you
not t' tell Mister Perkins n'r anybody else when I sneak up on the roofs
of nights."

"You wouldn't lean over the edge, Johnnie, and go all dizzy, and
fall?"--the brush was a sore temptation.

Johnnie belittled her fears. "Couldn't I jus' as easy fall out of our
window?" he demanded.

The bargain was struck; the brush changed hands.

In the face of those two gifts, Cis could never again doubt the
existence of a real Mr. Perkins. "I didn't care awfully whether he was a
truly person or not," she confided to Johnnie now. "But as long as he
_is_ alive, I think I'd like to meet him. So the next time he comes, you
get him to come the time after that between twelve and one, and I'll run
home. I can eat my lunch while I'm walking."

Johnnie considered the suggestion. "You won't give 'way on me 'bout the
swop, though."

"Cross my heart!"

After she had used the brush (thoroughly, too), and could not,
therefore, retreat out of her bargain, he offered an argument which he
felt sure would clinch her silence. "You wouldn't want Mister Perkins t'
find out that y' didn't have a good brush of your own," he reminded her,
"and that y' took mine away."

"Oh, I wouldn't!"--fervently. Then, recalling how she had already been
mortified in the matter of his first bath, and returning, girl-like, to
that worn-out subject, "Johnnie, are you positive Mr. Perkins didn't see
you empty the tub that day? and did he see the bottom of it when the
water was all out? and in the bottom wasn't there a lot of grit?"

He reassured her. "But, my goodness, Cis, you're terrible stuck-up," he
declared.

Certainly she felt more comfortable. For at once, with a haughty and
precise air, which was her idea of how the socially elect bear
themselves, with a set smile on her quaint face, and modulating her
voice affectedly, she took Mr. Perkins's arm and went for a walk around
Seward Park (the table), discussing the weather as she strolled, the
scenery, and other impersonal subjects. And there was much bowing and
hand shaking to it all, while Johnnie stood by, scarcely knowing whether
to be pleased or cross.

"When you come home, and Mister Perkins is here, what'll I say?" he
asked; "--just at first?"

"You introduce us," instructed Cis. "You tell him what my name is, and
you tell me what his name is."

"But you know his name!" argued Johnnie. "And he knows yours."

"I can't help it," she returned. "It sounds silly, but everybody does it
that wa