Mrs. Leslie laughed, but she kissed him, too.
“There’s a bundle in it,” she said, “quite a large bundle—some work to be taken to your friend Mrs. Waring, upon whom you have called so many times at my invitation. I’m afraid, from what one of her neighbors told me yesterday, that the poor woman has had very little work lately, and less than very little money; so I have hunted up all I could for her. And please tell her, Johnny, that I have some things for Phil, which I will give her when she brings the work home; and to please bring it as soon as she can. She will find two car tickets in the bundle.”
“Couldn’t you roll ’em up with the work, and let me take ’em to her now, mamma?” asked Johnny.
“Why, yes,” said Mrs. Leslie, “if it would not be too heavy for you; but the other bundle is quite as large as this, dear. Do you think you can manage so much?”
Johnny lifted Tiny, swung her round once, and set her down with a triumphant “There!”
“The double load would certainly not be so heavy as Tiny,” said Mrs. Leslie, “so I will tie them together at once.”
While his mother did this, Johnny marched up and down, whistling, with Polly on his shoulder. Then a bright idea struck him: he put Polly down, ran for his shinny stick, thrust it through the twine, and slung the bundle over the shoulder where Polly had just been.
“I’ll pretend I’m an emigrant, starting for the ‘Far West,’” he said. “Goodbye, my dear mother, my dear sisters!” and, with a heart-rending sob, followed by a wild prance down the walk, Johnny was gone.
Now the particular horse car which he was to take only came along every half-hour. He saw one as he walked up the cross street, about a block away, and was just going to shout, when he heard a crack and a “flop”; the shinny stick flew up in the air, and, turning round, he saw his bundle, a bundle no longer, but a confused heap. The twine, worn through by the stick, had given way, and the paper had been burst by the fall.