‘I’m sure I am glad you are,’ and there was a little kissing match. ‘You’ll always come to my room, won’t you? Do you know, when Constance came to luncheon, I only shook hands, I wouldn’t try to kiss her. Was that unforgiving?’
‘I am sure I couldn’t,’ said Mysie; ‘did she try?’
‘I don’t think so; I don’t think I ever could kiss her; for I never should have said what was not true without her, and that is what makes Uncle Reginald so angry still. He would not kiss me even when he went away. Oh, Mysie! that’s worse than anything,’ and Dolores’s face contracted with tears very near at hand. ‘I did always so love Uncle Regie, and he won’t forgive me, and father will be just the same.’
‘Poor dear, dear Dolly,’ said Mysie, hugging her.
‘But you know fathers always forgive, and we will try and make a little prayer about it, like the Prodigal Son’s, you know.’
‘I don’t blow properly,’ said Dolores.
‘I think I can say him,’ said Mysie, and the little girls sat with enfolded arms, while Mysie reverently went through the parable.
‘But he had been very wicked indeed,’ objected Dolores, ‘what one calls dissipated. Isn’t that making too much of such things as girls like us can do.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mysie, knitting her young brows; ‘you see if we are as bad as ever we can be while we are at home, it is really and truly as bad in us ourselves as in shocking people that run away, because it shows we might have done anything if we had not been taken care of. And the poor son felt as if he could not be pardoned, which is just what you do feel.’
‘Aunt Lily forgives me,’ said Dolores, wistfully.