The Rich Little Poor Boy

by Eleanor Gates

"He'll order me out again probably," returned Mr. Perkins, calmly. "Of course, if he could understand what I'm trying to do for you, I'm sure he'd look at the whole matter in a friendlier way." (Mr. Perkins never came closer than this to a criticism of the longshoreman.) "Well, he can't understand, because, you see, the poor chap never had the right thing done for him.—Yes, we'll go right ahead."

However, as Johnnie continued to feel nervous on the score of what his foster father might do to this good friend if the latter was again discovered at the flat, the scoutmaster, for Johnnie's sake, and to make the boy's mind more easy, agreed to change the time of his call to a little after one o'clock of each afternoon, it being decided that this hour was the safest.

Johnnie had wanted to say something about the ring, and the engagement—something to the effect that he was happy over the news, only Mr. Perkins was taking his (Johnnie's) job away from him, since he had planned, when he grew up,—yes, and even before—to take care of Cis himself. But for some reason he did not find it easy to broach the subject; and since the scoutmaster did not begin it (he looked ruddier and browner than ever before, Johnnie thought), the upshot of it was that the engagement did not get discussed at all.

Instead, the Handbook took up the whole of the hour. A mysterious signal on the sink pipe brought all of the books down to them, descending in the basket as if out of the sky. Mrs. Kukor had to be thanked then, from the window, after which Mr. Perkins and Johnnie settled down to a chapter treating of the prevention of accidents, first-aid, and lifesaving. And that afternoon, when the scoutmaster was gone, Letitia was several times rescued from drowning, and carried on a stretcher; and that evening Cis, on coming in from work, found Grandpa's old, white head bandaged scientifically in the dish-towel, this greatly to the veteran's delight, for he believed he had just been wounded at the Battle of Shiloh.

The chapter for the next day after proved even more exciting. It was all about games—the Treasure Hunt, and Let 'er Buck, Capture the Flag, and dozens more, but each as strange to Johnnie as another, since he had never played one of them. Mr. Perkins added his explanations to those in the Handbook, and showed Johnnie and Grandpa how cock-fighting was done, gave a demonstration of skunk tag, and proved that the soft, splintery boards of the kitchen floor were finely adapted to mumbly peg.

That night on the roof, Johnnie hailed to him a score of scouts, along with Jim Hawkins and David, Aladdin, and several of the younger Knights of King Arthur. Then went forward a great game of duck on a rock, followed by a relay race and dodge-ball. The roof had come to mean more and more to Johnnie of late, but now he felt especially glad that he had it to go to. During the past few weeks he had frequented it under every sort of summer-night sky. It was his weather station, his observatory, his gymnasium, his park, his highway, his hilltop, his Crusoe's Island. In the thinks he conjured up there, it was also his railroad station, for he traveled far and wide from it on trains that went puffing away from that little house built at the top of the stairs; and it was his wharf, to which tall-masted ships came with the swift quiet of so many pigeons. But now the roof was for him still another place—besides a health resort: it was his playground for all those scout games.

But he and Mr. Perkins had not stopped at that chapter on Games. From cover to cover Johnnie absorbed the Handbook, reading even the Appendix and the Index! He read the advertisements, too, and came to own a kodak, a junior rifle, a watch, a scout axe, and various other desirable things. But the merit badge he did not own. He meant to earn that, to have it really—not just as a think; for which reason he never lagged in the matter of his meal getting.

Big Tom profited through this determination of Johnnie's. Night after night he had biscuits and gravy. He had apple sauce where formerly Johnnie would have let the longshoreman eat his green apples uncooked. Barber profited, too, in the amount of work Johnnie did every day, promptly and thoroughly, and in those good turns which served to make old Grandpa happier.

Now as Johnnie waited for Cis to return from the area, he pondered on the difference between Big Tom and Mr. Perkins. The latter had often pointed out to Johnnie that it did not cost anything to be either polite or cheerful, and the boy liked being both. Why was Big Tom neither? "Mister Barber, what does 'Birds of a feather flock t'-gether' mean?" he inquired.

Barber had on a white collar and his best coat. His shoes were laced, too. This was the Sunday-morning longshoreman that was the pleasantest to look at. "Where d' y' git hold of such stuff?" was his retort. (Yet Barber smiled as he put on his hat. The boy was coming to time in great shape these days, behaving himself, doing his work, learning to answer a man right. A blind person could see the improvement. Who could say truthfully that he was not raising the boy first-class?)