e least resembled Johnny. No
dim blue eye of retrospection and reflection had Johnny; no tendency to
tall slenderness which would later bow beneath the greater weight of the
soul. Johnny was small, but wiry of build, and looked able to bear any
amount of mental development without a lasting bend of his physical
shoulders. Johnny had, at the early age of ten, whopped nearly every
boy in school, but that was a secret of honor. It was well known in the
school that, once the Trumbulls heard of it, Johnny could never whop
again. "You fellows know," Johnny had declared once, standing over his
prostrate and whimpering foe, "that I don't mind getting whopped at
home, but they might send me away to another school, and then I could
never whop any of you fellows."

Johnny Trumbull kicking up the dust, himself dust-covered, his shoes,
his little queerly fitting dun suit, his cropped head, all thickly
powdered, loved it. He sniffed in that dust like a grateful incense. He
did not stop dust-kicking when he saw his aunt Janet coming, for, as he
considered, her old black gown was not worth the sacrifice. It was true
that she might see him. She sometimes did, if she were not reading a
book as she walked. It had always been a habit with the Janet Trumbulls
to read improving books when they walked abroad. To-day Johnny saw, with
a quick glance of those sharp, black eyes, so unlike the Trumbulls',
that his aunt Janet was reading. He therefore expected her to pass him
without recognition, and marched on kicking up the dust. But suddenly,
as he grew nearer the spry little figure, he was aware of a pair of gray
eyes, before which waved protectingly a hand clad in a black silk
glove with dangling finger-tips, because it was too long, and it dawned
swiftly upon him that Aunt Janet was trying to shield her face from the
moving column of brown motes. He stopped kicking, but it was too late.
Aunt Janet had him by the collar and was vigorously shaking him with
nervous strength.

"You are a very naughty little boy," declared Aunt Janet. "You should
know better than to walk along the street raising so much dust. No
well-brought-up child ever does such things. Who are your parents, little
boy?"

Johnny perceived that Aunt Janet did not recognize him, which was easily
explained. She wore her reading-spectacles and not her far-seeing ones;
besides, her reading spectacles were obscured by dust and her nephew's
face was nearly obliterated. Also as she