During the summer vacation, one year, Josephine and Edward Brown spent
a month with Flora Lee and her brother. The visitors were distant
relations, and lived in the city of New York.
Josephine was a pretty little girl, but she had a very bad habit which
made for her a great many enemies. It is a common fault, not only among
children, but among grown-up people, and which often makes others
dislike them.
My readers shall see this fault for themselves, as the story advances,
and I hope they will understand and avoid it.
Perhaps Josephine was not so much to blame as her parents for this bad
habit. I am sure she did not understand, and did not know, why her
companions soon took a dislike to her.
Josephine and Edward were very much pleased with the home of Mr. Lee,
and for several days they were as happy as the days were long. They
were not used to the country, and it seemed to them just as though
they should never be tired of running in the fields, and of visiting
the woods and the river.
One day, after they had been playing very hard in the orchard, the
children all went into the house to rest themselves. Josephine threw
herself upon the sofa in the sitting room, and said she was tired
almost to death.
Of course she did not mean so, and only intended to say that she was
very tired, though I think it likely that, if an excursion to the woods
or the river had been proposed, she would not have been too tired to
join the party.
“Won’t you please to bring me a glass of water, Flora?” said Josephine,
after she had rested a little while.
“To be sure I will,” replied Flora, rising, and getting the glass of
water for her friend.
“Thank you,” added Josephine, as she took the glass, and drank its
contents.
Flora, when she had given her the water, happened to think of something
in the entry which she wanted, and went for it.
“Won’t you please to take this tumbler, Frank?” said Josephine.
Frank did not make any reply, but rose from his seat, took the glass,
and put it upon the table.
“Thank you, Frank; I never was so tired in all my life.”
“Are you quite sure of that?”
“Quite sure.”
“I am sorry for it,” replied Frank, rather dryly.
“Why are you so sorry?”
“Edward and I are going fishing; and father said Flora might go with
us.”
“That will be nice,” exclaimed Josephine, jumping up from the sofa, as
fresh as though she had just got out of bed. “I will go too.”
“You?” said Frank, laughing.
“Why shouldn’t I go? You know I like to go to the river above all
things. Won’t we have a nice time!”
“_We_ will, I think.”
“Don’t you mean to let me go? Come, now, I think you are real rude,
Frank,” pouted the young lady from New York.
“Let you go? I am sure I shall not prevent you from going.”
“What do you mean, then?”
“Didn’t you say just now that you were tired almost to death? that you
were never so tired in your life before?”
“I was; but I feel rested now.”
“You got over it very quick.”
“Are you going, Josey?” asked Flora, as she returned to the room.
“To be sure, I am.”
“Well, we are all ready. It is ten o’clock now, and father said John
might go with us at that time,” said Frank, moving towards the door.
“I am ready,” replied Flora, who had brought her rubbers in from the
entry.
“So am I,” said Josephine. “Dear me! my rubbers are up in my chamber.
Won’t you go up and get them for me, Flora?”
Flora went up stairs and got the rubbers for her, and Josephine thanked
her for her kindness. The boys were waiting in front of the house with
their fish poles on their shoulders, by this time, and, as boys always
are when they are going fishing, were very much in a hurry.
“O, dear me!” exclaimed Josephine, when she had put on her rubbers. “I
left my sack in the orchard. Please to go and get it for me, Flora, and
I will make Frank wait for us till you return with it.”
“Yes, I will get it;” and she bounded away for the missing garment.
“We never shall get to the river at this rate,” said Edward, when his
sister had told him the cause of the new delay. “It all comes of having
girls go with us.”
“There is time enough, Master Edward,” added John, the young man who
worked in the garden and helped take care of the horses. “You will be
tired enough before dinner time.”
“Here comes Flora. She is a dear good girl. I am very much obliged to
you,” said Josephine, as she took the sack. “Now I will be ever so
much more obliged to you if you will go into the house and get me one
of those nice doughnuts, such as we had for supper last night. I am
almost starved.”
“I think you had better not go a-fishing then,” added Edward, bluntly.
“Why not? Can’t I be hungry and go a-fishing?”
“We don’t want to wait all day for you.”
In a few minutes Flora joined them again; but the poor girl was
sweating, and out of breath, she had run so fast in supplying the
wants of her little New York friend.
“I believe we are all ready now,” said Josephine, as she took the
doughnut and began to nibble at it, just as a mouse nibbles at a piece
of cheese.
“If you are not, we will go without you,” replied Edward, whose
patience, as the reader has seen, was by no means proof against his
sister’s repeated delays.
“There! as true as I’m alive, there is one thing more. I have forgotten
my sunshade,” exclaimed Josephine.
“Never mind your sunshade. What do you want of a sunshade when you are
going a-fishing?” said Edward, as he moved down the path towards the
road.
“O, I can’t go without my sunshade. I should be as brown as an Indian
before we got back.”
“No matter if you are. Come along, or else stay at home, and not bother
us any longer.”
“Please, Flora, won’t you go up in my room and get it for me? I will do
as much for you any time. And we will walk along, and you can overtake
us before we have gone far. We will walk slowly.”
It is very likely that Flora thought her young friend was imposing upon
her; but without making any reply, she ran for the sunshade. She had
to look in quite a number of places before she found it, for Josephine
could not always tell where she had left her things; and when Flora
overtook the party, she was so weary and out of breath that she did
not enjoy the rest of the walk very much.
Do not my readers see by this time what Josephine’s fault was?
[Illustration]
[Illustration: JOSEPHINE AND FLORA.]