“Wasn’t it fun to see her little face, though!” said Johnny, as he and Pep walked home, having declined the proffered drive for the sake of a little more skating. “I think she thought something had made her feet slippery, all of a sudden—she’d never been on ice before.”
The thaw came very soon after this, as thaws will come, even when people have new steel skates, but happily, there are always tops and marbles, and, as some wise person has remarked, “When one door shuts, another opens.”
Johnny did not play marbles “for keeps”; his father had explained to him that taking anything without giving a fair return for it is dishonesty, and as he quite understood this, he had no desire to “win” marbles from boys who could not shoot so well as he could, but he enjoyed playing fully as much as anybody did, and found the game exciting enough when played merely for the hope of victory.
It was in the midst of a very even game that the school bell rang one morning. Johnny and one other boy were the champions; the rest had “gone out.” They lingered for one more shot—two more—then just a third to finish the game, and then, as they hurried into the schoolroom, they found that the roll had been called, and they were marked late.
Johnny had intended to take one more look at his history lesson, but there was no time. He was sure of it all, except two or three dates, and of course, one of those dates came to him—or rather, didn’t come; it was the question that came. The next boy gave the answer, and Johnny’s history lesson for the first time that term, was marked “Imperfect.”
This vexed him so, that he gave only a small half of his mind to his mental arithmetic, and he lost his place in the class,—lost it to a boy who was almost certain to keep it, too.
Thinking of this misfortune, he dropped a penful of ink on his spotless new copy-book, and, although he promptly licked it off, an ugly smear remained, and the writing teacher reproved him for untidiness. So he was very glad when two o’clock struck, and he could go home and tell his mournful story, for he had an uncomfortable feeling, under the injured one, that the real, responsible cause of his misfortunes was one Johnny Leslie.
When his mother had heard it all with much sympathy, she paused a moment, and then repeated these words,—
“‘That they who do lean only upon the hope of Thy Heavenly grace, may evermore be defended by Thy mighty power.’”