u, old fellow, and
you're counting on me, aren't you? No, we'll go right ahead."

"But if he finds out!" Johnnie ventured, happy, yet somewhat
apprehensive.

"He'll order me out again probably," returned Mr. Perkins, calmly. "Of
course, if he could understand what I'm trying to do for you, I'm sure
he'd look at the whole matter in a friendlier way." (Mr. Perkins never
came closer than this to a criticism of the longshoreman.) "Well, he
can't understand, because, you see, the poor chap never had the right
thing done for him.--Yes, we'll go right ahead."

However, as Johnnie continued to feel nervous on the score of what his
foster father might do to this good friend if the latter was again
discovered at the flat, the scoutmaster, for Johnnie's sake, and to make
the boy's mind more easy, agreed to change the time of his call to a
little after one o'clock of each afternoon, it being decided that this
hour was the safest.

Johnnie had wanted to say something about the ring, and the
engagement--something to the effect that he was happy over the news,
only Mr. Perkins was taking his (Johnnie's) job away from him, since he
had planned, when he grew up,--yes, and even before--to take care of Cis
himself. But for some reason he did not find it easy to broach the
subject; and since the scoutmaster did not begin it (he looked ruddier
and browner than ever before, Johnnie thought), the upshot of it was
that the engagement did not get discussed at all.

Instead, the Handbook took up the whole of the hour. A mysterious signal
on the sink pipe brought all of the books down to them, descending in
the basket as if out of the sky. Mrs. Kukor had to be thanked then, from
the window, after which Mr. Perkins and Johnnie settled down to a
chapter treating of the prevention of accidents, first-aid, and
lifesaving. And that afternoon, when the scoutmaster was gone, Letitia
was several times rescued from drowning, and carried on a stretcher; and
that evening Cis, on coming in from work, found Grandpa's old, white
head bandaged scientifically in the dish-towel, this greatly to the
veteran's delight, for he believed he had just been wounded at the
Battle of Shiloh.

The chapter for the next day after proved even more exciting. It was all
about games--the Treasure Hunt, and Let 'er Buck, Capture the Flag, and
dozens more, but each as strange to Johnnie as another, since he had
never played one of them. Mr. Perkins added his explanations to