Told On By an E g g

"Mama, am I old enough to gather the eggs by myself?" Maryanne asked

hopefully, giving Mother a big smile.
Mama smiled back. "Can you be real careful?" "Yes," said Maryanne.
"Well, you can try it then, I guess," Mama told her. "We'll see how you do."
Maryanne cheerfully ran to the chicken coop with her little basket. She unlocked
the wire door of the chicken yard and fastened it behind her. The coop was a small,
low-roofed shed covered with gray shingles. It had no windows, and it was hot and
very smelly inside. But Maryanne didn't mind the smell. She began looking in each
straw nest for the warm, smooth eggs. She found one—and another one— and
another—until she had five eggs in her basket. One more nest to look in. Yes, she felt
an egg in that one too.
Somehow, on its way from the nest to the basket, the egg slipped out of her hand
and smashed at her feet. There it lay, the yellow spreading out in a puddle on the
dusty floor, mixed with dirt and straw. "Oh, no!" she thought, feeling very scared.
"Mama will never let me get the eggs again. I've got to hide it so she won't know
about it."
Maryanne scooped up the broken egg in her chubby little hands and put it back in
the nest. Next she took a handful of straw and used it to rub away the remaining
mess until it was really hard to see where it had been. There was one more thing to
do. She took some clean straw and carefully covered up the nest where she had tried
to hide the egg. "There now. Mama won't be able to guess what I did," she told
herself.
Before she took the basket of five eggs into the house, she washed her sticky hands
at the outdoor faucet by Daddy's workshop. Then she walked inside. "Here they are,
Mama. I found five eggs."
"Thank you, Honey. You did a fine job," Mama said as she took the basket.
"If Mama only knew what I did!" Maryanne felt ashamed of herself for telling a fib.
And she was afraid Mama might still find out.
A few days later Mama came in from gathering the eggs and called Maryanne. "I
smelled something awful in the chicken house this morning. It smells like a rotten
egg."
Uh oh! Mama knew. The only thing to do was tell her the truth. So Maryanne told
her about the broken egg and how she had hidden it. "I'm sorry, Mama. I was afraid
you wouldn't ever let me get the eggs again."
Maryanne and Mama had a little talk about how sins usually are found out. This
time the broken egg had told on her. And Mama said, "We all have accidents
sometimes and break things, even though we try to be careful. But it's always best to
tell Mama the truth. Then we can fix things up together."
Maryanne agreed that sharing her problems with Mama and Daddy would make
her feel a lot better than carrying a fib around in her heart. And she tried hard to
always tell the truth after that.