“Yes, and I should forgive him,” he continued, after a pause. “I do try to practise as I preach. Poor Cyril! poor wilful boy. I pray heaven that my thoughts have been doing thee wrong.”
There was a gentle smile upon his lips then as he took the manuscript of his sermon and tore it up into very small pieces before consigning it to the waste-paper basket.
“No,” he said, “I must not preach a sermon such as that: it is too prophetic of my own position with my sons;” and as we know this prodigal did return penniless, having worked his way back in a merchant brig, to present himself one day at the rectory in tarry canvas trousers, with blackened horny hands and a reckless defiant look in his eyes that startled the quiet people of the place.
He made no reference as to his having wasted his substance; he talked not of sin, and he alluded in nowise to forgiveness, to being made as one of his father’s hired servants, but took his place coolly enough once more in the house, and if no fatted calf was killed, and no rejoicings held, he was heartily welcomed and forgiven once again.
He was his mother’s favourite, and truly, in spite of all, there was forgiveness ready in the father’s heart. As there was also for Frank, who after some years’ silence had suddenly walked in at the rectory gates, rough-looking and boisterous, but not in such a condition as his brother, who had quite scandalised the men-servants, neatly clad in the liveries, of which a new supply had come from London, greatly to the disgust of Smithson in the market-place, who literally scowled at every seam.
Part 1, Chapter XVI.
At the King’s Head.
“What I say is this,” exclaimed Jabez Fullerton. “Justice is justice, and right is right.”