The last bit of egg was eaten, the last nibble of toast, too, and the fruit. "Oh, yes, I'm too tired t' think 'bout a wreck," admitted Johnnie.
"Rest, lad dear! Rest!" The quilt was tucked round the weary limbs.
One of those big-girl hands reached up and drew the priest's head lower. "I guess where I been is on the danger line, all right," Johnnie whispered. "And the Handbook said a scout don't flinch in the face o' danger, and this time, gee, I didn't!"
A rest and some good food had made Cis feel like her former self by now. Presently she walked into the little room, lit a nubbin of candle, and changed into her best clothes. While she was gone, Johnnie drew on his old, big trousers, and donned Barber's shirt, then moved to the morris chair. As for Mrs. Kukor, she was gone again, her face very sober, and the line of her mouth tight and straight. As she teetered out, it was plain that she was all but in a panic to get away.
For evidently things were to happen in the flat before long. The air of the room proclaimed this fact. And plainly Barber was uneasy, for he stalked about, starting nervously whenever Father Pat shut the watch, or when a footfall sounded beyond the hall door.
All at once a loud tramping was heard on the stairs—a determined tramping, as if half a dozen angry men were setting down their feet as one. Doors flew open, voices hailed one another up and down the building, and Mrs. Kukor could be heard pattering in a wide circle beyond the ceiling. All of this disturbance brought Cis out of her tiny room, pink-faced once more, and eager-eyed.
The next moment, with a stomp and a slam, and without knocking, One-Eye made a whirlwind entrance into the kitchen, and halted, his wide hat grotesquely over one ear, a quid of tobacco distending that cheek which the hat brim touched, a score of questions looking from that single eye, and every hair on the front of those shaggy breeches fairly standing out straight.
"Wal?" he demanded, banging the door so hard behind him that all the dishes in the cupboard rattled. He had on gauntlets. Their cuffs reached half-way to his elbows. These added mightily to his warlike appearance.
"A-a-a-a-h!" greeted Father Pat, joyously.
So this was the person whose arrival had been awaited! Nonchalantly Big Tom shifted his weight from foot to foot, and chuckled through the stubble of his beard.