“Mamma wouldn’t worry,” said Johnny. “She doesn’t expect me home till tea time; and you needn’t mind keeping me in, just for once.”
There was a little more talk about it, and then Mrs. Waring consented to go, and Johnny was left alone with the baby, whose name, as he had ascertained, was Phil, and who seemed quite pleased with his new nurse. He was a good-natured, rollicking baby, and he pulled Johnny about the room, talking in his own fashion, and trying one sort of mischief after another, looking up with roguish laughter as Johnny gently stopped him. But at last his fat legs seemed to grow tired, and he subsided on the floor, where he actually remained quiet for five minutes, trying to make his wooden horse “eat” a large India-rubber ball. Johnny found he was tired, too, and he sat down on the sofa, where, unfortunately, he had thrown his school books. He picked up his mental arithmetic.
“I’ll not study,” he said, as if he were answering some one, “but I just want to see if to-morrow’s lesson is hard.”
“If it takes four men three days to build five miles of stone wall, how much can one man build in a day?”
What a question! Johnny’s forehead puckered, he grasped the book as if he would pinch the answer out, and gradually slipped down on the sofa, until he came near joining the baby on the floor. Meanwhile, Master Phil, tired of feeding a horse who would not eat, began to wrestle with the table-cover, and a large Bible, which lay near the edge of the table, fell to the floor with a bang, narrowly missing the baby’s head.
Johnny sprang to his feet, thoroughly roused and frightened, for Phil, startled by the crash, and also expecting the “Naughty baby!” and little slap on his hands which always followed any unusual piece of mischief, burst into a roar, although he was quite unable to squeeze out a single tear.
But this Johnny was too much alarmed to notice, and, picking up the offender as if he had been made of glass, the amateur nurse felt him very carefully all over, to find out if any bones were broken!
When he came to the little sinner’s ribs, Phil made up his baby mind that he was being tickled instead of scolded, and roared again, but this time with laughter, in which Johnny could not help joining, though he was provoked both with his interesting charge and himself.