The little girl he had knocked down was more frightened than hurt; but Charlie was very sorry, for he was not at all an ill-natured boy; and when he was at home by himself, while Ethel went for her donkey-rides, he had plenty of time to think things over, and made a good use of it. At first he found it very hard to be patient, but after a little while he found it becoming much easier to wait, and every time he tried it became easier still.
Next summer, when Father gave him and Ethel the promised donkeys, he said, "I am proud to trust you now, Charlie, and hope that you will have some happy times with your Neddie."
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"There now, dear, run away, and make haste, or you'll be late to school, and that will never do."
Little Johnnie Strong obediently gathered his books together, and with an effort to keep back the tears that were filling his eyes, held up his face for a last kiss.
"Good-by, then, mother dear, and I'll try to be brave and remember what you've been saying. I'll just do the very best I can, and perhaps I shall be able to manage it after all."
"That's my brave little man, now; good-by, dearie." And Johnnie was gone.
Very often Mrs. Strong and Johnnie had little talks at breakfast-time about his troubles, and he used to say it helped him through the day to remember his mother's loving words. The conversation with which this story began was the end of one of these talks. It was getting near examination time, and Johnnie had been trying very hard to catch up with the other boys in his spelling and writing. Sums he could manage now pretty well, and he read very fairly; but it seemed to him he should _never_ be able to spell properly. "Thousands of words," he would say, despairingly, "and no two spelt alike." However, he went off to school very bravely, and his determination to do the best he could was a wonderful help.
He got on very well that morning until the time came for "dictation," and then poor Johnnie's troubles began. He knew there were boys in his class very little better at spelling than he, who copied from their neighbors whenever a word was given out that they could not spell; but Johnnie was above doing that. It was cheating and deceiving, and he would rather every word of his exercise were wrong than be a cheat. But that morning he was sorely tempted. He thought there had never been such a hard piece of dictation; and when Jimmy Lane, who sat next to him, tried to help him by whispering the letters of one very hard word, it required some courage to ask him to stop.