Another halt. The cupboard boasted no cornstarch. Nor was there gelatine in stock, with which to make a gay-colored, wobbly jelly. As for prune soufflé, he could make that easily enough. But—the longshoreman did not want to lay eyes on another prune soufflé before Washington's Birthday, at least, and the natal anniversary of the Father of His Country was still a long way off.
Apple fritters, then? But they took apples. And brown betty had the boldness to demand molasses on top of apples!
He turned more pages.
Then he found his recipe. He knew that the moment his eye caught the name—"poor man's pudding." He bustled about, washing some rice, then making the fire. All the while he hummed softly. He was especially happy these days, for only the week before he had been visited by his Uncle Albert, looking a trifle changed after these five years, but still the kindly, cheerful Uncle Albert of the old days in the rich man's garage.
He fell to talking aloud. "I got milk," he said, "and I got salt, and sugar, and the rinds o' some oranges. They're dry, but if I scrape 'em into the puddin', Mrs. Kukor says they'll make it taste fine! I'll give Mister Barber a bowl t' eat it out of. My! how he'll smack!"
At this point, the wide, old boards of the floor gave a telltale snap. It was behind him, and so loud that it shattered his vision of Big Tom and the pudding bowl. Some one was in the room! Father Pat? Mrs. Kukor? One-Eye?
He turned a smiling face.
What he saw made him even forget that he had on the beloved scout suit. In the first shock, he wondered how they could have come up and in without his hearing them; and, second, if he was just thinking one of his thinks, and had himself lured these two familiar shapes into the kitchen. For there, in arm's length of him, standing face to face, were—Big Tom and Cis.
They were real. In the next breath, Johnnie knew it. No think of his would show them to him looking as they now looked. For Barber's heavy, dark countenance was working as he chewed on nothing ferociously; while Cis—in all the past five years Johnnie had never before seen her face as it was now. It was set and drawn, and a raging white, so that the blue veins stood out in a clear pattern on her temples. Her hat hung down grotesquely at one side of her head. Her hair was in wild disarray. And her eyes! They were a blazing black!
What had happened?