"Good morning, Uncle Harold!" said she.
"Good morning, my young sir," said the General, with a smile, for "the dark" had worked its marvels with him as well as with May.
The smile settled it!—as a smile will often settle trifling differences if it be allowed—May did not wait for further advances, but sprang into the General's arms and promptly kissed him! The General was amazed, and showed it. He had never been kissed by a child, and his sensations when May's fresh, dewy lips were laid on his were bewildering in their variety. He was embarrassed, of course, for old bachelors are not used to kisses; he was saddened, too, but he was not displeased, and May knew it.
Suddenly a sense of the difference between his life as it was, with its calm, but narrow routine of pleasures, its moments of dulness unbrightened by the companionship of wife and the warm lips and clinging arms of children, and the life that might have been his had he not allowed his youth to slip past him, awoke in him a sting of disgust, of self-pity.
"I hope you are not offended," May said, timidly, for the General's silence was oppressive. "We always kiss mother and father good morning—and—I thought you might like to be treated as well."
"I do like being 'treated as well,'" said the General, heartily.
"I didn't come in for just that; I came to tell you that I am sorry I was so rude to you yesterday. I hope you will excuse me."
"Certainly I will."
"I remembered last night that mother once said something about what people ought to do when they were guests in anybody's house. She said it to Alice, not to me, but it was something like this: 'No matter how disagreeable people are when you are visiting them you must always bear it and never resent or mention it to anybody'—and I don't mean to again."
This ingenuous statement amused the General vastly. "That is excellent advice and worthy of your good mother," said he.