Chapter XII: “because.”

“Because they obeyed not the voice of the Lord their God, but
transgressed his covenant, and all that Moses the servant of
the Lord commanded.”

“What _is_ the matter?” inquired Maybee, coming suddenly upon Tod, sitting on the door-step, with one fist screwed into either eye, and big, round tears dropping off the end of his nose.

“My new knife, it’s all losed!” and Tod buried half his face in a small square of Centennial cotton.

“Oh me suz! an’ I’ve lost your ball,” returned Maybee consolingly. “There’s never a shower ’thout it rains, my papa says,” which misquoted proverb Tod proceeded to illustrate with a fresh burst of grief.

“You see,” continued Maybee, “Sue said I mustn’t fire it that way, because it would go in the tall grass. I shouldn’t never thought of it if she hadn’t, and now papa won’t let me go and get it.”

“My hasn’t got anyfing,” wailed Tod, behind his handkerchief.

“It’ll be in the hay if the cows don’t eat it,” said Maybee cheerily. “Where’d you lose your knife?”

“Over in the marsh; it sinked, you know.”

“How came you playing down there?”

“Wented myself.”

“Who said you might?”

“Nobody,” very faintly.

“Oh!” said Maybee significantly, “naughty boys always lose their knives or something; but never mind, let’s go an’ see Aunty McFane and little Peter.”

“Can’t,” said Tod dejectedly.

“Why not?”

“Can’t go frough the gate for one, two, three days; mamma said so.”

“What for?”

“’Cause—’cause—my runned away.”

“Well,” with a long-drawn breath, “let’s go on the front pizarro and play steam-boat; only—you’d better have a clean apron on. Such awful patched pants, an’ that jacket! Why, you’re ever so much the biggest!”

“Can’t help it,” said Tod sulkily. “Can’t have no other clothes on for the greatest long while.”

“Well, if I sha’n’t give it up! What for?”

“’Cause—’cause I played with the grindstone in my best jacket.”

“The-od-o-re Smith! Aunty’s told you over and over again she’d punish you if you did.”

“My knows it,” said Tod meekly: “an’ my mamma’s so pur-sistent; might have finked she would.”

“Of course. What a goose! Well, then, let’s go in the shed and play store.”

“Isn’t any fings there. Mamma’s locked ’em all up, ’cause my kep’ forgetting—no, cause my didn’t want to put ’em away when she said it was time”; and Tod stared straight up at the blue sky overhead.

“I hate ‘becauses,’” said Maybee emphatically,—“_that_ kind, anyhow. I just had miserable times, my own self, all yesterday.”

“’Cause why?” asked Tod, with alacrity.

“_Be_cause my strings all knotted up tight—no; ’twasn’t, neither; I just wouldn’t say ‘Please,’ and the ‘becauses’ kept happening right along,—horrid, all of ’em. There’s always one with things you ought to do and don’t want to, and things you want awfully to do and mustn’t. They’re tied right tight on, too. And then there’s a nice kind, when you get a ticket because you’ve sewed your seam, or something. I wish they’d made ’em all like that.”

“Are you sure which is the best kind?” asked aunty, coming out on the stoop, and sitting down between them. “What did papa snip the baby’s hands for, this morning, Tod?”

“Oh! ’cause her _will_ put her fingers in the sugar-blowl,” returned Tod contemptuously.

“Was that a good or bad ‘because’?”

“Why, my s’poses her don’t like to be snipped; but you know if we ’lowed her to touch fings, her might burn her on the teapot, an’ spill the gwavy, an’ every-fing; ’sides it isn’t polite, an’ we must learn her to behave,” concluded Tod, with an air of superior wisdom.

“That is just it,” said mamma, drawing the little reasoner into her lap. “We all need to learn a great many things that we should not if there were no ‘becauses.’ God lets the bad ‘becauses’ _happen_, as Maybee says, to teach us how to be better, or to keep us from something that would harm us. Let me tell you a little story all in rhyme, and then we’ll see if we can’t happen the ‘good becauses,’ by doing just what God wants us to.”