As time went on, from that Fourth of July when Johnny had reason to change his views about independence, and as he thought more about that, and other matters connected with it, he grew only the more firmly convinced that any of his rights which trod upon the toes of other people’s rights, were only wrongs under a false name.
The boys at his school nearly all liked him; he “went into things” so heartily, that he was wanted on both sides in all the games that had more than one. But with all his love of fun, the boys soon found that there were some sorts of fun—or what they called so—for which it was useless to ask his help. So when recess came, the morning before school closed for the summer, a group of boys gathered in a corner of the playground, whispering together, and did not ask him to join them. He felt a little left out in the cold, for some of his best friends were in the group, but he was not naturally suspicious, and his mother had brought him up in a wholesome fear of imagining himself injured or slighted.
“Always take good-will for granted, Johnny,” she said to him once, when he fancied himself neglected by somebody, “at least until you have the most positive proof of ill-will.”
So he joined some of the smaller boys, who did not seem to have been invited to the conference, and made them supremely happy by getting up a game of football.
He had just parted from one of the larger boys, on his way home from school that afternoon, and was near his gate, when a little fellow, the youngest of all his schoolmates, stuck his head cautiously out of the nearly closed gate, and, after seeing that the coast was clear, said in a mysterious whisper,—
“Hold on, Johnny, will you? I’ve got something to tell you, but if you ever say I told you, you’ll get me into the awfullest scrape that ever was!”
If little Jamie Hughes had been talking to anybody but Johnny, he would have exacted a very solemn “indeed and double deed and upon my sacred honor I’ll never tell!”
But the boys all felt very sure, by this time, that Johnny would not do them an ill-turn, no matter what chance he might have; so Jamie went hurriedly on, linking his arm in Johnny’s as he spoke, and drawing him inside the gate and up the walk, as if he feared being seen.