“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Gregson,” I said. “I shall never be rude to you again.”
“Very well,” she answered, a little mollified at last.
“Keep your promise, and we’ll say no more about it. It’s for your father’s sake, mind, that I forgive you.”
I saw a smile trembling about my father’s lips, but he suppressed it, saying,
“Won’t you shake hands with him, Mrs. Gregson?”
She held out a poor shrivelled hand, which I took very gladly; but it felt so strange in mine that I was frightened at it: it was like something half dead. But at the same moment, from behind me another hand, a rough little hand, but warm and firm and all alive, slipped into my left hand. I knew it was Elsie Duff’s, and the thought of how I had behaved to her rushed in upon me with a cold misery of shame. I would have knelt at her feet, but I could not speak my sorrow before witnesses. Therefore I kept hold of her hand and led her by it to the other end of the cottage, for there was a friendly gloom, the only light in the place coming from the glow—not flame—of a fire of peat and bark. She came readily, whispering before I had time to open my mouth—
I’m sorry grannie’s so hard to make it up.”
“I deserve it,” I said. “Elsie, I’m a brute. I could knock my head on the wall. Please forgive me.”
“It’s not me,” she answered. “You didn’t hurt me. I didn’t mind it.”
“Oh, Elsie! I struck you with that horrid snowball.”