“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 was fortunate then, or he would have cried for her.  He saw his father only once a month; he was making money very fast in the dingy little office away down town in New York, and spending it almost as fast in a house away up town for Johnny’s new mamma, and, with Plowfield so far away, it was no wonder Johnny’s father was always on the move.  He ought to have been there that very day; the heavy snow perhaps had prevented; that was one reason why Johnny had been so naughty.

He sat quite still after he was brought back.  He was too indignant to cry; he felt as if there was no such thing as justice or generosity in grandmothers.

After a while he felt that he had thought of something that would do justice to his feelings.

“Drandma,” he cried, “I wish I’d smashed the bowl to-day when I spilt the cream!”

Grandma didn’t say anything for fear Johnny would know she was laughing.

He grew more and more indignant; he never in his life had felt so naughty.  He thought of all the rebellious things he had ever heard of, and making a few choice selections, mentioned them to his grandmother, and she, laughing, stored them away, to tell grandpa, consoling herself with the idea that if he was bad he wasn’t stupid.