“TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT IT”
“No,” said Mrs. Burton, “so he did what sensible people always do when they find themselves in trouble. He prayed. As for the king, I imagine he didn’t sleep much that night. People who take the advice of others and against their own better judgment, generally have to feel uncomfortable about it. At any rate, the king was awake very early next morning, and hurried off to the den alone, and looked in, and shouted, ‘Daniel! the Lord that you believe in, was he strong enough to keep the lions from eating you?’ And then Daniel answered the king—think of how happy it must have made the king to hear his voice, and know he was not dead! The unkindness of the king had not made Daniel forget to be respectful, so he said, ‘Oh, king, I hope you may live for ever.’s Then he told the king that he had not been hurt at all, and the king was very glad, and he had Daniel taken out, and then the bad men who had been the cause of Daniel being given to the lions were all thrown into the den themselves, and the lions ate every one of them.”
“I know why they let Daniel alone an’ ate up all the other fellows,” said Budge, with an air of comprehension.
“I felt sure you would, dear little boy,” said Mrs. Burton; “but you may tell me what you think about it.”
“Why, you see,” said Budge, “Daniel was only one man, and he would be only a speck apiece for all those lions—just like one single bite of cake to a little boy. When there were plenty of men, so that each lion could have one for himself, they made up their minds it was dinner-time, an’ so they went to work.”
Somehow this reply caused Mrs. Burton to forget to enforce the great moral application of the story of Daniel, and she found it convenient to make a sudden tour of inspection in the kitchen. She was growing desperately conscious that, instead of instructing and controlling the children, she had thus far done little but supply material for their active minds and bodies to employ in manners extremely distasteful to her. More than once she found her mind wavering between two extremes of the theories of government—it seemed to her that she must either be very severe, or must allow the children to naturally develop their own faculties, within reasonable bounds. At the first she rebelled, partly because she was not cruel by nature, as severe rulers of children often are, and partly because the children were not her own. The other extreme was equally distasteful, however. Were not children always made to mind in well-regulated families? To be sure, they seldom in such cases fulfilled, in adult years, the promise of their youth, but that, of course, was their own fault—whose else could it be? Should adults, should she, whose will had never been brooked by parent or husband, set aside her own inclinations for the sake of a couple of unformed, unreasoning minds?
Like most other people in doubt, Mrs. Burton did nothing for a few hours and succeeded thereby in entirely losing sight of her nephews until nearly sunset, when, drawn by that instinct which is strongest in the most immature natures, the boys returned for something to eat. Though quiet, there could be no doubt about their contentment; their clothes were very dirty, and so were their faces, but out of the latter shone that indefinable something that is the easily read indication of the consciousness of rectitude and satisfaction with the results of right-doing. They were not communicative, even under much questioning, and Mr. Burton finally said, as one in a soliloquy:
“I wonder what it was?”
“What are you talking about, Harry?” asked Mrs. Burton.