could not walk to the post-office and back, even with
the drawback of a dripping old umbrella instead of
a bow and arrow, without looking a bit like Robin
Hood, especially when fresh from reading about him.

Then suddenly something distracted his thoughts
from Uncle Jonathan. The long, feathery grass in
the field moved with a motion distinct from that
caused by the wind and rain. Johnny saw a tiger-
striped back emerge, covering long leaps of terror.
Johnny knew the creature for a cat afraid of Uncle
Jonathan. Then he saw the grass move behind the
first leaping, striped back, and he knew there were
more cats afraid of Uncle Jonathan. There were
even motions caused by unseen things, and he
reasoned, "Kittens afraid of Uncle Jonathan."
Then Johnny reflected with a great glow of indigna-
tion that the Simmonses kept an outrageous num-
ber of half-starved cats and kittens, besides a quota
of children popularly supposed to be none too well
nourished, let alone properly clothed. Then it was
that Johnny Trumbull's active, firm imagination
slapped the past of old romance like a most thorough
mustard poultice over the present. There could be
no Lincoln Green, no following of brave outlaws
(that is, in the strictest sense), no bows and arrows,
no sojourning under greenwood trees and the rest,
but something he could, and would, do and be.
That rainy day when Johnny Trumbull was a good
boy, and stayed in the house, and read a book,