Then he considered what his course of action should be. If Big Tom's old lamp chanced to possess even a scrap of that power peculiar to the lamp of Aladdin: if, when he rubbed the none too clean glass base, some genie were to appear, asking for orders--what should he command? It came to him then that what he wanted most in all the world was not bags of money, not dishes of massy gold, or rich robes, or slaves, but only freedom. He wanted to get away from the flat; to leave behind him forever the hated longshoreman. "If the great big feller comes when I rub," he told himself, "I'll say t' him, 'Take Grandpa and Cis and me as far away as--as Central Park'" (this a region of delight into which he had peeped when he was three or four years old, under escort of his Aunt Sophie). "'And leave us in a flat as good as this one.'" With Big Tom out of his life, oh, how he would work!--violet-making, bead-stringing, and, yes, boarders! He could fetch Grandpa's bed out into the new kitchen, and put three roomers into the little bedroom, just as several tenants in this building did. And what he could earn, added to Cis's wages at some factory, and Grandpa's pension (this a princely income which was now regularly drawn and spent by Big Tom) would take care of the three splendidly. Having settled upon the supreme wish, and fairly holding his breath, he reached out in the darkness and rubbed the lamp. Nothing happened. He waited a little. In this lamp business perhaps time figured prominently; though his own friends--Buckle, the four millionaires, David, Goliath, the Prince, and any number of others always appeared in the kitchen promptly. But no genie of the lamp arrived. To make sure that his test was fair, he rubbed the lamp a second time, all the way around. Still no huge, hideous, helpful figure loomed out of the dark. He grinned sheepishly, tugged at his hair a few times, then went back to his mattress and sat down. He was not disappointed, for though he had been hopeful, he had not been over-sure. And, anyhow, he had his book. He lifted it out, placed it upon his knees, and rested his forehead upon it. And the next moment, as if whisked to him by a genie all his own, Cathay was about him; and he was with the boy, Aladdin, plunging down a flight of steps on his way to a garden that yielded fruit which was all diamonds and rubies and pearls. CHAPTER VII A SERIOUS STEP HE awoke with such a feeling of happiness--a fluttery feeling, which was in his throat, and also just at the lower end of his breastbone, where he seemed to have so many kinds of sensations. For a moment he did not remember what made him so happy. But as he moved, something hard pressed against his ribs, whereupon the fluttery feeling suddenly spread over the whole of him, so that the calves of those lead-pipe legs got creepy, and his shoulder-blades tingled. Then he knew it was all because of the book.