is pale blue eyes were roving wearily;
the chair at a standstill, down came their lids, and his head tipped
sidewise.

He looked as much like a small, gray monkey as his strapping son
resembled a gorilla. As Johnnie tucked the blanket about the thin old
neck, Grandpa was already breathing regularly, the while he made the
facial grimaces of a new-born child.

CHAPTER IV

THE FOUR MILLIONAIRES

JOHNNIE always started his own daily program with a taste of fresh air.
He cared less for this way of spending his first fifteen free minutes
than for many another. But as Cis, with her riper wisdom, had pointed
out, a short airing was necessary to a boy who had no red in his cheeks,
and too much blue at his temples--not to mention a pinched look about
the nose. Johnnie regularly took a quarter of an hour out of doors.

He took it from the sill of the kitchen window--which was the only
window in the Barber flat.

This sill was breast-high from the kitchen floor, Johnnie not being tall
for his age. But having shoved up the lower sash with the aid of the
broom handle, he did not climb to seat himself upon the ledge. For there
was no iron fire escape outside; the nearest one came down the wall of
the building to the kitchen window of the Gamboni family, to the left.
And so Johnnie denied himself a perch on his sill--a dangerous position,
as both Mrs. Kukor and Cis pointed out to him.

Their warnings were unnecessary. He could easily realize what a slip of
the hand might mean: a plunge through space to the brick paving far
below; and there an instant and horrible end. His picture of it was
enough to guard him against accident. He contented himself with laying
his body across the sill, with the longer and heavier portion of his
small anatomy balanced securely against a shorter and lighter upper
portion.

He achieved this position and held it untiringly by the aid of the old
rope coil. This coil was a relic of those distant times when there was
no fire escape even outside the kitchen window of the Gambonis, and the
landlord provided every tenant with this cruder means of flying the
building. The rope hung on a large hook just under the Barber window,
and was like a hard, smudged wheel, so completely had the years and the
climate of the kitchen colored and stiffened it. And Johnnie's weight
was not enough to elongate its set curves.

It was a handy affair. Using it as a stepping-place, and pulling himself
up by his han