Of course Joe was delighted when he heard of the plan, for who ever saw a boy who didn't like to visit his grandfather?
Mrs. Patten wrote to Grandma Knight about Joe's bad habit, which was giving them so much trouble; and the two old people talked it all over and felt sure that they would know what to do when the time came.
"I'll keep the boy so busy that he won't have any time to forget," said his grandfather. "There is always plenty of work on a farm for a good boy."
"He can help me, too," added Grandma. "I'll pay him with cookies;" and she hurried out to the kitchen to make a big jarful of the round sugar cookies that Joe liked best.
Joe was delighted with everything on the farm, and for several days he did very well.
"He isn't such a bad boy after all," Grandpa told Grandma when Joe had gone upstairs to bed one night.
But the very next morning he gave Joe a bucket of grain to feed the hens, and in the afternoon he found the bucket in the barn, still full of grain. When he spoke to Joe about it, the boy answered carelessly, "Oh, yes, I did forget it; but it won't matter much, will it? Hens can't tell the time of day."
"I suppose not," his grandfather replied; "but I don't believe they like to go hungry any better than you do."
The next night Joe went to the pasture to get the cows, and came home driving nine, when he knew very well that his grandfather had ten. He never noticed the difference until Grandpa spoke to him about it, and then he seemed to care so little that the good old man began to think Joe one of the most careless boys he ever saw.
Two or three days later Mr. Knight went to market, leaving Joe to feed the horses at noon. When he reached home at night, the horses had not been fed, and Joe said he didn't think they would mind going without one dinner.