208 A SNAIL’S RACE.

“Good-bye, laddie; never mind me. Sooner or later I'll
get to town—slow and steady wins the race.”

Away went Johnny. How fast he could run when he was
going anywhere that he liked!

If he were going up to Betty’s cottage, for instance, with
a penny for sweets, or down to the meadow to play, or round
by the mill to watch the miller turn on the water, which was
great fun, or along the road to meet father coming home and
ride his horse back to the stable;—when bound on either of
these errands Johnny’s feet hardly seemed to touch the ground,
they went along so fast.

But in the morning, when he was going to school, you
would not have known him for the same boy; he scarcely went
along any more nimbly-than old Betty then, because he was
not at all anxious to get there.

Soon Johnny was perfectly out of breath, and had a red-
hot feeling in his chest from running so far and at full speed.

“IT shall certainly be there quite soon enough,” he said to
himself, as he looked round and saw that he had left old Betty
so far behind as to be almost out of sight in the distance;
“there is no good in running aM the way. I can go a little
slower now. What jolly grasshoppers! I should like to see if
I could catch one.”

Johnny pulled off his straw hat and began to chase the
mirthful trills which sounded here and there along the roadside,
but he found that the grasshoppers themselves were not half so
easy to follow as the gleeful sounds, which seemed to dodge
him hither and thither. When he had thrown his hat right
over one, as he thought, nothing was ever there when he began
to look under it. The songsters were so exactly the same
colour as the grass they dwelt in that it helped them to hide
away. It was provoking, when he wanted so very much to