"It's all your fault, Johnny Harris; if it hadn't been for you, I wouldn't have burnt my foot in the first place. I just can't bear to do it all over again, and besides, there isn't time anyway."
He lifted his hand angrily, and slapped Johnny's fat, freckled face. Then both the boys began to cry.
Aunt Jane disappeared in the closet for something, and stood there a moment, shaking with inaudible laughter, till the square-bowed spectacles slid down her nose. She looked very stern, though, when she came out and said, "There! there! boys, that's enough. It's no use to cry over spilled milk or swallowed money, either."
"Oh, please, ma'am, Miss Jane," begged Johnny, "won't you teach me to sew carpet-rags? I'll pay him back sure if you'll let me."
Aunt Jane looked at the clumsy little hands, brown, dirty, and covered with warts, and shook her head. It seemed a hopeless task. But the earnest look on the face and in the anxious eyes made her relent, and she gave a reluctant promise.
The rag-sewing commenced again. This time two boys sat on the door-step, longing to be out in the spring wind and sunshine, and one nursed his lame foot, and one wrestled manfully with thread that would snarl, and needles that would stick into his clumsy fingers.
As they sewed they talked, and the subject that came up oftenest was the circus. How Johnny longed to go! After awhile a hope whispered to him, that maybe he could pay his debt to Jode in time to earn enough money to go himself.
Although Aunt Jane sorted the rags so that most of the short ones fell to her lot, and the long ones to Johnny's, and contributed many a yard on the sly, Jode's foot was well before Johnny proudly paid over the two dimes, and only a long, red scar remained, to remind Jode of his disobedience and punishment.
"Wisht I was goin', too," sighed Johnny, when the last pound was weighed and delivered.
Then, regardless of ceremony, he pulled his hat over his eyes, and started home on the run. He did not go all the way. Aunt Jane spied him when she went to the barn for eggs. He was lying on the hay with his face in his arms.