forget
that."
"No, sir,"--fixing upon his visitor a look that admitted he was wrong.
"I wish I could drink a lot of milk," he added regretfully.
"And what about exercise? and baths? Out-door exercise, I mean," said
Mr. Perkins.
"I hang out o' the window 'most ev'ry mornin' that I don't go after
boxes," answered Johnnie, so glad that he could give a satisfactory
account of the matter of fresh air. "And bathin', well, I bathed ev'ry
day when I was at my Aunt Sophie's, but down here----"
"Yes?" Mr. Perkins smiled encouragement.
"We ain't got no tub," said Johnnie, "so my neck's 'bout as far as I
ever git."
Then the moment for which he had been waiting: "And you think you'd like
to be a scout?" inquired Mr. Perkins.
"Oh, gee!" sighed Johnnie. He relaxed from sheer excess of feeling. His
head tipped back against his chair, and he wagged it comically.
"Wouldn't I jus'! And wear clothes like yours, and--and learn t'
s'lute!"
Mr. Perkins laughed, but it was a pleasant, promising laugh. "We'll see
what can be done," he said briskly. "And to begin with, how old are
you?"
Johnnie opened his mouth--but held his tongue. He guessed that age had
something to do with being a scout. But what? Was he too old? But the
boys who had marched past him were as tall as he, if not taller. Then
was he too young? Taken unaware, he was not able quickly to decide what
the trouble might be. But he had not lived five years at Tom Barber's
without learning how to get himself out of a tight corner. This time,
all he had to do was tell the absolute truth. "I don't 'xac'ly know," he
answered.
"Mm!" Mr. Perkins thought that over. Presently, adjusting his glasses,
he looked Johnnie up and down, while anxious swallows undulated
Johnnie's thin neck, and about his knobs of knees the long fringe of the
big trousers trembled. "But we can find out how old you are, can't we?"
Mr. Perkins added, with a sudden smile.
"I guess I'm ten goin' on 'leven," capitulated Johnnie.
"Ten going on eleven! That's splendid! It's the best age to begin
getting ready to be a scout! The very best!"
"Gee! I'm glad!"
"So am I! You see, it takes some time to be a scout. It'll take every
spare minute you've got to get ready. It's something that can't be done
in a hurry. But here you've got more than a year to prepare yourself."
"More'n a--a _year_?"
"All scouts are twelve."
"Oh!" A shadow clouded the gray eyes.
"But a year means that you can get yourself in dandy condition. And
would you mind showing me how fit you are now?"
Johnnie spread out his hands deprecatingly. "That's the trouble," he
declared, looking down at his big, old clothes. "They don't fit."
But when he understood just what Mr. Perkins meant, in a twinkling he
had slipped Barber's shirt over his head and was standing bared to the
waist, all his little ribs showing pitifully, and--as he faced square
about--his shoulder blades thrusting themselves almost through a skin
that was a sickly white. "Ain't I fine?" he wanted to know. "Don't I
look good'n strong?"
The glasses came tumbling off Mr. Perkins's nose. He coughed, and pulled
out the white handkerchief again, and fell to polishing the crystal
discs. "Fair," he said slowly. "But there's room for improvement."
Johnnie sensed a compassionate note in the answer. "Course I ain't fat,"
he conceded hastily. "But when Mrs. Kukor gives me filled fish I can see
a big diff'rence right away!"
"Fat isn't what a boy wants," returned Mr. Perkins. "He wants good
blood, and strong muscles, and a first-class pair of lungs!"
"Oh!" Raising the big shirt on high, Johnnie disappeared into it, fixing
upon Mr. Perkins as he went a look that was full of anxiety. As he
emerged, his lip was trembling. "You--you don't think I look all right,
do you?" he asked. "Maybe you think I can't ever--you mean I--I can't
be----"
"Oh, nothing of the kind!" laughed Mr. Perkins. "Fact is, Johnnie,
you're way ahead as far as your mind is concerned. I'm mighty pleased
about your reading. I certainly am, old fellow! And in no time you can
get some blood into your cheeks, and cultivate some muscle, and
straighten out your lungs. Once there was a boy who was in worse shape
than you are, because he had the asthma, and could hardly breathe. And
what do you suppose he did?"
"Et lots?" hazarded Johnnie.
"He said he would make over his own body, and he made it over."
"But, Mister Perkins, I'll do it, too! I'll make mine over! Tell me
how!"
"Fresh air, proper breathing, exercises--day after day, that boy never
stopped. And when he grew up, he found himself a strong man even among
very strong men. That was the great American, Theodore Roosevelt."
"Oh, I know about him!" cried Johnnie. "He was President once, and he
was a soldier. Cis knows a girl, and the girl's father, he worked in a
big, stylish hotel, and once he carried Mister Roosevelt's trunk on his
own back! Cis could name the girl, and prove it!"
But Mr. Perkins had no doubt as to the truth of the account. "The motto
of the Boy Scouts is Be Prepared," he went on. "That means, be ready--in
mind and body--to meet anything that happens. Now, as I said a bit ago,
Johnnie, you've got a good brain. And when your body's strong, it'll not
only be a promise of long life for you, but you can defend yourself;
better still, you can protect others."
"Yes, sir!" Johnnie was bubbling with eagerness. "Please let me start
now. Can I? What'll I do first?"
"Bathe," answered Mr. Perkins. "Every day. Scrub yourself from head to
foot. Give your skin a chance to breathe. You'll eat better and sleep
better. You'll pick up."
One, two, three, and the dishes were cleared from the table. Then with
the hall door locked as a precaution, Johnnie spread the oiled
table-cloth on the floor (though Mr. Perkins demurred a little at this),
planted the washtub at the center of the cloth, half filled the tub from
the sink spigot, warmed the water with more from the teakettle, and took
a long-deferred, much-needed rub down. It was soapy, and thorough. And
he proved to himself that he really liked water very much--except,
perhaps, in the region of his neck and ears!
When he was rinsed and rubbed dry, and in his clothes again, Mr. Perkins
took off his own coat. Under it was a khaki-colored shirt, smart and
clean and soldierly, that seemed to Johnnie the kind of shirt most to be
desired among all the shirts of the world. Mr. Perkins pushed up the
sleeves of it, planted his feet squarely, and fell to shooting his arms
up and out, and bending his solid figure this way and that. Next, he
alternately thrust out his legs. And Johnnie followed suit--till both
were breathless and perspiring.
"To-morrow, exercise first and bathe afterward," instructed Mr. Perkins.
"To-night, be sure to sleep with that window open. And now I'll give you
a lesson in saluting."
It was then that Grandpa wakened. And perhaps something about the lesson
stirred those old memories of his, for he insisted upon saluting too,
and tossed poor Letitia aside in his excitement, and called Mr. Perkins
"General."
When the latter was gone, with no pat on the head for Johnnie, but a
genuine man-to-man hand shake, and a promise of his return soon, the
boy, for the first time in his short life, took stock of the condition
of his own body. Slipping out of the big shirt once more, and borrowing
Cis's mirror, he contrived, by skewing his head around, chinning first
one shoulder, then the other, to get a meager look at his back. He
appraised his spindling arms and legs. He thumped his flat chest.
"Gee! Mister Perkins is dead right!" he admitted soberly. "I'm too
skinny, and too thin through, and my complexion's too good." In the back
of his head, always, was that dream of leaving the flat some day, never
to return. "But like I am, why, I couldn't work hard 'nough, or earn
good," he told himself now, and very earnestly. "So I'll jus' go ahead
and make my body over the way Mister Roosevelt did."
While he was doing his housework he stopped now and again to shoot out
an arm or a leg, or to bend himself from the waist. His skin was
tingling pleasantly. His eyes were bright. A new urge was upon him. A
fresh interest filled his heart. His hopes were high.
Cis, when she was told that the leader had actually called, not only
believed the statement but shared Johnnie's enthusiasm. Realizing how
much his training to be a scout would help him, she even tried to do
away with that certain objection of his. "Maybe they don't have girl
scouts any more," she suggested.
"Aw, I don't care a snap 'bout girl scouts!" he answered. "Cis, he
called me 'old fellow'--I like it! And he's twenty-one. And you just
ought t' see the shirt he wears!--not with little flowers on it, like
Mike Callaghan's. And, oh, Cis, he never even s'pected that I cook, or
wash, or do anything like that! And while he was here I took a bath!"
"No!" Her enthusiasm went. She was horrified. "Oh, Johnnie! Oh, my!" She
grew pink and pale by turns. "And you so dirty!"
"Well, I did! What's the matter with y'! I wouldn't need t' bathe if I
wasn't dirty!"
"Oh,"--tears of mortification swam in the violet-blue eyes--"but you
were extra dirty!"
"Oh, I don't know," returned Johnnie, refusing to get panic-stricken.
"I'd like to see your bath water," she persisted. "Where is it?"
"Gone down the sink."
"How did it look! Pretty bad? Dark? Just how?"
"Well, it looked kind of riley if you got under the soap that was
floatin' on top," Johnnie admitted. "'Cause I give myself a dandy one!
Oh, a lot of skin come off!"
"Oh, my! And did he see under the soap? And what did you use for a
towel?"
Johnnie had used a pillowcase. "'Cause what else _could_ I use?" he
implored.
But Cis did not answer, for she was in tears. And she would not look up
even to see him salute.
Big Tom had his turn at being appalled--this at the supper table, when
he observed Johnnie's appetite. "As you git bigger," pointed out Barber,
"you eat more and more. So, understand me, y' got t' _make_ more--_work_
more."
"Yes," agreed Johnnie, helping himself to fried mush and coffee for the
third time, and breaking open his second baked potato. But to Cis, later
on, he confided his intention to work no harder, yet to "stuff." "I
can't make myself over jus' on fresh air," he declared.
She warmly upheld his determination. Yet she flatly refused to take Mr.
Perkins shopping with them, pleading that she felt ashamed.
"About what?" Johnnie asked, irritated. "About your cryin'?"
"About that bath you took," she answered. "Oh, gracious!"
He was not in the least bothered about it. And when the rest of the
household were asleep, he had a splendid think about himself. He was
twenty-one, and tall and strong, so that he was able to ignore Big Tom.
He was well-dressed, too, and did no more girl's work. Instead, he was
the head and front of some great, famous organization which numbered
among its members all the millionaires in New York. Just what this
organization was all about, he did not pause to decide. But he had his
office in a building as large as the Grand Central Station, and was
waited upon by a man in a car-conductor's cap.
Cis had once peeped into the huge dining rooms of the Waldorf Astoria,
this while walking along Fifth Avenue. She had described to Johnnie the
lofty, ornate ceilings, and the rich, heavy hangings, which description
thereafter had furnished him with a basis whenever he transformed the
kitchen for one of his grandest thinks. Upon his new office he lavished,
now, a silver ceiling, velvet curtains, a marble desk and gold chairs.
The thing finished, he rose, shed his clothes, and, standing on his
mattress, white and stark against the black of the stove, filled his
lungs from the open window, wielded his arms, bent his torso, and kicked
up his heels.
In due time, by faithfully following Mr. Perkins's instructions, he
would be plump, well-muscled, red-faced, and rounded as to chest. Then
in a beautiful uniform and a broad hat, with his right hand at salute,
he would burst, as it were, upon the neighborhood--the perfect scout!
That night the whole world seemed to him khaki-colored. That day marked
the beginning of a new Johnnie Smith.