As the story of stories unfolded itself, step by step, the ragged street urchin whose father had been a poor tailor, attained to great heights—to wealth and success and power. Johnnie gloried in it all, seeing such results as future possibilities of his own, and not forgetting to remark how kind, through all the upward trending of fortune, Aladdin had been to his mother (though he, himself, did not pause in his enjoyment of the tale to take the regular train trip with Grandpa).
Twice during the morning the old soldier, by whimpering insistently, brought himself to Johnnie's attention. But the moment Grandpa was waited upon, back Johnnie went to his book, and page was turned upon page as the black magic of the hateful African wafted that most perfect of palaces many a league from its original site, and separated for his own wicked purposes the loving Aladdin and his devoted Buddir al Buddoor.
And then—all of a sudden—and for no reason that Johnnie could name, but as if some good genie of his own were watching over him, and had whispered a warning, he cast off the enthrallment of Asia, stopped dragging at his hair, started to his feet, slid the book under his collar-band, and took stock of the time.
It was twelve. Indeed, the noon whistles were just beginning to blow. But they and the clock did not reassure him. He had been dimly aware, the past hour or so, of a strange state of quiet overhead. That awareness now resolved itself into a horrible fear—the fear that, in spite of lunches put up and a clock wound to clang at four in the afternoon, the day was—Saturday!
"Gee!" breathed Johnnie, and paled to a sickly white.
His first thought was to make sure one way or another. Scurrying to the window, he pushed it up, hung out of it toward the Gamboni casement, and called to a sleek head that at this time of the day was almost certain to be bobbing in sight. There it was, and "What day is this, Mrs. Gamboni?" he demanded. "Quick! Is it Saturday?"
"Si!"
Saturday! A half-day! Barber!
He threw himself backward, then stood for a moment, panic-stricken. Of course it was Saturday. Which explained why Mrs. Kukor was out. Oh, why had she not stopped by on her way to church? Oh, why had he left any of his work undone? Oh, for some genie to finish it all up in a second! Oh, for some Slave of a Ring or a Lamp!
"Gee!" he breathed again. "This was the shortest Saturday mornin' in the world!"