MARGIE'S LESSON.
LITTLE Margie, with her mother, was on a visit to her grandmother, who lived in a fine roomy old house in the town of Fernley.
There was a beautiful porch in front of the house, with very large white pillars reaching up to the roof of the house; and the floor was made of square stones, part white and part blue, while broad stone steps led down to the walk. But it was a rather dangerous porch for little folks, because, although it was almost a full story from the ground, it had no railing around it.
This did not matter much, most of the time, as there were no little children living in the house, but everybody was uneasy about it when little Margie was there; and this was the reason why.
That little girl had a very bad habit of never obeying right at once when she was spoken to. If her mother would call, "Stop, Margie," she would always go a few steps farther before she obeyed.
If she said, "Don't do that, daughter," when she was in any mischief, the little girl would almost always go on for a while instead of stopping as soon as her mother spoke. Many a bump and tumble she had gotten in consequence of it, but as yet nothing had cured her of this evil habit.
Her little cousin Lucy was there on a visit at the same time; but she, although younger, obeyed her mother perfectly, and gave no uneasiness to anybody.
When the two little girls were running on the porch together, as they were very fond of doing, just before they got to the end, Lucy's mother would say quietly, "Stop now, Lucy," and Lucy would stop right still that very minute, while Margie's mother would cry, "Stop, Margie! Stop!
Stop!" and then run after her and grasp her dress perhaps just in time to save her from running off at the end.
One evening, however, they started for a race, when Margie's mother was talking with some one at the farthest part of the porch, and with her back to them. She turned in time to see them almost at the edge, but being too far off to hope to reach them, she screamed frantically,
"Stop, Margie, you'll fall! You'll fall!"
but, as usual, Margie would go a few steps farther. So off she went, just where the porch was highest, and fell in a little heap on the ground.
The mother did not wait for her bitter cry of pain, but, hastening round by the steps, lifted and carried her carefully into the house, one little arm hanging helplessly, pitifully, with splinters of the bone sticking through the tender flesh, for it was broken.
Oh! How dreadfully it hurt, even when nobody touched it; but when the doctor came and pulled it ever so hard, as he was obliged to do to get the poor little bone straight, it took mother and Aunt Margie both to hold her.
All this time, and for several days, the suffering was too great to let her remember how it all happened; but the thinking time came at last, when she had to sit in the big chair all day long with her arm in a sling, and nothing to do but remember how many times she had delayed and hesitated instead of obeying her mother promptly, and how that very thing had been the cause of all this trouble.
One day she called her mother, and putting her unbroken arm around her neck, she whispered, while her little lips quivered, "Mother, I know why I broke my arm, and I am so sorry I was such a naughty girl; I am going to try, when I get well, to mind you the very minute you speak to me; and mother, won't you punish me whenever I don't?—if I don't mind the very first minute, mother?" And she held her tightly with that one good arm until she got the promise.
The next time they all visited grandmother's, no one could say that Margie did not obey her mother as promptly as Lucy.
S. S. Times.