The words, though spoken gently, almost in a whisper, were more than the lad's chafed spirit could brook.
"Father, you insult me. I will not bear it. I will quit the room."
He went out, shutting the door passionately after him. His mother rose up to follow him—then sat down again. The eyes that she lifted to her husband were deprecating, beseeching, heavy with a speechless pain.
For John—he said nothing. Not though, as was plain to see, this, the first angry or disrespectful word he had ever received from any one of his children, struck him like an arrow; for a moment stirred him even to wrath—holy wrath—the just displeasure of a father who feels that the least portion of his child's sin is the sin against him. Perhaps this very feeling, distinct from, and far beyond, all personal indignation, all sense of offended dignity, made the anger strangely brief—so brief, that when the other children, awed and startled, looked for some ebullition of it—lo! it was all gone. In its stead was something at which the children, more awed still, crept out of the room.
Ursula even, alarmed, looked in his face as if for the first time she could not comprehend her husband.
"John, you should forgive poor Guy! he did not intend any harm."
"No—no."
"And he is so very miserable. Never before did he fail in his duty to you."
"But what if I have failed in mine to him?—What if—you used to say I could not understand Guy—what if I have come short towards him? I, that am accountable to God for every one of my children."
"John—John"—she knelt down and put her arms round his neck. "Husband, do not look unhappy. I did not mean to blame you—we may be wrong, both of us—all of us. But we will not be afraid. We know Who pities us, even as we pity our children."