washing the dishes."

"Look in my face, darling," said mamma, "Did you take any sugar without
my leave?"

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.

Frankie was very much delighted, and ran around the garden with it for
several hours, Ponto following close at his heels, quite delighted with
the new sport. At last he came in, and, sitting down by his mamma,
began to play with the string she had tied around the head of the cane.
Then he looked very thoughtful for a minute, when he said, "I don't lik