Then it was Johnnie who experienced sensations: Surprise--bewilderment--doubt--staggering belief--awe--joy--more joy--pride--triumph! He sat up. Now he understood why the shaggy breeches had struck him as somehow familiar. Of course! He had seen just such a pair pictured on the billboard across from the millionaire's garage. Now he realized how he had seared the sight of his enemies as he and the Great One arrived side by side in a taxicab!--Yet no one must ever know that he had been in the dark! "Why, yes, Mrs. Kukor!" he cried. "My goodness! This is a reg'lar one!" (At which One-Eye colored, blending his bronze with a bashful purple.) "A cowpoy!" whispered Mrs. Kukor, as if in a daze. "Pos-i-tivvle! Mit furs on hiss pants, und everythink!" CHAPTER XII A PRODIGAL PUFFED UP LEANING on his well elbow, Johnnie related to Mrs. Kukor and Cis and Grandpa the whole story of what had happened to him; and they paid such rapt attention to him that at the most they did not interrupt him more than fifteen or twenty times. "And, oh, didn't everything turn out just fine?" he cried in ending. "T' be found by a cowboy and fetched home in a' auto! and--all?" Mrs. Kukor vowed that she dass-ent to deny how everytink about it wass both stylish und grand! Next, he had to hear what had transpired after his departure; how every one had taken his going, especially Big Tom--now gone out to escort One-Eye to the taxi. "I tells to him, 'Sure does Chonnie go for sometink'," declared Mrs. Kukor. But Barber had known better, and contradicted her violently. "Und so I tells to him over that, 'Goot! Goot! if he runs away! In dis house so much, it ain't healthy for him!' Und I shakes my fingers be-front of hiss big nose!" Mrs. Kukor had to go then, remembering with a start that she had a filled fish cooking. She rushed out at a thumping gallop. Then the whole adventure was told a second time, Johnnie sitting up with Grandpa's hat cocked over one eye, and drawling in fine imitation of their late guest. When Barber came back, he was not able to let matters pass without a brief scolding for Johnnie, and a threat. "Y' go and git yourself laid up," he complained, coming to stand over the pallet on the floor; "so's you can't do your work, and earn your keep. Well, a good kick was the right pay for runnin' away. And now let me tell y' this, and I mean it: if y' ever run away again, y' won't git took _back_. Hear me?" "Yes," answered Johnnie, almost carelessly. Barber said no more, realizing that if Johnnie could run away once he could again. Even without grumbling the longshoreman helped Cis to put the wash to soak in the round, galvanized tub that stood on its side under the dish cupboard--a Sunday night duty that was Johnnie's, and was in preparation for the hated laundry work which he always did so badly of a Monday.