Then he took up Edwarda, who opened her eyes with a sharp click. Edwarda, favorite of her young owner, smelled adorably—like the tiny room, like the birthday roses, like apples. And her dainty presence, exhaling the familiar scent of the dressing-table box, brought Cis even nearer to him than had Letitia. With a choking exclamation, he caught the new doll to him along with the old, and held both tight.
Then dropping to the mattress, he laid the pair side by side before crumpling down with them, digging his nose into one of Edwarda's fragrant sleeves. The instant her head struck the bed, Edwarda had clicked her eyes shut, as if quite indifferent to all that had happened that day (not to speak of the previous night), and had fallen asleep like a shot. Not so the sterling Letitia, who lay staring, open-eyed, at the ceiling.
But Johnnie, worn with emotion, weak from yesterday's whipping, sick and weary from last night's long hours across the table edge, sank into a deep and merciful and repairing sleep.
CHAPTER XXXVII
UPS AND DOWNS
HE awoke a changed boy. How it had come about, or why, he did not try to reason; but on opening his gray eyes at dawn, he felt distinctly two astonishing differences in himself: first, his sorrow over Cis's going seemed entirely spent, as if it had taken leave of him some time in the night; second, and more curious than the other, along with that sorrow had evidently departed all of his old fear of Big Tom!
The fact that Johnnie no longer stood in dread of Barber was, doubtless, due to the fact that he had seen the giant outmatched and brought to terms. He hated him still (perhaps even more than ever); yet holding him in contempt, did not indulge in a single revenge think. He understood that, with Cis away, the longshoreman needed him as he had never needed him before. So Barber would not dare to be ugly or cruel again, lest he lose Johnnie too. "If I followed Cis where'd he be?" the boy asked himself. "Huh! He better be careful!"
As to Cis, now that he had had a good rest, it was easy for him to see that this change which had come into her life was a thing to be grateful for, not a matter to be mourned about. After her trouble with Barber, she could not stay on in the flat and be happy. Granting this, how fortunate it was that she could at once marry the man she loved. (And what a man!)
He saw her in that splendid, imaginary apartment in which he had long ago installed Mr. Perkins. And was he, John Blake, wishing that she would stay in a tiny, if beautiful, room without a window?
