en 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 appetite. "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