At breakfast he was given no chance to talk matters over with Cis. And she neither saw his signals nor heard them, though he arranged both the stove and the table to warn her that something had happened, and coughed croupily till Barber told him roughly to shut up. He comforted himself with reflecting that it would have done him no good had they threshed the coming crisis out.
It was a shaken, hollow-eyed, miserable, unbathed little boy that greeted Mr. Perkins when the scoutmaster rapped. And the sight of the latter only made Johnnie's spirits sink lower. He had hoped with all his heart that the leader would come in all the grandeur and pride of his uniform; and here was Mr. Perkins in a light suit, a straw hat, and white socks. The fact that he had on a lavender tie and was carrying brown gloves made things just that much worse. Steadily, during the past fortnight, the scoutmaster had been dressing better and better. This morning he was finer than ever before. It was awful.
"You'll see," mourned Johnnie, his eyes on the clock as he talked. "He'll be awful mean t' me. Here he says I can't listen t' scoutin' no more! N'r nothin'! Say, Mister Perkins, if he shoves at me, would y' ever give him biscuits and gravy again?"
Mr. Perkins thought it over. "Well, under the same circumstances," he said finally, "what do you think Theodore Roosevelt would do?"
Johnnie could not decide. He felt that a look at the picture would help. Hunting a match, he disappeared into the blue room, struck a light, and gave the likeness a searching look. "I don't 'xac'ly know," he declared when he came out; "but, Mister Perkins, I b'lieve maybe he'd just lick him!"
A queer gleam came into those eyes which were a coffee-brown. "I shouldn't be surprised," said Mr. Perkins, "if that isn't precisely what the Colonel would do."
The door opened. It was Big Tom. His cargo hook hung round his great neck. His hat was pushed back, uncovering a forehead seamed and sweaty. To Johnnie he looked bigger and blacker than usual—this in comparison with Mr. Perkins, so slim, if he was fully as tall as Barber, and so immaculate, even dainty!
The older man had an insolent smile in those prominent eyes of his, and a sneer bared his tobacco-stained teeth. Slamming the door, he came sauntering toward the scoutmaster, who had risen; he halted without speaking, then deliberately, impudently, he stared Mr. Perkins from head to foot.
The latter glanced back, and with much interest, not staring, yet seeing what sort of looking man the longshoreman was. To judge by the expression in the brown eyes he did not like the kind. For suddenly his eyelids narrowed, and the lines of his mouth set. "Introduce me, Johnnie," he said.
Anxious, alert, and not hopeful, Johnnie had been watching the two, this from the farther side of the table, so that he should not be handy in case his giant foster father wanted to maul him. "This is Mister Barber," he began, speaking the name as politely as he could, but forgetting to complete the introduction.