David Fleming's Forgiveness

by Margaret M. Robertson

“We haven’t Mr Burnet and Cousin Betsey here very often, Mr Maxwell. You might stay to-night for their sakes.”

So he stayed, and the squire had a good time still, and so had all the rest, it seemed, for they were in no haste to leave the table till Sally came to take the things away. When she came in again it was to say that “Ben had been waiting for his Aunt Betsey for the biggest part of an hour, and it was getting on for nine o’clock.” Even then Miss Betsey seemed in no hurry to go, but when she went, Mr Burnet went also, and Elizabeth went out of the room with her cousin, and did not come back for what seemed to Katie a long time. Her father was tired and she went out with him afterward. Mr Maxwell talked with Katie a while, about her mother and her grandparents, about Davie and his bees, and the work that had occupied him all the winter, and then he sat for a long time looking into the fire in silence. When Miss Elizabeth came in again he rose to go away.

“It is not very late,” said she.

“No—and it is very pleasant here,” said the minister, and he sat down again.

Miss Elizabeth took her work, and they were all silent for a while, and in the silence a sudden sense of embarrassment and discomfort seized Katie Fleming. She had a book in her hand, but she was not sure whether she ought to read or not. She would have liked to go with it to the side-table, where Miss Elizabeth had carried the lamp before she sat down, or even out into the kitchen to see Sally for a while.

“Are you deep in your story already? Well, take your book to the lamp, if you like, for a little while,” said Miss Elizabeth, just as if she had known her thoughts.

But Katie would not have liked her to know her thoughts. She was glad to go to the lamp, but she did not care for her story. She was thinking of something else, of a single word she had heard one day, which put together significantly the names of the minister and her friend. She had been indignant at first. “They were just friends,” she had said to herself. Afterward she could not help giving them a good many of her thoughts, and she was not sure about it. As she sat with the book on the table before her, shading her eyes with her hands, she felt a little guilty and greatly interested, for the story before her was better than any story in a book.

Perhaps she ought to go away, she thought again. It was not right to listen, and she could not help listening. But indeed there was nothing said which all the world might not hear. Mrs Varney had burned her hand. Old Mrs Lawrence was sick, and Miss Elizabeth promised to go and see her. Then Mr Maxwell told her about a meeting he had attended in Fairfax, and about another that he meant to attend, and so on.

“It might be grannie and he,” said Katie, with a little impatient wonder. “Only grannie would say it all a great deal better, and not just ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ and ‘I hope so indeed,’ like Miss Elizabeth. What has come to her, I wonder? Mrs Stacy’s rheumatism, and the mothers’ meeting at North Gore. That is not how people talk, surely—when—when—”

Suddenly looking up she met Miss Elizabeth’s eye, and reddened, and hung her head. Then she rose as Miss Elizabeth beckoned to her, and came to the fireside again, still holding her book in her hand.