“So do I,” said John.
“But we can’t,” said William, “so now we will go to sleep. But we will get up, and go to his house the first thing in the morning.”
The boys get up early to explain the accident to Thomas.
This the boys did. Thomas’s mind was very much relieved when he heard their story. He went directly into the house to tell his wife, who, as well as himself, had been very anxious about the origin of the fire. When he came out, he told the boys that he was very much obliged to them for coming to tell him about it so early. “In fact,” said he, “I think it is very generous and noble in you to take the blame of the fire upon yourselves, instead of letting it rest upon innocent people. There are very few boys that would have done so.”
The final result.
William and John were fortunately disappointed in their expectations that they would have to suffer some punishment for their fault. In fact, they were not even reproved. They told their father all about it at breakfast, and he said that, though it certainly was not a prudent thing for boys to trust themselves with a wooden candlestick in a shop full of wood and shavings, still he did not think that they deserved any particular censure for having made one. “The whole thing was one of those accidents which will sometimes occur,” said he, “and you need not think any thing more about it. I will have a new tool-house and shop built pretty soon, and will make it better than the old one was. And now, after breakfast, you may go down and rake over the ashes, and see if you can rake out any of the remains of the garden tools.”
An important principle.
It would have been better for the story if it had happened that the boys, in setting fire to the tool-house, had really been guilty of some serious fault, for which they were afterward to be punished; for the nobleness and magnanimity which are displayed in confessing a fault, are so much the greater when the person confessing occasions himself suffering by it.