“You never did,” said Johnny. “I have been a bad boy, Richard—I ran away from home. I read books about boys that went off to see the world, and I thought it would be fun.”
“Well!” said Richard, laughing; “you are not the first fellow who has found out that bread and butter and money don’t grow on the bushes. Now I suppose you are quite ready for me to carry you back?”
“Yes,” said Johnny.
“Well, eat your supper, and then be off to bed, for I shall start before the hens are awake; and mind you tell your folks that I had no hand in your going off. It looks rather suspicious, you see—coming straight out to my house. Lucky you did not fall into worse hands; and, Betty, you might as well brush up his dirty shoes and take a little dust off his jacket and cap. I can always tell a boy that hasn’t seen his mother for four-and-twenty hours. Ah, Johnny, nothing like a mother. Don’t you be too proud, now, to ask her pardon for running off; you young scapegrace.”
“No I ain’t,” said Johnny.
“What are you laughing at?” asked Richard.
“I was thinking,” said Johnny, as he watched Betty dusting his jacket, “what a silly boy I was, and how I thought that one of these days every body would want to see the jacket and trowsers that the great traveler John Sims had on, when he first started on foot to go round the world.”
“Never mind that,” said Richard, laughing; “it will be a cheap suit of clothes for you, if it only teaches you that a good home is the best place for boys, and a good father and mother the very best of friends.”
“Wake up, wake up,” shouted Richard, shaking John by the shoulder the next morning, “my team is all harnessed, and at the door; and Betty has some smoking-hot coffee down stairs; wake up, Johnny, and we’ll get into town time enough to eat breakfast with your mother.”
Johnny jumped out of bed, and in his hurry, put his legs into the sleeves of his jacket: he was not used to dressing in the dark; the hot coffee was soon swallowed, and jumping into the market cart beside John, they rattled off by starlight down the road. Richard did not talk much, he was thinking how much money his turnips, and carrots, and beets, and parsnips, would bring him, so that Johnny had plenty of time to think. Every mile that brought them nearer to the city made him feel more and more what a naughty boy he had been, to distress such a good father and mother; so that he was quite ready when the market cart rattled over the paved streets of the city, and up to his father’s door, to say all that such a foolish boy should say, when his parents came out to meet him; nor did he get angry when “the fellows” joked him about his “long journey round the world.” And when they found he could laugh at his own folly, as well as they, they soon stopped teasing him. Johnny has some little boys of his own now, and when they begin to talk big, he always tells them the story of “John Sims, the famous traveler.”