Frankie looked up with his clear, truthful eyes, and said, "No, mamma, I didn't take any."
"Then go and get two large lumps, and bring them to me."
The little boy ran off, saying, "I will, mamma; I will get some."
Presently he returned with them; and she said, "Now, my dear, you shall have these, because you didn't take any without asking leave."
A few months before this time, Willie one day found Frankie in the store closet dipping up sugar with his hand from the barrel, and crowding it into his mouth. His whole face was covered with sugar, when Willie lifted him down from the chair, and led him to his mother.
When mamma had washed his hands and face, she took him in her lap, and told him it was very naughty to take mother's sugar without her permission. When he wanted sugar, or candy, or figs, he must always ask for them. Since that time she had not known him to touch any thing until he had first asked leave. Once she had left a paper of cough candy in her drawer for several days, and she knew he often went to this drawer on errands for her. She was coughing severely one afternoon, and said, "I really wish I had some candy."
"I will get you some," he said. "I saw some in the drawer;" and away he ran for it.
Mamma was so much pleased that he had not taken any, that she gave him a small paper of sugar plums. The cough candy was not good for him.
Ever since Frankie could remember, his mamma had told him the pretty stories in the Bible. The account of Adam and Eve in the garden; the sad death of good Abel, and the punishment of wicked Cain; the ark, and the dreadful flood; the stories of Joseph and his brethren, of Samuel and of Ruth, were as familiar to him as the names of the family circle. Indeed, the little boy seemed to connect the events of the Bible with every thing he saw.
One day a gentleman gave him a short cane. He had often seen Frankie play horse with his father's cane, and he thought it would please the child to have one of his own.