Cragg was silent, watching the light on Pattie's face.
"Why should he not know? How can we tell? If he cannot see or hear for himself what goes on here—and we don't know anything about that!— I should think the angels would tell him. If he cares to know, I am sure they would. I am so thankful it is cleared up. It is like a great weight taken off me."
"And you mean to say,"—began Mrs. Cragg,—"you mean to say, Pattie, that you can feel kindly about that man—that Peterson?"
"I think he did wrongly. He was sure too quickly. He ought to have trusted longer. But it was difficult for him—things looked black, I suppose. And now he is very very sorry. No one could be more sorry."
"Well, you're not my sort. If a man had behaved so to me, I shouldn't forget it the rest of my life. I shouldn't want ever to see him again. Why, just think—if he hadn't turned your father away, you wouldn't have come here at all, and your father might be living now! Just think!"
"My dear!" remonstrated Cragg.
But even this suggestion could not shake Pattie's peace, though two tears fell.
"It must have been God's will," she said. "It wasn't only Mr. Peterson's doing. And if God meant to call my father Home just at that time, He would have done it in some other way—even if we had not come to Putworth. And if it was the right time for father to go, how could I want to keep him back?"
"You're right, Pattie," said Cragg. "And my wife is wrong to try you like this. It's a great mercy to know that your poor father's name is cleared. And you'll feel all the happier for it. You're right enough to forgive Mr. Peterson. Only I do think he ought, in some sort of way, to try to make up to you for the past. He has done you and your father a great wrong, though I dare say he didn't mean it. And, take it any way you will, it's through him in a sort of manner that you are an orphan. I think he ought to do something for you."
Pattie placed the letter in Cragg's hand.