There was once a mother who blamed her two little girls for everything that went wrong around the house. Whenever something got broken, or got lost, it was their fault. Whenever they were late for school or for church on Sunday, again it was their fault. Early one Monday morning, she couldn’t find the keys to the car.

“Where are the car keys?” she asked her little boy and little girl.

“We don’t know.”

“I saw you playing with my handbag yesterday afternoon.”

“Yes we were. But we didn’t take anything out of it.”

“ Well, find them, because I always leave the car keys in my hand bag.”

The two little girls searched high and low, and as time passed and they were all getting late for school and for work, their mother got increasingly angry.

“Now we are all late, and I’m going to have to spend money to call a cab. As punishment, go and stand outside and wait until the cab comes along.”

The two girls trudged outside, and sat down on the driveway, sad and forlorn.

“Hey look,” one of them said, “there’s something underneath the car. What is it?”

The scooted underneath the car, and sure enough, there were the keys, hidden just behind the front wheel. They grabbed it, raced inside and held it up to their mother in triumph.

“See,” they said, “it’s not our fault. You dropped the keys as you were coming out of the car.”

“This was all your fault,” she said. “Why didn’t you think of checking there sooner?”