"And, my goodness!" Johnnie added. "Think o' Cis havin' her name in the paper!"
They sat for a while without speaking. Grandpa, having been generously supplied by the cowboy with scraped apple, slept as sleeps a fed baby. Johnnie stacked and restacked his five books, caressing them, drawing in the fragrance of their leaves. One-Eye studied the floor and jiggled a foot.
"Sonny," he said presently (it was plain that he had something on his mind); "y' won't feel too down-in-the-mouth if I tell y'—tell y'—er—aw—" The spurred foot stopped jiggling.
"What? Oh, One-Eye, y're not goin' away right off?"
"T'night."
"Oh!"
"But, shucks, I'll be sailin' back East again in no time! These Noo York big-bugs is jes' yelpin' constant fer my polo ponies."
"I'm glad." But there was a shadow now upon a countenance which a moment before had been beaming. Things were going wrong with him—everything—all at once. It was almost as if some malign genie were working against him. "Mrs. Kukor's away, too," he said. "And with Cis gone—" He swallowed hard.
One-Eye began to talk in a husky monotone, as if to himself. "They's nobody else jes' like her," he declared; "that's a cinch! She's shore the kind that comes one in a box! Whenever I'd look at her, I'd allus think o' a angel, 'r a bird, 'r a little, bobbin' rose." He sighed, uncrossed his shaggy knees, crossed them the other way, shifted his quid of tobacco to the opposite cheek, and pulled down the brim of the wide hat till it touched his leathery nose. "Such a slim, little figger!" he added. "Such a pert, little haid! And—and a cute face! And she was white! Plumb white!"
Johnnie, as he listened, understood that the cowboy was talking of Cis—no one else. He was not mourning his own departure, nor regretting the fact that a small, lonely boy was to be left behind. Which gave that boy such a pang of jealousy as helped him considerably to bear this new blow.