"You been hidin' these here books for him!" Barber went on, his head still out of the window, so that much of what Cis was saying was lost upon him. "_Ja! Ja! Ja! Ja!_" "Don't y' yaw _me_!" But Mrs. Kukor's window had gone down. Now every other window in the neighborhood was up, though the dwellers round about were hidden from sight. However, they launched at him a chorus of hisses. "A-a-a-a!" triumphed Cis. "You see what people think of you? Good! Good! Why don't you go out and get hold of _them_? why don't you throw _them_ around?--Oh, you're safe in here, with the children!" Still Barber did not notice her. Leaning farther out across the window sill, he shook a fist into space. "Bah!" he shouted. "Ain't one o' y' dares t' show y'r face! Jus' y' let me see who's hissin', and I'll give y' what for! Geese hiss, and snakes! Come and do y'r hissin' where I can look at y'!" More hisses--and cat calls, yowls, meows, and a spirited spitting; raucous laughter, too, and a mingling of voices in several tongues. "Wops!" cried Big Tom again. "Wops, and Kikes, and Micks! Not a decent American in the whole lot--you low-down bunch o' foreigners!" Cis laughed again. She was like one possessed. It was as if she did not care what he did to her, nor what she said to him; as if she were taunting him and daring him--even encouraging him--to do more. "Decent Americans!" she repeated, as he closed the window and came toward her, the books in his hands. "Do you think _you're_ a decent American? But they're foreigners! Ha! And you call them names! But they don't treat children the way you've always treated us! You'd better call yourself names for a change!" "And I s'pose that dude left these!" Barber had halted at the table. Now he turned to Johnnie, looking directly at him for the first time. The next moment, an expression of mingled astonishment and rage changed and shadowed his dark face, as he glared at the uniform, the leggings, the brown shoes. Next, "Where did y' git _them_?" he demanded, almost choking. He leveled a finger. Johnnie swallowed, shifting from foot to foot. To his lips had sprung the strangest words, "There's people that're givin' these suits away--to all the kids." (The kind of an explanation that he would have made promptly, and as boldly as possible, in the days before he knew Father Pat and Mr. Perkins.) But he did not speak the falsehood; he even wondered how it had come into his mind; and he asked himself what Mr. Roosevelt, for instance, would think of him if he were to tell such a lie. For a scout is trustworthy.