TRUE AND OBEDIENT.
"CHARLIE! Charlie!" Clear and sweet as a note from a silver bell, the voice rippled over the common. "That's mother," cried one of the boys, and he instantly threw down his bat and picked up his jacket and cap.
"Don't go yet!" "Have it out!"
"Finish this game!" "Try it again!" cried the players.
"I must go right off this minute, I told her I'd come whenever she called."
"Make believe you didn't hear!" they all exclaimed.
But I did hear!"
"She won't know you did."
"But I know it, and"
"Let him go," said a bystander,
"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 she called," said another.
"I don't call it babyish to keep one's word to his mother," answered the obedient boy, a beautiful light glowing in his blue eyes. "I call that manly; and the boy who don't keep his word to her will never keep it to any one else you see if he does!" and he hurried away to his cottage home.