“Johnny!” she called wildly. “My darling! What has happened?”
A pale face, a rough-looking head, with hay sticking out of its hair, appeared at the top of the ladder, and Johnny staggered weakly down.
“Oh, mamma!” he groaned, “I think I must be going to die! I never felt this way before!”
His mother caught him in her arms, and as she did so, the smell of the rank cigar which Johnny, with wasted heroism, had smoked to the end, struck her indignant nose.
“Johnny!” she exclaimed, reproachfully, “you’ve been smoking, and you told me what was just as bad as a lie about it!”
And the warm-hearted, offended little mother burst out crying, and sobbed with her head on Johnny’s dusty shoulder.
Nothing she could have said would have gone to Johnny’s heart of hearts as those sobs did. He forgot his alarming illness as he caught her in his arms, and said, imploringly,—
“Oh, mammy, my darling mammy, please don’t cry like that; I’ll die before I’ll ever tell you a lie, or act you one, again. Oh, please say you forgive me!”
Of course Tiny felt obliged to help with the crying, and when Mr. Leslie, coming home to a deserted house, traced his family to the barn, he came upon a place of wailing.
At first, he was inclined to laugh, but when he heard of the deceit which had followed Johnny’s first effort at smoking, he looked very grave. No one, however, could doubt Johnny’s penitence, and as he lay on the lounge in his mother’s room, while the heavy thunder and sharp lightning seemed to fill the air, and waves of deathly sickness rolled over him, he made some very good resolutions, which were not forgotten, as such resolutions sometimes are, after his recovery.