"Twelve?"
"Ha-ha-a-a-! Boy scout age!" reminded the Father.
At that, Johnnie, quite overcome by the news, tumbled sidewise upon One-Eye's hairy knees, and the cowboy mauled the yellow head affectionately. When the Westerner set Johnnie up again, "So ye see Mr. Barber shoved yer age back a bit when ye first came here," explained the priest. "And as ye was shut in so much, and that made ye small for yer years, why, he planned t' keep ye workin' for him just that much longer. Also, it helped him in holdin' ye out o' school."
One-Eye's mustache was standing high under the brown triangle of his nose. The single eye was burning. "Oh, jes' fer a good ex-cuse!" he cried. "Fer a chanst! Fer a' openin'! And—it'll come! It'll come! I ain't goin' t' leave Noo York, neither, till I've had it!"
If Cis caught the main drift of all this, Johnnie did not. "I'd like t' be able t' send word t' Mister Perkins!" he declared. "Oh, wouldn't he be tickled, though!—Cis, I can be a scout—this minute!" Then apologetically, "But I won't int'rrupt y' again, Father Pat. I know better, only t' hear what you said was so awful fine!"
"Ye're excused, scout dear," declared the priest. "Shure, it's me that's glad I can bring a bit o' good news along with the sad—which is the way life goes, bein' more or less like bacon, the lean betwixt the fat. And now I'll go on with the story o' the young man and his wife, and——"
"There's a lady in the story?" asked Cis.
"A dear lady," answered the Father. "Young and slim, she was—scarce more than a girl. With brown hair, I'm told, though I'm afraid I can't furnish ye much more o' a description, and I'm sad t' say I've got no photograph."
"Guess I won't be able t' see her face the way I do his," said Johnnie.
"She must've been very sweet-lookin' in the face," declared Father Pat. "And bein' as good as she was good-lookin', 'tis not hard t' understand why he loved her the way he did. And that he did love her, far above annything else in the world, ye'll understand when ye've heard it all. So think o' her as beautiful, lad dear, and as leanin' on him always, and believin' in what he said, and trustin'. Also, she loved him in the same way that he loved her, and we'll let that comfort us hereafter whenever we talk about them—the strong, clean, fine, young husband, and the bit o' a wife.
