"Good-by, General!" quavered the old man. "Good-by!" A shaking hand lifted in a salute.
Mr. Perkins gave Barber a courteous nod as he passed him. "Good-by," he said pleasantly.
"Good-by," returned Barber. "And good riddance!" He slammed the door.
Then something strange happened—something that had never happened before. Without giving Johnnie a look, Barber lifted down the lamp, lighted it, carried it into Cis's room, and closed the door.
Rooted to the floor, alert as any frightened mouse, Johnnie listened. He could hear the longshoreman moving about, and the scrape of the dressing-table box as it was lifted from its place, then shoved back. What was Barber hunting? Fortunately the books were wound up in Johnnie's bedding, a precaution taken by their owner in view of Barber's spoken determination to return and take a look at Mr. Perkins. By any chance did the longshoreman know about the Handbook? If he did, and if he found it, what would happen then?
After what seemed a long time, Barber appeared. Except for the lamp, his hands were empty. He blew into the top of the chimney and set the lamp back in its place. "Tea," he ordered.
Startled, Johnnie fairly rose into the air. When he touched the floor again, he was halfway to the stove. He set the table for one, mustering the food which Big Tom was to have had in the lunch pail. Barber ate, occasionally growling under his breath; or blew fiercely at the full saucer from which he was drinking. His look roved the room as if he were still searching. His meal finished, he found his hat, hung the cargo hook about his neck, and slouched out.
Then for the first time Johnnie relaxed, and slumped into the morris chair. He was not only weak, he was sick—too sick with bitterness and hate and shame and rage even to care to go into Cis's room to see in what condition Big Tom had left it. He knew now that the rough handling that he had feared for himself, though it would have been hard enough to endure, was less than nothing when compared with what he had suffered in seeing Mr. Perkins insulted, and ordered out.
He began to talk to himself aloud: "Good turns don't work! I'm sorry I ever done him one! I'll never do him another, y' betcher life!" Black discouragement possessed him. What good did it do any one to treat a man like Barber well? "Why, he's worse'n that mean Will Atkins that Crusoe hates!" he declared. "And the first time I git a chance, away I'll go, Mister Tom Barber, and this time I won't never come back!"
"Sh!" whispered old Grandpa. "Sh!" The faded blue eyes were full of fear.