ngs.

He looked through his tears at the candle in the tall silver
candlestick, and by half shutting his eyes he could make three candles,
and by blinking a little he could see pretty colors; but amusement
tends to dry tears, and Johnny wanted to cry.

He caught the old cat and watched his tears slide off her smooth fur,
but when he held her head on one side and let a large round tear run
into her ear, she left him in indignation. Then he looked out of the
window. The snow was falling fast, as it had been all day.

"Drandma!" he called, but the old lady was busy in the next room, and
could not, or would not hear him, so he walked to the door and said:
"Drandma, may I sweep a path for drandpa?"

This time "drandma" did hear and see him too. He was brought back and
reseated, with marks of flour here and there on his little checked
apron.

We must not blame grandma too much; it was a very long time since she
was a child, and Johnny, to use her own words, "had almost worn her
soul out of her."

When Johnny's mother died, his home was in New York, and while Johnny
sat in his little chair by the fire-place, he was thinking of New York,
wondering if he ever should see it again,--the great stores with their
bright windows,--and, above all, hear the never-ending bustle and hum
that would drown the noise of twenty great clocks like grandpa's. Then
he thought how he had been deluded in coming to Plowfield; stories of
bright green fields, butterflies, hay-carts piled high with hay, and
'way up on the top a little boy named Johnny.

A horse would be there, a cow (wrongly supposed by city people to mean
always a plentiful supply of milk), and a blue checked apron; but no
one mentioned the apron, and no one said that winter came in Plowfield;
not that they meant to deceive Johnny--they couldn't remember
everything, but it came all the same, and the bright green fields were
brown and bare; then Johnny didn't like them at all, and when the snow
came, grandma said if he went out he'd have the croup.

The butterflies forgot Johnny.

He did have _one_ ride on the hay, but grandpa didn't have much hay.

The horse was not such a great comfort after all; he never drove except
taking hold of what reins grandpa didn't use, and the cow--yes, Johnny
did like the cow--she was a very good cow, but, if Johnny could have
expressed himself, he would have said that she was a little
_monotonous_.

Johnny couldn't remember his mother, which