David Fleming's Forgiveness

by Margaret M. Robertson

“Well, I’ll go; and thank you, cousin,” said Elizabeth, laughing.

She did not drive old Samson. He was safely stabled by this time. She drove her own horse and sleigh with its pretty robes, and acknowledged herself better the very first breath of wind that fanned her cheek. The snow had fallen so heavily as to make it not easy to drive rapidly, and so she enjoyed all the more the winter sights and sounds that were about her. The whole earth was dazzlingly white. The evergreen trees in the graveyard looked like pyramids of snow. The trunks of the great maples under which she passed as she drew near Mr Fleming’s house, showed black and rugged, and so did the leafless boughs that met each other overhead.

But even the great boughs were bending under their load of new-fallen snow, and every now and then, as the wind stirred them, it fell in great, soft masses silently to the ground. How still and restful it was. The sleigh-bells tinkled softly, and there was a faint rushing of the wind through the trees, and the sharp stroke of an axe was heard now and then in the distance. That was all. Elizabeth put away all troubled thoughts to enjoy it, and there were no traces of tears, no signs of nerves visible, when she drove up to Mrs Fleming’s door. She had been there a good many times since the night she had made the visit with Clifton and the minister, and she never came but that she was heartily welcomed by them all.

“Especially welcome to-day, when we never expected to see any one after such a fall of snow. Come awa’ ben, Miss Elizabeth, and when Davie comes down with his load of wood, he’ll put in the horse, and you’ll bide to your tea, and go home by light of the new moon.”

But Elizabeth could not stay long. Betsey, who was with her father, would be anxious to be home early, and she must not leave her father alone, though she would like to stay.

“Well, you know best, and we winna spoil the time you’re here by teasing you about staying longer. So sit you down here by the fire and warm your hands, though you look anything but chilled and cold. Your cheeks are like twin roses.”

Elizabeth thought of Betsey’s dismissal of her and laughed.

“My drive has done me good.”

She stayed a good while and enjoyed every minute of it. It was a great rest and pleasure to listen to Mrs Fleming’s cheerful talk, with Katie’s quiet mother putting in a word, and now and then Katie herself. Neither Katie nor Davie were at the school this winter. The studies that Davie liked best he would have had to go on with alone, even if he had gone, and he liked as well to get a little help from the master now and then and stay at home. But he had not much time for study. For he had taken “just a wonderful turn for work,” his grandmother said, and much was told of the land he was clearing and the cord-wood he was piling for the market. Katie brought in a wonderful bee-hive he had made, to show Miss Elizabeth, and told her how much honey they had had, and how much more they were to have next year, because of Davie’s skill. Davie had made an ice-house too, for the summer butter—a rather primitive one it seemed to be as Katie described it—on a plan of Davie’s own, and it had to be proved yet, but it gave great satisfaction in the meantime. And the frame of the new dairy was lying ready beside the burn to be put up as soon as the snow melted, and the water was to be made to run round the milk-pans in the warm nights, and Katie, under the direction of her grandmother, was to make the best butter in the country. All this might not seem of much interest to any one but themselves, but listening to them, and watching their happy, eager faces, Elizabeth, who had more than the common power of enjoying other people’s happiness, felt herself to be refreshed and encouraged as she listened, especially to what was said about Davie. The troubles of the Flemings would soon be over should Davie prove to be a prop on which, in their old age, they might lean.

“He is wonderfully taken up about the work, and the best way of doing it just now, and I only hope it may last,” said Mrs Fleming, and then Katie said, “Oh, grannie!” so deprecatingly that they all laughed at her.