The Choice of Friends
The moon was shining on a clear cold night, and it was near ten o'clock, and all the children of the village of Newton, except one, were in bed and asleep. That one, whose name was Frank Lawless, was above three miles from home, weeping with pain and fear, alone, forlorn, cold, and wretched, with no shelter but a leafless hedge and no seat but a hard stone; while his father and mother were running wildly about the fields and lanes, not knowing what had become of their naughty boy.
Frank Lawless had been playing truant that day, and was met by his father with a number of bad boys, to whom he ought not at any time to have spoken. They were the children of brickmakers, and most likely they had never been taught what was right; so that if they said wicked words, told lies, and took things which did not belong to them, one could scarcely wonder at it; but that Frank Lawless, who had the means of knowing the value of good conduct and good manners, should choose such boys for his friends and playfellows, was indeed most strange. Yet thus it was; their shouting, laughing, and vulgar mirth pleased Frank. They had also a great share of cunning, and found the way to manage him, so as to get from him what they wanted to have. When
they told Frank that he was very handsome and very clever, and that it was a shame so fine a boy should be forced to go to school if he did not like it, he was silly enough to be pleased, and gave them in return his playthings and his money; nay, he would even take sugar, cakes, fruit, and sweetmeats from his mother's store-room to bestow on these ill-chosen friends; and their false pretence of love for him made him quite careless of gaining the real love of his father and mother.
On meeting his son in the midst of the brickmakers' children, Mr. Lawless[2] was very angry, and, taking him home by force, he gave him a severe reproof, and then locked him up in his chamber. Frank,
who had lately grown very sullen and froward, was far from being sorry for his fault, and said to himself that his father was both cross and cruel, and wished to prevent his being happy. With these wicked thoughts in his head, he began to contrive how to make his escape; and the window not being very high above the ground, and having a vine growing up to it, whose branches would serve as a sort of ladder, he got out, reached the ground, and passing unseen through the garden-gate, ran with all his speed till he came up to the boys, who were still at the cruel sport of robbing birds'-nests in the lane where he had left them.
But he did not seem half as welcome to them now as in the morning, when he had brought a pocket full of apples, and as he