"Maybe y' better have a doctor," essayed Johnnie, practically, and as calmly as he might have said it to Cis. "You mind your business." The afternoon was longer than the morning. Johnnie sat at the table again. His face was hot, and he kept a dipper of water in front of him so that he could take frequent draughts. Sometimes he watched his patch of sky; sometimes he shut his eyes and read from the burned books, or looked at their pictures; now and then he slept--a few minutes at a time--his head on his arms. Toward evening, though rested physically, he found his spirits again drooping. Bravely as he had started the day, its hours of futile waiting had tried him. (Could it be possible that grief was a matter of the clock?) As twilight once more moved upon the city it brought with it the misery, the loneliness and the pain which had been his just twenty-four hours before. Oh, where, he asked himself, was the light step, the tender voice, the helpful hand of her who had hurried home to him every nightfall of the past? He understood then what a difference there could be between bodily suffering and mental suffering. His whipping, severe as it had been, was over and done, and all but forgotten. But this sorrow--! "Gee!" he breathed, marveling; "how it sticks!" No; he had not realized when Cis left how hard it would be to stay on at the flat without her. And ahead of him were how many days like this one? He seemed there to stay for a time that was all but forever! That night it was Boof who shared the mattress with him. He whispered to the dog for a long while, recounting his troubles. Afterward, he said over the tenth law, that one having to do with bravery. "Defeat does not down him" the Handbook had said; and he was not downed. He thought of every valiant soul he knew--Aladdin, Heywood, Uncas, Jim Hawkins, Lancelot, Crusoe. He fought the tears. But he felt utterly stricken, wholly deserted. --By all save Polaris, now risen above the roofs. "Oh, you can see ev'rything!" Johnnie said to the star, enviously. "So, please, where is Father Pat?" But Polaris only stared back at him. Bright and hard, calm and unchanging, what difference did it make to so proud a beacon--the woe of one small boy? * * * * * Joy cometh with the morning. This time Joy wore the disguise of a cowboy who had a black eye, a bag of apples, a newspaper, and two cigars. Also he carried a couple of businesslike packages, large ones, well wrapped in thick brown paper and wound with heavy string. The excitement and happiness that One-Eye roused when he shuffled in came very nearly being the end of Johnnie, who could not believe his own eyes, but had to take hold of a shaggy trouser leg in order to convince himself that this was a real visitor and not just a think.