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."
