When Father Pat was gone, One-Eye with him, he left behind, not a sorrowing little boy, who blamed Fate for having robbed him of both father and mother in one terribly tragic hour, but a boy who was very proud. There was this about him, too: he did not feel fatherless and motherless any longer, but as if the priest had, somehow, given him parents.
"And, oh, wasn't it a beautiful story?" Cis asked, as they put the medal in a pocket of the new scout coat. (The picture Father Pat had carried away to have copied.) "Johnnie, I feel as if I'd been to church! It's like the passing of Arthur—so sad, but so wonderful! Oh, Johnnie Blake, think of it! You're twelve! and you can go to school! and you're the son of a hero!"
"Yes," said Johnnie. As he had not done the work which he knew Big Tom expected of him that Sunday, now he got out the materials for his violet-making and began busily shaping flowers. "And I'm goin' t' be a scout right off, too," he reminded. "So I mustn't shirk, 'r they won't give me a badge!"
CHAPTER XXIX
REVOLT
"'TAKE two cupfuls of milk,'" read Johnnie, who was bent over his newest possession, a paper-covered cookbook presented him only that morning by his good friend overhead; "'three tablespoonfuls of sugar, one-half saltspoonful of salt' (only, not havin' a saltspoon, I'll just put in a pinch), 'one-half teaspoonful of vanilla' (and I wonder what vanilla is, and maybe I better ask Mrs. Kukor, but if she hasn't got any, can I leave vanilla out?), 'the yolks of three eggs'—" Here he stopped. "But I haven't got any eggs!" he sighed. And once more began turning the pages devoted to desserts.
This sudden interest in new dishes had nothing whatever to do with the Merit Badge for Cooking. The fact was, he was about to make a pudding; and the pudding was to be made solely for the purpose of pleasing the palate of Mr. Tom Barber.
Johnnie had on his scout uniform. And it was remarkable what that uniform always did for him in the matter of changing his feelings toward the longshoreman. The big, old, ragged clothes on, the boy might be glad to see Barber go for the day, and even harbor a little of his former hate for him; but the scout clothes once donned, their very snugness seemed to straighten out his thoughts as well as his spine, the former being uplifted, so to speak, along with Johnnie's chin! Yes, even the buttons of the khaki coat, each embossed with the design of the scout badge, helped him to that state of mind which Cis described as "good turny." Now as he scanned the pages of the cookbook, those two upper bellows pockets of his beloved coat (his father's medal was in the left one) heaved up and down proudfully at the mere thought of to-day's good deed.
He began to chant another recipe: "'One pint of milk, three tablespoonfuls of sugar, two heapin' tablespoonfuls of cornstarch'——"