Johnnie was hungry too. The butter gone, along with its complement of bread, he attacked his share of the meat and vegetables, using, however (which was to Cis's credit), a fork. The dish was delicious. He forgot even the placard.
So far the one-eyed man had proven to be anything but a talkative person. Under the circumstances this was just as well. Johnnie could not have shared just then in a conservation. Twice during the meal he reached down and let out the strap a hole or two. And for the first time in his life he was grateful for the roominess of Barber's old clothes.
Half an hour, and Johnnie was, as he himself expressed it, "stuffed like a sausage." The orange, he dropped into his shirt-band to find a place with the books, there being no space for it internally.
"Full up, eh?" demanded the one-eyed man, mopping at his mustache so hard with a paper napkin that Johnnie expected to see the hairy growth come away from its moorings under the leathery nose.
"It was a feast!" pronounced Johnnie, borrowing from the language of his friend Aladdin. A moment later he gasped as he saw his host carelessly ring a fifty-cent piece upon the gorgeous marble of the table top. Then the meal had cost so much as that! As he trotted doorward in the wake of the spurred heels, his boy's conscience faintly smote him. He almost felt that he had eaten too much.
"My goodness!" he murmured, his glance missing the variegated mosaic of the floor.
But still another moment, and the one-eyed man had halted at a desk which stood close to the front door, and was throwing down a one-dollar bill, together with some silver.
Johnnie knew something was wrong. His host was forgetful, absent-minded. He realized that he must interfere. "You jus' paid the lady!" he warned in a hasty whisper.
The other nodded sadly as he settled the big hat. "Yeppie," he returned. "But y' see, sonny, it's this-away: if you got jes' one eye, w'y, they make y' pay twicet!"
Another gasp. It was so grossly unfair!