"More"n a--a _year_?"
"All scouts are twelve."
"Oh!" A shadow clouded the gray eyes.
"But a year means that you can get yourself in dandy condition. And would you mind showing me how fit you are now?"
Johnnie spread out his hands deprecatingly. "That"s the trouble," he declared, looking down at his big, old clothes. "They don"t fit."
But when he understood just what Mr. Perkins meant, in a twinkling he had slipped Barber"s shirt over his head and was standing bared to the waist, all his little ribs showing pitifully, and--as he faced square about--his shoulder blades thrusting themselves almost through a skin that was a sickly white. "Ain"t I fine?" he wanted to know. "Don"t I look good"n strong?"
The gla.s.ses came tumbling off Mr. Perkins"s nose. He coughed, and pulled out the white handkerchief again, and fell to polishing the crystal discs. "Fair," he said slowly. "But there"s room for improvement."
Johnnie sensed a compa.s.sionate note in the answer. "Course I ain"t fat,"
he conceded hastily. "But when Mrs. Kukor gives me filled fish I can see a big diff"rence right away!"
"Fat isn"t what a boy wants," returned Mr. Perkins. "He wants good blood, and strong muscles, and a first-cla.s.s pair of lungs!"
"Oh!" Raising the big shirt on high, Johnnie disappeared into it, fixing upon Mr. Perkins as he went a look that was full of anxiety. As he emerged, his lip was trembling. "You--you don"t think I look all right, do you?" he asked. "Maybe you think I can"t ever--you mean I--I can"t be----"
"Oh, nothing of the kind!" laughed Mr. Perkins. "Fact is, Johnnie, you"re way ahead as far as your mind is concerned. I"m mighty pleased about your reading. I certainly am, old fellow! And in no time you can get some blood into your cheeks, and cultivate some muscle, and straighten out your lungs. Once there was a boy who was in worse shape than you are, because he had the asthma, and could hardly breathe. And what do you suppose he did?"
"Et lots?" hazarded Johnnie.
"He said he would make over his own body, and he made it over."
"But, Mister Perkins, I"ll do it, too! I"ll make mine over! Tell me how!"
"Fresh air, proper breathing, exercises--day after day, that boy never stopped. And when he grew up, he found himself a strong man even among very strong men. That was the great American, Theodore Roosevelt."
"Oh, I know about him!" cried Johnnie. "He was President once, and he was a soldier. Cis knows a girl, and the girl"s father, he worked in a big, stylish hotel, and once he carried Mister Roosevelt"s trunk on his own back! Cis could name the girl, and prove it!"
But Mr. Perkins had no doubt as to the truth of the account. "The motto of the Boy Scouts is Be Prepared," he went on. "That means, be ready--in mind and body--to meet anything that happens. Now, as I said a bit ago, Johnnie, you"ve got a good brain. And when your body"s strong, it"ll not only be a promise of long life for you, but you can defend yourself; better still, you can protect others."
"Yes, sir!" Johnnie was bubbling with eagerness. "Please let me start now. Can I? What"ll I do first?"
"Bathe," answered Mr. Perkins. "Every day. Scrub yourself from head to foot. Give your skin a chance to breathe. You"ll eat better and sleep better. You"ll pick up."
One, two, three, and the dishes were cleared from the table. Then with the hall door locked as a precaution, Johnnie spread the oiled table-cloth on the floor (though Mr. Perkins demurred a little at this), planted the washtub at the center of the cloth, half filled the tub from the sink spigot, warmed the water with more from the teakettle, and took a long-deferred, much-needed rub down. It was soapy, and thorough. And he proved to himself that he really liked water very much--except, perhaps, in the region of his neck and ears!
When he was rinsed and rubbed dry, and in his clothes again, Mr. Perkins took off his own coat. Under it was a khaki-colored shirt, smart and clean and soldierly, that seemed to Johnnie the kind of shirt most to be desired among all the shirts of the world. Mr. Perkins pushed up the sleeves of it, planted his feet squarely, and fell to shooting his arms up and out, and bending his solid figure this way and that. Next, he alternately thrust out his legs. And Johnnie followed suit--till both were breathless and perspiring.
"To-morrow, exercise first and bathe afterward," instructed Mr. Perkins.
"To-night, be sure to sleep with that window open. And now I"ll give you a lesson in saluting."
It was then that Grandpa wakened. And perhaps something about the lesson stirred those old memories of his, for he insisted upon saluting too, and tossed poor Let.i.tia aside in his excitement, and called Mr. Perkins "General."
When the latter was gone, with no pat on the head for Johnnie, but a genuine man-to-man hand shake, and a promise of his return soon, the boy, for the first time in his short life, took stock of the condition of his own body. Slipping out of the big shirt once more, and borrowing Cis"s mirror, he contrived, by skewing his head around, chinning first one shoulder, then the other, to get a meager look at his back. He appraised his spindling arms and legs. He thumped his flat chest.
"Gee! Mister Perkins is dead right!" he admitted soberly. "I"m too skinny, and too thin through, and my complexion"s too good." In the back of his head, always, was that dream of leaving the flat some day, never to return. "But like I am, why, I couldn"t work hard "nough, or earn good," he told himself now, and very earnestly. "So I"ll jus" go ahead and make my body over the way Mister Roosevelt did."
While he was doing his housework he stopped now and again to shoot out an arm or a leg, or to bend himself from the waist. His skin was tingling pleasantly. His eyes were bright. A new urge was upon him. A fresh interest filled his heart. His hopes were high.
Cis, when she was told that the leader had actually called, not only believed the statement but shared Johnnie"s enthusiasm. Realizing how much his training to be a scout would help him, she even tried to do away with that certain objection of his. "Maybe they don"t have girl scouts any more," she suggested.
"Aw, I don"t care a snap "bout girl scouts!" he answered. "Cis, he called me "old fellow"--I like it! And he"s twenty-one. And you just ought t" see the shirt he wears!--not with little flowers on it, like Mike Callaghan"s. And, oh, Cis, he never even s"pected that I cook, or wash, or do anything like that! And while he was here I took a bath!"
"No!" Her enthusiasm went. She was horrified. "Oh, Johnnie! Oh, my!" She grew pink and pale by turns. "And you so dirty!"
"Well, I did! What"s the matter with y"! I wouldn"t need t" bathe if I wasn"t dirty!"
"Oh,"--tears of mortification swam in the violet-blue eyes--"but you were extra dirty!"
"Oh, I don"t know," returned Johnnie, refusing to get panic-stricken.
"I"d like to see your bath water," she persisted. "Where is it?"
"Gone down the sink."
"How did it look! Pretty bad? Dark? Just how?"
"Well, it looked kind of riley if you got under the soap that was floatin" on top," Johnnie admitted. ""Cause I give myself a dandy one!
Oh, a lot of skin come off!"
"Oh, my! And did he see under the soap? And what did you use for a towel?"
Johnnie had used a pillowcase. ""Cause what else _could_ I use?" he implored.
But Cis did not answer, for she was in tears. And she would not look up even to see him salute.
Big Tom had his turn at being appalled--this at the supper table, when he observed Johnnie"s appet.i.te. "As you git bigger," pointed out Barber, "you eat more and more. So, understand me, y" got t" _make_ more--_work_ more."
"Yes," agreed Johnnie, helping himself to fried mush and coffee for the third time, and breaking open his second baked potato. But to Cis, later on, he confided his intention to work no harder, yet to "stuff." "I can"t make myself over jus" on fresh air," he declared.
She warmly upheld his determination. Yet she flatly refused to take Mr.
Perkins shopping with them, pleading that she felt ashamed.
"About what?" Johnnie asked, irritated. "About your cryin"?"
"About that bath you took," she answered. "Oh, gracious!"
He was not in the least bothered about it. And when the rest of the household were asleep, he had a splendid think about himself. He was twenty-one, and tall and strong, so that he was able to ignore Big Tom.
He was well-dressed, too, and did no more girl"s work. Instead, he was the head and front of some great, famous organization which numbered among its members all the millionaires in New York. Just what this organization was all about, he did not pause to decide. But he had his office in a building as large as the Grand Central Station, and was waited upon by a man in a car-conductor"s cap.
Cis had once peeped into the huge dining rooms of the Waldorf Astoria, this while walking along Fifth Avenue. She had described to Johnnie the lofty, ornate ceilings, and the rich, heavy hangings, which description thereafter had furnished him with a basis whenever he transformed the kitchen for one of his grandest thinks. Upon his new office he lavished, now, a silver ceiling, velvet curtains, a marble desk and gold chairs.
The thing finished, he rose, shed his clothes, and, standing on his mattress, white and stark against the black of the stove, filled his lungs from the open window, wielded his arms, bent his torso, and kicked up his heels.
In due time, by faithfully following Mr. Perkins"s instructions, he would be plump, well-muscled, red-faced, and rounded as to chest. Then in a beautiful uniform and a broad hat, with his right hand at salute, he would burst, as it were, upon the neighborhood--the perfect scout!