“I am ashamed of myself,” I said, almost forcing my confession upon her.
“So you ought to be all the days of your life. You deserve to be drummed out of the town for a minister’s son that you are! Hoo!”
“I’ll never do it again, Mrs. Gregson.”
“You’d better not, or you shall hear of it, if there’s a sheriff in the county. To insult honest people after that fashion!”
I drew back, more than ever conscious of the wrong I had done in rousing such unforgiving fierceness in the heart of a woman. My father spoke now.
“Shall I tell you, Mrs. Gregson, what made the boy sorry, and made him willing to come and tell you all about it?”
“Oh, I’ve got friends after all. The young prodigal!”
“You are coming pretty near it, Mrs. Gregson,” said my father; “but you haven’t touched it quite. It was a friend of yours that spoke to my boy and made him very unhappy about what he had done, telling him over and over again what a shame it was, and how wicked of him. Do you know what friend it was?”
“Perhaps I do, and perhaps I don’t. I can guess.”
“I fear you don’t guess quite correctly. It was the best friend you ever had or ever will have. It was God himself talking in my poor boy’s heart. He would not heed what he said all day, but in the evening we were reading how the prodigal son went back to his father, and how the father forgave him; and he couldn’t stand it any longer, and came and told me all about it.”