XLI
THE BITTEN APPLE
Say, fellows, I was visiting a boy friend one afternoon and while we played his mother called him. Wondering if there was anything wrong, I waited and listened while he answered the summons. I could hear her speaking to him as she said: "Bob, here are two apples—one for you and one for Wade."
Then I waited, and as Bob did not return at once I stepped to the corner of the house to see what kept him. That fellow was sitting on the step digging his teeth into one of the apples. I thought: "Well, that's polite, starting on his own before he gives the other to his guest!" It rather disgusted me. Directly Bob came round the corner, kind of sheepish like, and what do you suppose he did? Well, fellows, he offered me the bitten apple!
That was enough for me. Take it? I guess not. I turned on my heel without a word and went straight home. I don't think anything ever inspired more contempt in me as a boy than that piece of petty thievery.
Of course, fellows, that was not a Christian way to treat an erring playmate, and I fear I had very little charity in my heart; I am just telling you frankly how that act of Bob's impressed me. And it was only in the beginning of Bob's eventful career. Twenty-five years later, Bob's name was in the daily papers all over the country. He had gotten away with a big sum of money that belonged to others who had trusted him, and now he is a poor hunted fugitive from his native land, if indeed he is alive.
The boy who begins taking just a bite of somebody else's apple is likely going to pull off something big some day!
Suppose Bob's mother had handed him seven apples and asked him to save one of them for her, and he had made away with the whole lot, don't you think that would have been pretty mean and low down?