Johnnie was provided with a spade and a wheelbarrow, and led to a gaping hole beneath the barn.  I explained that the rain had washed away the soil and made the hole, which must be filled up before more rain should fall.

“Wheer shall I git the dirt from?” Johnnie demanded.

“From the most convenient place,” said I. Ajax and I returned to the barn an hour later.  The hole was filled; but another hole, from which Johnnie had taken the dirt, as large as the first, seriously threatened the under-pinning of the building.

Ajax swore.  Johnnie looked at me, as he drawled out: 

“The boss told me to git the dirt wheer ‘twas mos’ handy.”

Ajax grinned.

“I see.  It was the boss’ fault, not yours.  Now then, Johnnie, the work must be done all over again.”

“If you say so, boys, I’ll do it.”

As we moved away Ajax pointed out the propriety of giving explicit directions.  At dinner time we came back to the barn.  Johnnie had taken the earth out of the first hole and put it back again into the second!

“You star-spangled fool!” said Ajax.

“You tole me,” replied Johnnie, “that the work mus’ be did all over agen—­an’ I done it.”

“Directions,” I remarked, “may be made too explicit.”

After this incident, we always spoke of Johnnie as Bumblepuppy.

Some six months later Alethea-Belle told us that Johnnie Kapus was doing “chores” for the widow Janssen; milking her cow, taking care of the garden, and drawing water.  Upon inquiry, however, we learned that the cow was drying up, the well had caved in, and the garden produced no weeds, it is true, and no vegetables!

“Why doesn’t the widow sack him?” Ajax asked.

“Mis’ Janssen is kinder sorry for Johnnie,” replied the schoolmistress; then she added irrelevantly, “There’s no denyin’ that Johnnie Kapus has the loveliest curly hair.”

About a fortnight after this, when the July sun was at its zenith and the starch out of everything animate and inanimate, old man Kapus came up to the ranch-house.  Johnnie, he said, disappeared during the previous night.

“And he’s bin kidnapped, too,” the uncle added.

“Kidnapped?”

“Yes, boys—­hauled out o’ winder!  A man weighin’ close onter two hundred pounds ‘d naterally prefer to walk out o’ the door, but the widder hauled Johnnie out o’ winder.”

“The widow?”

“Mis’ Janssen.  There was buggy tracks at the foot o’ the melon patch, and the widder’s missin’.  She’s put it up to marry my Johnnie.  I suspicioned something, but I counted on Johnnie.  I sez to myself:  ‘Others might be tempted by a plump, well-lookin’ widder, but not Johnnie.’  Ye see, boys, Johnnie ain’t quite the same as you an’ me.”

“Not quite,” said Ajax.