Oh, Dick! Could you have seen your mother's face then, not angry; but, so sad, so grieved that you had disobeyed her, you would have been sorry I am sure!
Mrs. Stuart sat down with a sigh to a basket full of mending. She was not fond of mending, and now the holes to be patched were many and large. She felt discouraged but not at the work. She did not even think of that. She was grieving for her boy, who had disobeyed her and displeased his heavenly Father.
"I did hope he was a Christian child," she said half aloud. "I thought he had begun to remember that he was not his own—that he was bought with a price,—that he had pledged himself to obey Christ's commands. What if he had deceived himself?"
Tears rolled down her cheeks and fell on her work. At last she reflected that he was only a child, liable to fall into temptation. "I will wait and see whether he confesses," she said. "If he does, I will freely forgive him, and I will pray God to forgive him."
Her husband looked into the room and was surprised to see instead of her usual bright smile, a clouded face.
"What is it?" he asked.
She told him What had occurred and her own fears about her boy.
"Dick is trying to be like his Master," was his encouraging reply. "I am sure of that; but like all the rest of us, he sometimes yields to the temptations of the arch deceiver. I feel sure his conscience will not let him rest till he has confessed, both to God and to his mother."
"I hope not, husband."
In a few minutes a wagon drove up to the door, and one of their neighbors, a young farmer, sprang to the ground.