Jamie did not seem as sorry as his mother wished he were. "You needn't worry about me," he said, "I'm not going to get into any trouble;" and he put on his cap and went out to join his playmates.
A few days later Mrs. Burnham saw him on the street with a crowd of boys who were snow-balling the passers-by. When he came home that night, she said, "I wish you would not play with those boys. They are rough and rude, and I don't like them. They are not the kind of friends I want you to choose."
This time Jamie was decidedly cross. "Why do you find fault with every little thing?" he asked. "Can't you trust me to take care of myself?"
"I am trying to teach you how to do it," his mother replied; "and I want you to help me."
But this lesson seemed to be a hard one for the boy to learn. It was not many days before his teacher saw him copying an example from the paper of a boy who sat in front of him in school.
"What are you doing, James Burnham?" Miss Jackson asked quickly. "I want you to do those examples yourself, not copy them from some one else. Bring your paper here at once. I am sorry I cannot trust you."
Jamie put the paper on the teacher's desk, and as he did so he said, "I know how to do the examples. I don't see why you should care about such a little thing as that."
"Perhaps it may seem only a little thing to you," replied Miss Jackson; "but unless you are an honest boy you will never be an honest man. Try to do just what is right every day, or you will get into serious trouble before you know it."
Five or six years later Miss Jackson was visiting an Industrial School for boys, when suddenly she caught sight of a familiar face.
"Who is that?" she asked the superintendent who was conducting her over the buildings, and she pointed to a boy who was working at a carpenter's bench.