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.
