“I am sorry. Aunt Janet,” muttered Johnny, “that I—”
“You need never say anything about that,” his aunt returned, quickly. “I did not see who you were at first. You are too old to be spanked by a woman, but you ought to be whipped by a man, and I wish your grandfather were alive to do it.”
“Yes, ma'am,” said Johnny. He looked at her bravely. “He could if he wanted to,” said he.
Aunt Janet smiled at him proudly. “Of course,” said she, “a boy like you never gets the worst of it fighting with other boys.”
“No, ma'am,” said Johnny.
Aunt Janet smiled again. “Now run and wash your face and hands,” said she; “you must not keep supper waiting. Your mother has a paper to write for her club, and I have promised to help her.”
“Yes, ma'am,” said Johnny. He walked out, carrying the great gold timepiece, bewildered, embarrassed, modest beneath his honors, but little cock of the walk, whether he would or no, for reasons entirely and forever beyond his ken.
JOHNNY-IN-THE-WOODS
JOHNNY TRUMBULL, he who had demonstrated his claim to be Cock of the Walk by a most impious hand-to-hand fight with his own aunt, Miss Janet Trumbull, in which he had been decisively victorious, and won his spurs, consisting of his late grandfather's immense, solemnly ticking watch, was to take a new path of action. Johnny suddenly developed the prominent Trumbull trait, but in his case it was inverted. Johnny, as became a boy of his race, took an excursion into the past, but instead of applying the present to the past, as was the tendency of the other Trumbulls, he forcibly applied the past to the present. He fairly plastered the past over the exigencies of his day and generation like a penetrating poultice of mustard, and the results were peculiar.