“Yes, if you deserved them. You know they were to be a kind of reward; but you certainly cannot, feel that you ought to have any to-night.”
Alfred confessed that he had not deserved them, and said he would try to do better the next day; and so, after saying the little verse which he used to repeat after he had said his prayers, he went to sleep.
This is the verse which Alfred said:—
“At night I lay my little head
To rest upon my nice soft bed;
Lord, let thy holy angels keep
Thy watch around me while I sleep.”
After this Alfred got his lessons well, even without sugar-plums. He began to think, too, that he was too large to eat them, and gave them all away; although he still kept the box with the picture of the boy and the kite on it. But it became quite a saying among the children, when any one wanted something that they had not earned, “O, you must not have the sugar-plums, when you have not got your lesson.”