Selwick Hall, December ye vii.
This morrow, I being in Aunt Joyce’s chamber, helping her to lay by the new-washed linen, come Milisent in very softly.
“Aunt Joyce,” she saith, “I would fain have speech of you.”
“Shall I give thee leave (go away and leave you), Milly?” said I, arising, for I was knelt of the floor, before the bottom drawer.
“Nay, Edith,” she makes answer: “thou knowest my faults, and it is but meet thou shouldst hear my confession.”
Her voice choked somewhat, and Aunt Joyce saith lovingly, “Dost think, then, thou hast been foolish, dear child?”
“I can hardly tell about foolish, Aunt,” saith she, casting down her eyes, “but methinks I have been sinful. Will you forgive me mine hard words and evil deeds?”
“Ay, dear heart, right willingly. And I shall not gainsay thee, Milly,” saith Aunt Joyce, sadly: “for ‘the thought of foolishness is sin,’ and God calls many a thing sin whereof we men think but too lightly. Yet, bethink thee that ‘if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father.’ Now, dear heart, if thou wilt be ruled by me, thou wilt ‘arise and go to thy father’ and thy mother, and say to them right as did the prodigal, that thou hast sinned against Heaven and in their sight. I think neither of them is so much angered as sorrowful and pitying: yet, if there be any anger in them, trust me, that were the way to disarm it. Come back, Milly—first to God, and then to them. Thou shalt find fatherly welcome from either.”
Milly still hid her face.
“Aunt Joyce,” she saith, “I dare not say I have come back to God, for I have been doubting this morrow if I were ever near Him. But I think I have come. So now I may go to Father and Mother.”