"Wal," went on One-Eye, philosophically, "I never was a lucky cuss. If the sky was t' rain down green turtle soup, yours truly 'd find himself with jes' a fork in his pocket."
What was the cowboy hinting? How had luck gone against him, who was grown-up, and rich, and free to travel whither he desired? And, above all, what connection was there between Cis and green turtle soup?
Johnnie could not figure it out. With all his power of imagination, there was one thing he never did understand—the truth concerning One-Eye's feeling toward a certain young lady.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
ANOTHER GOOD-BY
JOHNNIE could hear a fumbling outside in the hall, as if some one was going slowly to and fro, brushing a wall with gentle, uncertain hands. Cautiously he tiptoed to his own door and listened, his heart beating a little faster than the occasion warranted, this because he had just been scooting about the deck of the Hispaniola again with Jim Hawkins, eluding that terrible Mr. Hands; and he was still more or less close in to the shore of Treasure Island, rather than in New York City, and hardly able to realize that in the gloomy, old kitchen he was reasonably safe from a pirate's knife.
The noise in the hall traveled away from the Barber door to another on the same floor. Johnnie concluded that the Italian janitress was giving the dark passage its annual scrub. As he had no wish to exchange words with her, much preferring the society of the rash, but plucky, Jim, he stole back to the table, and once more projected himself half the world away.
Three days had passed since One-Eye's departure. They had been quiet days. Mrs. Kukor was still gone. Big Tom ventured forth from his self-imposed imprisonment only late at night. Cis and Mr. Perkins, save for a cheery greeting scribbled on a post card that pictured the Capitol at Washington, seemed utterly to have cut themselves off from the flat. As for Father Pat, of course he had not forgotten Johnnie, not forsaken a friend; nevertheless, there had been no sign of him.
But having again his seven beloved books (the two extra ones had arrived by parcel post), Johnnie had not fretted once. What time had he for fretting? He was either working—cooking, washing, ironing, cleaning, waiting on the longshoreman or the aged soldier, going out grandly in his scout uniform to fetch things from the grocer's, smartening Grandpa's appearance or his own—or else he was reading. And when he was reading, his world and all of its cares dropped magically away from him, and the clock hands fairly spun.