Copy-Cat and Other Stories by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
page 64 of 406 (15%)
page 64 of 406 (15%)
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late grandfather's immense, solemnly ticking watch,
was to take a new path of action. Johnny suddenly developed the prominent Trumbull trait, but in his case it was inverted. Johnny, as became a boy of his race, took an excursion into the past, but instead of applying the present to the past, as was the tendency of the other Trumbulls, he forcibly applied the past to the present. He fairly plastered the past over the exigencies of his day and generation like a penetrating poultice of mustard, and the results were peculiar. Johnny, being bidden of a rainy day during the midsummer vacation to remain in the house, to keep quiet, read a book, and be a good boy, obeyed, but his obedience was of a doubtful measure of wisdom. Johnny got a book out of his uncle Jonathan Trum- bull's dark little library while Jonathan was walking sedately to the post-office, holding his dripping umbrella at a wonderful slant of exactness, without regard to the wind, thereby getting the soft drive of the rain full in his face, which became, as it were, bedewed with tears, entirely outside any cause of his own emotions. Johnny probably got the only book of an anti- orthodox trend in his uncle's library. He found tucked away in a snug corner an ancient collection |
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