"

"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.

Johnny, being bidden of a rainy day during the midsummer vacation to
remain in the house, to keep quiet, read a book, and be a good boy,
obeyed, but his obedience was of a doubtful measure of wisdom.

Johnny got a book out of his uncle Jonathan Trumbull's dark little
library while Jonathan was walking sedately to the post-office, holding
his dripping umbrella at a wonderful slant of exactness, without regard
to the wind, thereby getting the soft drive of the rain full in his
face, which became, as it were, bedewed with tears, entirely outside any
cause of his own emotions.

Johnny probably got the only book of an antiorthodox trend in his
uncle's library. He found tucked away in a snug corner an ancient
collection of Border Ballads, and h