"I like to have you speak so about me!" May said, with a gratified smile. "But suppose the boys and Ethel and Julia wouldn't have forgiven you?"
"I'm sick of so much forgiving!" cried Gay. "It's nothing but forgive or be forgiven all the time."
"To forgive and be forgiven—that is life, my son," said a soft voice behind them. "Learn to forgive as freely as you would be forgiven and you will need no other lesson."
It was the gentle mother who spoke, pale and fragile still, but happy to have her children around her once more.
"Your little girl knows what it is to forgive," said Sarah, with a fond glance at May.
"And I know what it is to be forgiven!" said irrepressible Gay. "That evens things up. May and I are one, and sometimes she's the one and sometimes I'm the one, but between us we've learned mother's lesson of life."
"You see Miss Maud and Uncle George under the trees in the garden, don't you?" Gay broke out abruptly, a moment later. "They've been there since we came. They don't know that they are dusty and need dusting just as much as any of us, because they are lovers and don't know things like other people!"
"The garden looks cool and shady enough to tempt any one into it," remarked the mistress, with a longing glance through the open door.