From Ailenroc’s Book, by Cornelia Alexander
Johnnie was pouting. Ignore the fact, if you choose; but pouting he was, and in a way that drove all the sunny brightness from his face and the joyous light from his eyes. His rosy lips were thrust out, and he had just as many wrinkles on his forehead as there was room for; and, being a broad forehead, it held a good many.
The little man had met with something that even we grown-up children do not like. He had met with a disappointment, but was not philosopher enough to face it bravely. His heart had been set on a new pair of boots, and his father had seen fit to refuse them to him. Johnnie’s boots were not worn out by any means; they only twisted over the heel a little, after the manner of boys’ boots, and a white spot or two suggested the breaking through of restless toes; but father thought they could be shined up a while yet. Johnnie differed with him, and took it out in pouting. Was ever a young man of nine years so mistreated? He glowered from his corner, after he had pushed little May and her sympathetic chatter away and had made her crack the white arm of Miss Dolly and cry over it till her pretty eyes were red. He watched his mother, and wondered how she could bear to see him in such trouble. Surely no boy in the round world had ever been treated so badly before; surely no boy was ever so miserable. Lizzie, his eldest sister, had really turned her face away as she left the room, lest he should see her laughing; but he did, and gulped it down with the rest.
He wondered what kind old grandfather thought of the way they all acted toward his grandson; but, being buried in his newspaper, possibly he did not think of it at all.
Suddenly grandpa threw down his paper, and said: “Dear, dear dear! Things were not so in my young days.” Read More
