“Daughter,” said old Mr Hall, “methinks you have but a strange notion of forgiveness, if you count that it lieth in a man’s persuading himself that the offender hath done him no wrong. To forgive as God forgiveth, is to feel and know the wrong to the full, and yet, notwithstanding the same, to pardon the offender.”
“And in no wise to visit his wrong upon him? Nay, Father; that’d not a-pay me, I warrant you.”
“That a man should escape the natural and temporal consequences of his evil doing, daughter, is not the way that God forgives. He rarely remits that penalty: more often he visits it to the full. But he loveth the offender through all, and seeks to purge away his iniquity and cleanse his soul.”
“Well-a-day! I can fashion to love Edward Benden that way,” said Tabitha, perversely misinterpreting her father-in-law’s words. “I’ll mix him a potion ’ll help to cleanse his disorder, you’ll see. Bitters be good for sick folks; and he’s grievous sick. I met Mall a-coming; she saith he snapped her head right off yester-even.”
“Oh dear!” said literal Christie. “Did she get it put on again, Aunt Tabitha, before you saw her?”
“It was there, same as common,” replied Tabitha grimly.
“He’s not a happy man, or I mistake greatly,” remarked Roger Hall.
“He’ll not be long, if I can win at him,” announced Tabitha, more grimly still. “Good lack! there he is, this minute, crossing the Second Acre Close—see you him not? Nell, my pattens—quick! I’ll have at him while I may!”
And Tabitha flew.
Christabel, who had lifted her head to watch the meeting, laid it down again upon her cushions with a sigh. “Aunt Tabitha wearies me, Father,” she said, answering Roger’s look of sympathetic concern, “She’s like a blowy wind, that takes such a deal out of you. I wish she’d come at me a bit quieter. Father, don’t you think the angels are very quiet folks? I couldn’t think they’d come at me like Aunt Tabby.”