the scoutmaster had been dressing better and better. This
morning he was finer than ever before. It was awful.

"You'll see," mourned Johnnie, his eyes on the clock as he talked.
"He'll be awful mean t' me. Here he says I can't listen t' scoutin' no
more! N'r nothin'! Say, Mister Perkins, if he shoves at me, would y'
ever give him biscuits and gravy again?"

Mr. Perkins thought it over. "Well, under the same circumstances," he
said finally, "what do you think Theodore Roosevelt would do?"

Johnnie could not decide. He felt that a look at the picture would help.
Hunting a match, he disappeared into the blue room, struck a light, and
gave the likeness a searching look. "I don't 'xac'ly know," he declared
when he came out; "but, Mister Perkins, I b'lieve maybe he'd just _lick_
him!"

A queer gleam came into those eyes which were a coffee-brown. "I
shouldn't be surprised," said Mr. Perkins, "if that isn't precisely what
the Colonel would do."

The door opened. It was Big Tom. His cargo hook hung round his great
neck. His hat was pushed back, uncovering a forehead seamed and sweaty.
To Johnnie he looked bigger and blacker than usual--this in comparison
with Mr. Perkins, so slim, if he was fully as tall as Barber, and so
immaculate, even dainty!

The older man had an insolent smile in those prominent eyes of his, and
a sneer bared his tobacco-stained teeth. Slamming the door, he came
sauntering toward the scoutmaster, who had risen; he halted without
speaking, then deliberately, impudently, he stared Mr. Perkins from head
to foot.

The latter glanced back, and with much interest, not staring, yet seeing
what sort of looking man the longshoreman was. To judge by the
expression in the brown eyes he did not like the kind. For suddenly his
eyelids narrowed, and the lines of his mouth set. "Introduce me,
Johnnie," he said.

Anxious, alert, and not hopeful, Johnnie had been watching the two, this
from the farther side of the table, so that he should not be handy in
case his giant foster father wanted to maul him. "This is Mister
Barber," he began, speaking the name as politely as he could, but
forgetting to complete the introduction.

"Tommie's home! Tommie's home!" piped up old Grandpa, suddenly waking
from his morning nap, and evidently not happy over his discovery.

"My name is Perkins," said the scoutmaster to Barber. He spoke
courteously, but there was no cringing in his manner.

"Perkins, huh?" returned Barber,