"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?"