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Updated: June 6, 2025
He was deep in the story again when a plump hand interrupted by covering his page. So shut were his ears against every sound, inside and out, that he had not heard Mrs. Kukor enter. Now she held up something before his face. It was the alarm clock. Next after Big Tom and his own hair he hated the clock most. It was forever rousing him of a morning when he longed to sleep.
Kukor's sink, debouched in turn into the Barber sink. A moment's wait. Then some one began to cross the floor overhead with an astonishing sound of rocking yet with little advance in the way that a walking doll goes forward. This was Mrs. Kukor herself, who was motherhood incarnate to Johnnie; motherhood boiled down into an unalloyed lump; the pure essence of it in a fat, round package.
Perkins, who was up like a cat, and on, and facing round. "Now I'll git y'!" cried Barber. As he, in turn, faced about, he began to kick out furiously, now with one foot, now with the other. Each moment was passing in painful anxiety to the group in the Barber flat. Mrs. Kukor made one of that group, having teetered in directly Big Tom and Mr. Perkins were gone.
He coughed, and pulled out the white handkerchief again, and fell to polishing the crystal discs. "Fair," he said slowly. "But there's room for improvement." Johnnie sensed a compassionate note in the answer. "Course I ain't fat," he conceded hastily. "But when Mrs. Kukor gives me filled fish I can see a big diff'rence right away!" "Fat isn't what a boy wants," returned Mr. Perkins.
Poor Mrs. Kukor! Poor daughter Rebecca! Poor baby, whose mamma had a "bad sicknus!" And, yes, poor husband, Mr. Reisenberger! even though he was "awful rich." The broom had swept from under the stove those lengths of clothesline.
Kukor, pushing the door open with a slippered foot, for each hand held a dish. The exciting events which had transpired in the Barber flat being common property up and down the area building, naturally she knew them; also, leaned out of her own window, she had heard more than enough. The paleness of her round face told how anxious she was. The priest stood up.
When Johnnie was dressed, and stood, clean and combed and straight on his pins, his chest heaving as he glanced around a kitchen which was shipshape, and upon his aged friend, who was as presentable as possible, it occurred to him that when a caller happened in this morning Mrs. Kukor, Father Pat, or Cis; or when he, himself, fetched King Arthur, or Mr.
Doors flew open, voices hailed one another up and down the building, and Mrs. Kukor could be heard pattering in a wide circle beyond the ceiling. All of this disturbance brought Cis out of her tiny room, pink-faced once more, and eager-eyed.
So the green eye focused upon the mattress in sorrowful reproof. But the next instant a burst of dialect set Johnnie right in his new friend's eye. "Ach, Chonnie!" cried the little Jewish lady. "Vot iss? Vot iss?" Her concern pleased One-Eye. He sat down, crossed his knees, and swung a spur. Mrs. Kukor had not yet seen him.
Kukor waved both hands in eloquent signals, urging Big Tom to go; tapped her chest, winked, and made little clicking noises with her tongue all to denote the fact that she would see everything straightened up to perfection, but that for old Grandpa's sake further conversation with Johnnie might be a mistake, since weeping all around would surely break out again.
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