ow by the quick, sidewise tip of her small, black-hatted head, Cis
inquired of Johnnie whether she should stay or go. And Johnnie, with
what amounted to an upward fling of his eyelids, answered that she need
not stay. With Barber's cutty once more in his right fist, and with his
mind veered to a fresh subject, Johnnie knew the crisis was past.

With a swift glance of affection and sympathy, not unmixed with triumph
over the success of her interruption, Cis fluttered out--leaving the
door open at Barber's back.

The longshoreman turned heavily as if to follow her, but came about with
a final caution, lowering his voice to cheat any busy ear in the other
flat on the same floor. "Don't you neglect the old man," he charged.
"Face--hair--fix him up--_you_ know."

At the stove, an untidy heap of threadbare, brown blanket, in a wheel
chair suddenly stirred. In several ways old Grandpa was like a big baby,
but particularly in this habit of waking promptly whenever he was
mentioned. "Is that you, Mother?" he asked in his thin, old voice. (He
meant Big Tom's mother, dead now these many years.)

A swift change came over Barber's face. His great underlip drew in, what
chin he had was thrust out with something like concern, and his eyes
rolled away from Johnnie to the whimpering old man. "It's all right,
Pa," he said soothingly. "It's all right. Jus' you sleep." Then he
turned, tiptoed through the door, and shut it after him softly.

Johnnie did not move--except to shift his look from the laths to the
door knob, and take up his toeing of the crack at his feet. The door
itself moved, and rattled gently, as the area door three flights below
was opened by Cis, and a gust from the narrow court was sent up the
stairs of the tenement, as a bubble forces its way surfaceward through
water, to suck at the Barber door.

But Big Tom was not yet gone. And a moment later, the boy was looking at
the outer knob, now in the clutch of several great, grimy, calloused
fingers.

"Let your hair _alone_!" ordered the longshoreman. Then the door closed
finally, and the stairs complained with loud creakings as Barber
descended them.

Johnnie waited till the door in front of him moved and rattled again,
then--

CHAPTER II

PRIDE AND PENALTY

HIS toe stopped working across the crack in the floor. His left hand
forsook his tousled hair and fell to his side. His eyes narrowed, and
his chin came up. Then his lips began to move, noiselessly