“What, mother?” asked Rollo.
“Why, make him a beetle and wedge, for his own.”
“Why, mother!” said Rollo, with surprise.
“Yes,” said she. “You might make him one. Think how pleased he would be with it. Then he could sit down with you, and you could both be splitting together.”
“But, seems to me, mother, that that would be rewarding him for being a naughty boy.”
“It would be so, if you were to make him a beetle and wedge, because he was a bad boy; but I proposed that you should make it for another reason, that is, to please him.”
“But perhaps he would think I did it because he ran away with my knife,” said Rollo.
“I don’t think there is any danger that he would imagine that you did it as a reward for that,” replied his mother.
Here Rollo paused a moment. He did not feel quite ready to undertake to make Nathan a beetle and wedges; but he did not know exactly how to reply to his mother’s reasoning. At length he said, in a timid and hesitating voice,
“But, mother, it seems to me that it would be better to punish Nathan, rather than reward him, or do any thing which would seem like rewarding him for acting so.”