"ElizaLeeFollen-Conscience" - читать интересную книгу автора (Follen Eliza Lee)

Conscience
Eliza Lee Follen

This etext was produced by Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
The short wintry days were beginning to lengthen, the sun rose earlier and staid
up longer. Now and then a bluebird was heard twittering a welcome to the coming
spring. As for the robins, they were as pert and busy as usual. The little
streams were beginning to find their way out of their icy prison slowly and with
trembling, as if they feared old winter might take a step and catch them, and
pinch them all up again.
Frank and Harry were sorry to see their snow man growing smaller and smaller
every day; from being a large, portly gentleman, he was shrunk into a thin,
shabby, ugly-looking fellow. His strong arms were about falling to the ground;
his fat nose had entirely disappeared, and his mouth had grown so big that you
might look down his great throat, and see the place where one of the boys used
to go in to make his snowship talk. Frank and Harry loved all their winter
amusements, and were loath to give up skating, sliding, and coasting, and above
all, snowballing. Yet the boys enjoyed the lengthening twilightЧЧ-the hour their
mother devoted to them.
"Will you please to give me two cents, Mother?" said Frank, one day.
"For what?"
"To buy a piece of chalk."
"And two for me, Mother," said Harry, "for I want a piece as well as Frank."
"What are you both going to do with chalk?" asked their mother. They were
silent. She asked again, but they made no reply. "I cannot give you the money
till you tell me what you want of the chalk. Why are you not willing that I
should know?"
The boys continued silent for a short time, and then Frank said, "I am afraid
that, if you know what we are going to do with the chalk, you will not let us
have the money."
"Then," replied their mother, "you think what you want to do is wrong. I,
perhaps, ought to insist upon your telling me what you want of the chalk. I love
to give you every innocent pleasure, and what is right for you to do I think I
may know about. However, if you will assure me it is for nothing wrong that you
want the chalk, I will ask no more questions, and give you the money."
"We do not mean to do any great harm with it," said Harry. "Still I am afraid
you will not quite like to have us do it, mothers are so much more particular
than boys, you know."
"Try and see if we disagree about this matter," said their mother.
"Shall I tell?" said Harry to Frank.
"Yes," he replied. "It is no such dreadful affair. Let's tell mother all about
it. You know, she said the other day that she remembered when she was a boy."
They all laughed at this often quoted blunder, and Harry began: "You see,
Mother, that yesterday John Green contrived, while we were in school, and
engaged in doing our lessons, to make a great B on Frank's and my back, with a
piece of chalk. John is a good hand at such things, and he did it so nicely,
that the master did not see him, and neither of us saw the B on the other. When
we went out to play, all the boys cried out, "B for blockhead, B for
blunderbuss, B for booby," and so on, ever so many other names beginning with B,