"Oscar, you may find it hard to conquer your temper. Perhaps sometimes you will forget. But God is watching you every moment, and when he sees that you try to be a good boy; that you keep from lying, and endeavor to honor your parents, he will help you. If ever you are discouraged, you must put up a little prayer to him; and, though he lives in the sky, and has thousands of angels bowing before him, he will certainly hear and answer you."
Oscar sat very still, thinking of all this; and the chickens had made a hearty meal, and were taking a nap under their mother's wings, when he said, aloud,—
"I mean to pray, now."
He did not kneel down. You know he had never been taught, as you have been, to kneel at his mother's side and pray; but he covered his face in both his hands, and began to repeat, as well as he could remember, Charley's prayer,—
"O God! I know I've been awful wicked. I'm real sorry, God, that I forgot. I do want to be a good boy. I don't like being ugly and cross and naughty all the time, as I used to be. Will you help me be like Charley, who is good and happy all the time? Will you help mother be good, too? For I know she's trying real hard."
[CHAPTER VIII.]
CHARLEY'S REWARD.
I TOLD you that Mrs. Russel went back into the house. She had told her husband that very morning that she never knew a boy so changed as Oscar was. "Only," she said, "I'm afraid it wont last. If it does, I shall think Mrs. Monson is a witch."
Now she said in her heart, flinging herself into a large rocking-chair, with a sigh,—
"There, it's all over! I knew it would be. He's just as ugly as ever. I wish I hadn't given him the chickens. I thought 'twould kind of encourage him to keep on being good. But now, after all my fuss in feeding the old hen, there he was setting Tom on to kill her. I declare, I can't help crying."