A group of boys were playing ball. One of them named Charlie, heard his name called. “That’s Mother,” he cried, instantly throwing down his bat, and picking up his cap and jacket.
“Don’t go yet, Charlie,” said one of the boys. “Let’s finish the game.”
“I must go right now, this minute—I told Mother I’d come whenever she called.”
“Make believe you didn’t hear!” the boys exclaimed,
“But I did hear!”
“She’ll never know you did.”
“But I’d know, and I’m not going to act a lie.”
“Let him go,” said another of the boys; “you can’t do anything with him. He’s tied to his mother’s apron-strings.”
“I wouldn’t be such a baby as to run the minute I was called,” called out another of the boys.
“I don’t call it babyish to keep one’s word,” said Charlie, with a beautiful light glowing in his eyes. “I call it manly for a fellow to keep his word with his mother; and if he doesn’t keep his word to her, you see if he keeps it to anyone else.”
This was noble in Charlie, wasn’t it?
~~
ML-08/21/1960