especially happy
these days, for only the week before he had been visited by his Uncle
Albert, looking a trifle changed after these five years, but still the
kindly, cheerful Uncle Albert of the old days in the rich man's garage.

He fell to talking aloud. "I got milk," he said, "and I got salt, and
sugar, and the rinds o' some oranges. They're dry, but if I scrape 'em
into the puddin', Mrs. Kukor says they'll make it taste fine! I'll give
Mister Barber a bowl t' eat it out of. My! how he'll smack!"

At this point, the wide, old boards of the floor gave a telltale snap.
It was behind him, and so loud that it shattered his vision of Big Tom
and the pudding bowl. Some one was in the room! Father Pat? Mrs. Kukor?
One-Eye?

He turned a smiling face.

What he saw made him even forget that he had on the beloved scout suit.
In the first shock, he wondered how they could have come up and in
without his hearing them; and, second, if he was just thinking one of
his thinks, and had himself lured these two familiar shapes into the
kitchen. For there, in arm's length of him, standing face to face,
were--Big Tom and Cis.

They were real. In the next breath, Johnnie knew it. No think of his
would show them to him looking as they now looked. For Barber's heavy,
dark countenance was working as he chewed on nothing ferociously; while
Cis--in all the past five years Johnnie had never before seen her face
as it was now. It was set and drawn, and a raging white, so that the
blue veins stood out in a clear pattern on her temples. Her hat hung
down grotesquely at one side of her head. Her hair was in wild disarray.
And her eyes! They were a blazing black!

What had happened?

"Let go of me!" Cis demanded, in a voice that was not hers at all.
Barber had hold of her arm. With a sudden twist she freed herself.

"Here!" Her stepfather seized her again, and jerked her to a place
beside him. "And none o' y'r loud talk, d' y' understand?"

"Yes, I understand!" she answered defiantly, yet without lowering her
voice. "But I don't care what you want! I'll speak the way I want to!
I'll yell--Ee-e-e----"

But even as she began the shriek, one of his great hands grasped the
whole lower half of her face, covering it, and stopping the cry.

The next moment she was gasping and struggling as she fought his hold.
She tried to pull backward. She dragged at his hand as she circled him.

It was a strange contest, so quiet, yet so fierce. It was not