What Keith Found Out

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 23, 1909

What Keith Found Out

“KEITH, don’t forget to fill the wood-box,” Mrs. Lawson reminded her son the morning after his return from a visit to his aunts and Uncle Jack.

“What’ll you pay me?” Keith was searching for his gloves, and he asked the question without looking up. In a moment he turned and met his mother’s astonished gaze. “Aunt Kate, Aunt Harriet, and Uncle Jack always paid me in some way when I worked for them,” he explained hastily, “and I think you folks could, too.”

“Well!” Keith knew by the tone that his mother was displeased. “All right,” she added in a moment, but with a hurt look. “I’ll give you five cents if you will fill it heaping full.”

When the wood-box was filled, Keith’s grandmother called: “Where is the boy who hunts my glasses? I’m glad he is home again.”

“I’ll find them if you will pay me, grandmother,” was the answer.

“Let me see, I haven’t any change. How would a bag of candy do?”

Keith decided it would do, and he hunted the glasses. That night he was paid for getting his father’s slippers. He wouldn’t take his little sister to bed until he was promised a new knife. So things went on day after day. His parents had thought, at first, that it was only a notion that would soon be forgotten, but it was not. One day Mr. and Mrs. Lawson and Grandmother Lawson had a talk, but Keith didn’t hear the talk.

That very same day he hurried home from school, and rushed into the house. “Mother, where are you?” he called. “Won’t you sew my football? It’s ripped.”

“What will you pay me?” his mother asked.

“Why! why!” Keith was so surprised that this was all he could say for a minute. “I could give you the big red apple that Carl Horton brought me,” he finished.

“I will fix it for that,” was the reply. When Keith went out again, the ball was mended, but the red apple was on the table by his mother’s side.

“Won’t you help me with my example, father?” he asked after supper that same evening.

“I will for ten cents,” Mr. Lawson replied.

Keith shut his lips tight to keep from saying anything. Father had always been so willing to help. The help was given this time, but the elephant bank was ten cents lighter when the work was finished. For five days Keith paid each member of the family who did anything for him; he was paid, too, for anything he did for others. The fifth evening he said to Baby Lillian: “Won’t you hand me my pencil off the table, Lillian?”

“What ’oo pay?” she lisped.

That was too much for Keith, and when his father looked at him, a big tear was rolling down his cheek. “What’s the matter?” he inquired.

“I haven’t hardly a thing left,” he sobbed. “I’ve given away my knife, my big marble, my top, my paints, and lots of my money to have things done for me. I don’t like this way. Let’s just do things because we like each other.”

“All right,” father, mother, and grandmother agreed, “we don’t like this way either.”

“I have found out how mean I’ve been, though,” and Keith smiled through his tears. “I’ll fill that wood-box up high in the morning, mother. I’ll do what I’m asked to do, after this, and I won’t ask to be paid for doing it, either.”

—The Advance.