“I don’t see it at all, Johnny Leslie, and what’s more, I don’t believe you do either! The boys at school would only laugh at you, if the worst came to the worst, and I’m pretty sure, from things Jim has told mamma, that the kind of boys he knows would just as lief kick him, or knock him down, if they were big enough, as to look at him! And if you’d stand up for that poor little boy, I think some more of them would, too. Don’t you remember, papa said boys were a good deal like sheep; that if one went over the fence, the whole flock would come after him; sometimes, I wish I could do something for that boy! I don’t see how you can bear to let them all make fun of him, and never say a word, when it made you so mad, that time, when those two dreadful boys tried to hang my kitten. It seems to me it’s exactly the same thing!”
Tiny’s face was quite red by the time she had finished this long speech, and Johnny’s, though for a very different reason, was red too. He had been angry with Tiny, at first, but before she stopped speaking, his anger had turned against himself. She was a little frightened at her own daring in “speaking up” to Johnny in this way, but she soon saw that her fright was needless.
“Tiny,” he said, solemnly, after a rather long pause, “you can’t expect me to wish I was a girl, you know, they do have such flat times, but I will say I think its easier for them to be good than it is for boys,—in some ways, anyhow,—and I think I must be the beginning of a snob! You didn’t even look foolish the day mamma took Jim with us to see the pictures, and we met pretty much everybody we knew, and my face felt red all the time. I’m really very much obliged to you for shaking me up. I shall talk it all out with mamma, now, and see if I can’t settle myself. To think how much better a fellow Jim is than I am, when I’ve had mamma and papa and you, and he don’t even know whether he had any mother at all!” And Johnny gave utterance to his feelings in something between a howl and a groan. To his great consternation, Tiny burst into a passion of crying, hugging him, and trying to talk as she sobbed. When he at last made out what she was saying, it was something like this,—
“I thought you were going to be mean and horrid—and you’re such a dear boy—and I couldn’t bear to have you like that—and I love you so—oh, Johnny!”
Johnny may live to be a very old man; I hope he will, for good men are greatly needed, but no matter how long he lives, he will never forget the feelings that surged through his heart when he found how bitter it was to his little sister to be disappointed in him. He hugged her with all his might, and in a very choked voice he told her that he hoped she’d never have to be ashamed of him again—that she shouldn’t if he could possibly help it.
And after the talk with his mother that night, he hunted up the “silken sleeve,” which he had worn until it was threadbare, and then put away so carefully that he had a hard time to find it. It was too shabby to be put on his hat again, but somehow he liked it better than a newer one, and he stuffed it into his jacket, when he dressed the next morning, about where he supposed his heart to be. He reached the schoolhouse a few minutes before the bell rang, and found everybody but Ned Owen laughing and talking. He was sitting at his desk with a book, on which his eyes were intently fixed, held before him, but his cheeks were flushed, and his lips pressed tightly together.
Johnny did not hear anything but a confusion of voices, but he could easily guess what the talk had been about. He walked straight to his desk, and, laying his hand with apparent carelessness on Ned’s shoulder, he glanced down at the open history, saying, in his friendliest manner, which was very friendly,—
“It’s pretty stiff to-day, isn’t it? I wish I could reel off the dates the way you do, but every one I learn seems to drive out the one that went in before it!”
The flush on Ned’s face deepened, and he looked up with an expression of utter astonishment, which made Johnny tingle with shame from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. And Johnny thought afterward how, if the case had been reversed, he would have shaken off the tardy hand and given a rude answer to the long-delayed civility.
Ned replied, very quietly,—