This vexed him so, that he gave only a small half of his mind to his mental arithmetic, and he lost his place in the class,—lost it to a boy who was almost certain to keep it, too.
Thinking of this misfortune, he dropped a penful of ink on his spotless new copy-book, and, although he promptly licked it off, an ugly smear remained, and the writing teacher reproved him for untidiness. So he was very glad when two o’clock struck, and he could go home and tell his mournful story, for he had an uncomfortable feeling, under the injured one, that the real, responsible cause of his misfortunes was one Johnny Leslie.
When his mother had heard it all with much sympathy, she paused a moment, and then repeated these words,—
“‘That they who do lean only upon the hope of Thy Heavenly grace, may evermore be defended by Thy mighty power.’”
A sudden light came into Johnny’s face, and he exclaimed,—
“That was it, mamma dear! I wasn’t leaning on it at all, and of course, I went down! I know all about it now. I didn’t get up when you called me the first time, and I said my prayers in a hurry, just as if they were the multiplication table, and I didn’t wait to read the verse in my little book—I meant to do it after breakfast, but the marbles rattled in my pocket, and I forgot all about it, I was in such a hurry to have a game before school. And I wouldn’t stop to think, when the bell rang, except a sort of make-believe think that a minute more would not make me too late to answer to my name, and so I lost the chance to go over those dates. And the question I missed in mental arithmetic was a mean little easy thing, if I’d had my wits about me, but I was worrying about the history, and I made that dreadful blot because I was thinking of both, and did not look, and dug my pen down to the bottom of the inkstand. It’s just like ‘The House that Jack built.’”
“Yes,” said his mother, “I don’t think anything, the smallest thing, stands quite alone; it is fast to something else that it pulls after it, so we must keep a sharp lookout for the first things. We can’t rub out this bad day—it is like the blot on your copy book; you will keep seeing the mark, even if you don’t make another. But then, you can use the mark, with the dear Saviour’s help, to keep you from making another. To-morrow will be another day. You know Tiny and you like Tennyson’s ‘Bugle Song’ so much, here is something else he said,—