She went, and as if she was grateful to get away, though the sun was still shining on the roofs of the houses opposite. She did not even glance at Johnnie, and shut herself in.
"What time t'morrow will that guy come?" the longshoreman wanted to know as soon as Cis was gone.
"'Bout 'leven." Johnnie could not help but wonder how he was ever to get on if the laws bound him so tight to the truth, and the truth would prove the undoing, the wrecking of all his dearest plans.
"'Leven," mused Barber. "Hm!—Well, y' needn't t' put up no lunch for me in the mornin'. I'll come home for it. I jus' want t' take a look at that scout gent."
CHAPTER XXI
THE MEETING
A TERRIBLE dread filled Johnnie's heart—that heart which had always known so much dread. It took away his desire to go upon the roof; it kept him awake long into the night, tugging at his hair, twisting and turning upon his mattress, sighing, even weeping a little out of sheer helplessness. Having his normal amount of the reserve, dignity and pride that is childhood's, his dread was not that Big Tom, when he returned to meet Mr. Perkins, would be rude to the scoutmaster (it did not occur to him that the longshoreman would dare to go that far); it was that, in the presence of the new friend whose good opinion Johnnie longed to keep, Barber would order him around, jerk him by a sleeve, or shove him rudely—treat him, in fact, with that lack of respect which was usual, and thus mortify him.
The full moon was again lifting above the city and touching all the roofs with silver. From where he lay he looked out and up, trying to forget his wretchedness, but living the coming encounter again and again. His ears grew hot as Barber seized one of them and wrung it, or brushed his face with a hard, sweaty hand. Imagining insult upon insult, his chest heaved and his wet eyes burned.
"Oh, One-Eye!" he whispered to a dear image that seemed to fill the morris chair, "if you was only here! Gee, Big Tom never dast treat me bad before you!" It was not that he felt for a moment that the cowboy was the better friend of the two whom he revered and loved; they held equal places in his affections. But Mr. Perkins was too much of a gentleman to be awe-inspiring. The Westerner, in his big hat and his hairy breeches, was the man to be feared!
