Her sister smiled, but did not utter the disapproval that was in her heart. Karl listened and took all in. A little while afterward Mrs. Omdorff got up and rang the bell, saying, as she did so, with a short gurgling laugh, that seemed ashamed of itself: "I guess we'll have a little ice-cream—at Poole's expense."
Aunt Ruth shook her finger, and said feebly: "Oh, that's too bad!" But Karl was not able to see whether she approved or disapproved. The ice-cream was sent for, and enjoyed by the child. While the sweet taste was yet on his tongue, he heard his mother say: "I'm very much obliged to Poole for his treat—it's delicious."
Is it strange that the boy's perception of right and wrong should be obscured? or that, in a day or two afterward, he should come in from the street with an orange in his hand, and, on being questioned about it, reply: "A woman let it drop from her basket, and I picked it up. She didn't see it drop, mamma."
"But why didn't you call after her?" asked Aunt Ruth.
"'Cause I didn't want to," answered the child. "She dropped it. I didn't knock it off."
Mrs. Omdorff was not satisfied with the conduct of her child; and yet she was amused at what she called his cuteness, and laughed instead of reproving him for an act that was in spirit a theft.
So the child's education for crime was begun—his ruin initiated. The low moral sense of his mother was perpetually showing itself in some disregard for others' rights. A mistake made in her favor was never voluntarily corrected, and her pleasure at any gain of this kind was rarely concealed. "He cheated himself," was a favorite saying, heard by Karl almost every week; and as he grew older he understood its meaning more clearly.
Mr. Omdorff was a man of higher integrity than his wife and just in dealing to the smallest fraction. "Foolish about little things—more nice than wise," as she often said, when he disapproved of her way of doing things, as was sometimes the case. Mrs. Omdorff had learned to be guarded in her speech when he was at home; and so he remained in ignorance of the fatal perversions going on in the mind of his child.
As the boy grew up his father's supervision became more direct. He was careful about his associates, and never permitted him to be away from home without knowing where and with whom he was. He knew but too well the danger of evil association; and guarded his boy with jealous solicitude.
Alas! he dreamed not of the evil influences at home; never imagined that the mother was destroying in her son that nice sense of honor without which no one is safe; nor that she had taught him to disregard the rights of others, to take mean advantages, and to appropriate what did not belong to him whenever it could be done with absolute certainty of concealment.