Free PIECES OF LAUGHTER AND FUN by Unknown Page B

tonight? I think you'd better go and get it over with. Have you ever tried crying real loud to get out of being punished?"
    "That's a worse idea than not going home," I replied. "I'd get punished once for whatever I did, and once for trying to get out of being punished." I sighed. "Ma said that if I made a choice, it would be my own responsibility. I might as well tell her what happened."
    "Maybe you wouldn't have to let her know right away," Sarah Jane suggested.
    I shook my head. "That wouldn't do any good. She'll have to know sometime. The longer I wait, the worse I'll feel. I'll just go on in and get it over with."
    "Well, good luck. I'm glad it's not me." Sarah Jane wasn't much comfort, but I knew what she meant.
    Ma wasn't in the kitchen when I got home. I put my lunch box on the table and went to my room to change my clothes. When I heard her come in, I carried the dress and stockings to the kitchen.
    "It was an accident, ma. Somebody bumped the desk and the ink tipped over. I couldn't help it."
    "I'm sorry, Mabel. The accident might have happened, no matter what you had on. But it couldn't have ruined your best dress if you hadn't been wearing it. I guess you can see that you made the wrong decision."
    I nodded dismally. "Are you going to punish me?"
    "You've taken care of that yourself," ma replied. "We'll do the best we can to get the ink out, but I'm afraid the color will come with it."
    "What will I wear for Sunday?"
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    "It looks as though you have two choices," ma answered. "You can wear a pinafore to cover these spots, or you can wear a school dress."
    "Or I could stay home?"
    Ma shook her head decisively. "That's not a choice," she said firmly. "We don't back out of problems."
    "I thought you'd say that. I guess I won't make any more decisions."
    "We want you to decide things for yourself, Mabel. But you need to stop and think of the possible results before you act. That's why you still need help from pa and me."
    She hugged me. "Come on, let's see what we can do about your dress. It may be worth a few spots if you've learned something today."
     
     
The Harvest Home Festival
    GRANDMA AND I often memorized Scripture together, and on long trips we would take turns reciting passages to each other. Though I learned a number of chapters and verses, I was never able to get ahead of her.
    "How can you learn all those verses so fast?" I demanded. "You always have yours memorized first."
    "Maybe it's because I've read them so often." Grandma laughed. "When you've read the Bible as many years as I have, it won't behard for you to recall them, either."
    "Do you remember the first Bible verses you ever learned?" I asked.
    Grandma thought a moment. "I remember the first whole chapter. I'm sure there must have been a lot of single verses before that. But the chapter was Isaiah 55. I have good reason for not forgetting that!"
    I was eager at any time to hear a good story, so I settled back to enjoy another of grandma's adventures....
    Early in the fall of the year I was in the third reader, Miss Gibson announced there would be a prize for the child who learned a full chapter from the Bible and recited it the best at the Harvest Home Festival the day before Thanksgiving.
    "You must choose the chapter you want to memorize before the end of the week," Miss Gibson said, "and let me know what it is. You will have eight weeks to learn it."
    "Eight weeks sure is a long time," Sarah Jane said. "You could learn the whole Bible in that length of time. Well, maybe not the whole Bible," she reconsidered. "But a lot of it. What chapter are you going to take?"
    "I like the one where the trees of the fields clap their hands," I said promptly.
    Sarah Jane was suspicious. "Trees don't clap their hands. They don't even have hands. You made that up."
    "I did not!" I replied indignantly. "Pa read it to us not very long ago. He'll know right where it is."
    And, of course, he did.
    "Isaiah, the fifty-fifth chapter," he said. "Is that the one