“Why, you know all that happened, mammy,” replied Johnny. “But I’ll go over it, if you like. First, I had some good fun with Tiny, because she played fort so nicely, and then you made us laugh with the doughnut woman and gingerbread man, and then Kitty came with those beautiful apples, and then I beat her the very first game of checkers we played—and I don’t see why in thund—I mean why I didn’t beat her any more, for we played six games after that, and she beat me every single one. And then Tiny made us laugh telling about the doll-party, and then papa kept Kitty to tea, and gave us those jolly papers, and if that isn’t a pretty good day, I should like to know what is!”
“But you didn’t begin at the beginning,” said his mother. “Now I am going to suppose. Suppose, when you found you could not go out this morning, you had kept on looking out of the window and watching the boys until your vexation and disappointment had made you cry, I am very certain that would have set you to coughing, and then your body would have felt worse, as well as your mind. Suppose that, instead of offering to play with Tiny, and doing it heartily, you had been cross and sulky, and hurt her feelings, and had spent the morning bemoaning your hard fate, and thinking how ill-used you were; you would have been in such a bad way by dinner-time that my doughnut woman and gingerbread man would scarcely have made you smile, and by the time Kitty came, the sight of your face would have been enough to make her turn round and go home again. Fretting and fuming all the afternoon would have left you too tired of yourself and everything else to care for Tiny’s account of the party and papa’s papers. In short, everything would have looked to you the ugly color of your own dark thoughts.”
“Then it’s just like checkers!” exclaimed Johnny, sitting up in bed; “if you get the first move, and make that all right, the rest is pretty sure to come straight.”
“Yes,” said his mother. “There is a French proverb which means, ‘It is only the first step that costs.’ If we make the first step, or the first move, in the right direction, we have gone a good deal more than one step toward the right end.”
“And it’s like checkers in another way,” said Johnny, thoughtfully; “if we’re too uncommonly sure we’re all right, and can’t go wrong, we get tripped up before we know it. I do believe that the reason why Kitty beat me every time but that one, was because I felt so stuck up about the first game that I didn’t try my best afterward; I thought I could beat her anyhow.”
“That is very likely,” answered his mother. “And now you see how needful it is to ask that we may obey God’s ‘blessed will’ in all things—not only large, important-looking things, which only come once in a while, but in the veriest trifles, or what seem to us like trifles, that are coming all the time. Sometimes I think that there is no such thing as a trifle, Johnny. Good-night, darling—you will find my sleeve on your helmet in the morning, my own true knight!”