Jamie and his mother were talking together very earnestly. The boy's face looked cross and impatient, while his mother's was sad and serious.

Mrs. Burnham had sent Jamie to the store to buy a yard of muslin and a spool of thread. When he gave her back the change, she counted it, and saw at once that there were three pennies missing.

If this had been the first time that Jamie had brought his mother too little change, she would have thought a mistake had been made at the store, or that he had lost the money.

She would have been glad to believe it now. But after she had questioned him, she felt sure, by looking into his eyes—eyes that did not look back into hers— that the boy whom she loved, and wished to trust, had used the pennies to buy something for himself, and was trying to deceive her.

"Oh, Jamie!" she said, "you don't know how it troubles me to think you would do such a thing;" and her eyes filled with tears as she looked into her son's face.

Jamie really was a little ashamed, but he didn't like to say so. "Oh, Mother, you make such a fuss over nothing!" he answered, turning to look out of the window. "It was only two or three pennies! I don't see why you should feel so badly over such a little thing. What if I did spend them for something else?"

"I know it is a little thing," his mother told him. "It isn't the pennies I care about. I would have given them to you gladly if you had asked for them; but I cannot bear to have you take them and not tell the truth about it."It is only a little fault, I know; but little faults grow into big ones, just as little boys grow into big men. You must look out for your little faults now, Jamie, or you will have big ones when you are a man. A boy ten years old should know the difference between right and wrong."

Jamie did not seem as sorry as his mother wished he were. "You needn't worry about me," he said, "I'm not going to get into any trouble;" and he put on his cap and went out to join his playmates.

A few days later Mrs. Burnham saw him on the street with a crowd of boys who were snow-balling the passers-by. When he came home that night, she said, "I wish you would not play with those boys. They are rough and rude, and I don't like them. They are not the kind of friends I want you to choose."

This time Jamie was decidedly cross. "Why do you find fault with every little thing?" he asked. "Can't you trust me to take care of myself?"

"I am trying to teach you how to do it," his mother replied; "and I want you to help me."

But this lesson seemed to be a hard one for the boy to learn. It was not many days before his teacher saw him copying an example from the paper of a boy who sat in front of him in school.

"What are you doing, James Burnham?" Miss Jackson asked quickly. "I want you to do those examples yourself, not copy them from some one else. Bring your paper here at once. I am sorry I cannot trust you."

Jamie put the paper on the teacher's desk, and as he did so he said, "I know how to do the examples. I don't see why you should care about such a little thing as that."

"Perhaps it may seem only a little thing to you," replied Miss Jackson; "but unless you are an honest boy you will never be an honest man. Try to do just what is right every day, or you will get into serious trouble before you know it."

Five or six years later Miss Jackson was visiting an Industrial School for boys, when suddenly she caught sight of a familiar face.

"Who is that?" she asked the superintendent who was conducting her over the buildings, and she pointed to a boy who was working at a carpenter's bench.

"His name is James Burnham," replied the superintendent. "He has been here two or three years, but we are going to send him home next month. He is a pretty good boy now."

"He used to go to school to me," said Miss Jackson. "I think he meant well, but he was careless about little things, and didn't always choose the right friends."