A poor girl, whose face was pale and sickly, and who led a little ragged child by the hand, came up one day to the door of a large house, and, seeing a boy standing there, said to him, ’Do, pray, sir, ask your mamma to buy these plumbs. There are four dozen in my basket.’ George Loft took the basket to his mother, who counted the plumbs, and finding them right in number and that they were sound, good fruit, sent out to know the price. The girl asking more than Mrs. Loft thought they were worth, she put the plumbs again into the basket, and told George to carry them back, and say it did not suit her to buy them.

Now these plumbs were fresh picked from the tree; they had a fine bloom on them, and were very tempting to the eye. George loved plumbs above all other fruit, and he walked very slowly from the parlour with his eyes fixed on the basket. The longer he looked, the more he wished to taste them. One plumb, he thought, would not be missed; and as he put his hand in to take that one, two others lay close under his fingers. It was as easy to take three as one, and the three plumbs were taken and put into his pocket. When he reached the hall door and gave the basket back to the girl, his face was as red as a flame of fire, but she did not notice it, nor thought of counting her plumbs; for how could she suppose any one in that house would be so mean as to take from her little store!

It chanced that as the girl turned from the door, Mrs. Loft came to the parlour window, and, seeing the girl look so ill, she felt sorry she had not bought the plumbs. Therefore, throwing up the sash, she asked the cause of her sickly looks. The girl then told a sad story of distress: she had been ill of a fever; her parents had caught the disease of her, and were now very bad and not able to work for the support of their children. In the little garden of their cottage a plumb-tree grew, and she had picked the ripe plumbs and had come out to sell them that she might buy physic for her parents and food for herself and her hungry little sister. Mrs. Loft paid the girl the full price for her plumbs, gave her wine to carry to her sick parents and food for herself and the child, and bade her return the next day for more.

Soon after the grateful girl had left the house, Mrs. Loft, placing the fruit in her dessert-baskets, found that, instead of forty-eight, there were only forty-five plumbs; and, far from thinking her son had been guilty of the theft, she laid the blame on the girl, who she now thought had tried to impose on her. It was not the loss of three plumbs that Mrs. Loft cared for, but the want of an honest mind that gave her offence. She had meant to be a friend to the poor girl, but now she began to doubt the truth of her story; for Mrs. Loft thought if she could impose in one thing she might also in others. Deeming the girl therefore no longer worthy of her kindness, she gave orders for her to be sent away when she came on the morrow.

George had heard the whole: first, the tale of distress, and then his mother’s censure of the blameless girl. He had not only taken from a poor, wretched creature a part of her little all, but had been the means of bringing a foul reproach upon her, while her parents, who might have been saved from greater distress by his mother’s bounty, would now be left helpless, in sickness and in sorrow. All this cruel mischief he had done for the sake of eating three plumbs he, too, who had never wanted food, clothes, nor anything a child need desire to possess. He felt the bitter pangs of guilt, and the fruit, whose shape and bloom had looked so tempting, was now as hateful as poison to the sight of George.

There was still a way left to make some amends: namely, to confess his fault to his mother. It did require some courage to do this; and when a boy throws away his sense of honour, no wonder his courage should forsake him. George could not resolve to disclose a crime to his mother, which he thought she never would find out. The first day in each week he had sixpence given him for pocket-money, and he laid a plan to save that money, and to bestow it for a month to come on the girl. This, he thought, was doing even more than justice: for as her three plumbs were only worth one penny, he should by this means give her two shillings for them, and save his own credit with his mamma. He wished with all his heart he had never touched the plumbs; but as he had done it, it seemed to him less painful to leave the poor girl to suffer the blame, than to accuse himself.

With this plan of further deceit in his mind, George went to dinner; but before the cloth was taken from the table he had reason enough to repent of his double error. Mrs. Loft, in paying for the plumbs, had given a number of half-pence, among which, unseen by her, a shilling had slipped. When the poor girl reached the cottage she found the shilling, and lost not a moment in coming back to restore it to its right owner. Mrs. Loft well knew that she who could be thus just in one instance must have an honest mind. Her doubts of the poor girl were at an end, but no sooner did she cast her eyes on George, than she read, in the deep blush that spread over his face, in his downcast look, and the trembling of his limbs, who was the guilty person.

Guilt not only fixes the stings of remorse within the bosom, but imprints its hateful mark upon the outward form.