"Well, your pa didn't come home to dinner, for a wonder; I reckon he was kept to the mill; so we hadn't much cooked. I took your ma's up to her; but I never let on that I didn't know where you was, for fear of worrying her. She has worried a good lot any way. Here, let me brush your hair a little, and then you'd better run upstairs and make her mind easy. I'll have something for you to eat when you come down."
Eyebright's heart smote her afresh when she saw her mother's pale, anxious face.
"You've been out so long," she said. "I asked Wealthy, and she said she guessed you were playing somewhere, and didn't know how the time went. I was afraid you felt sick, and she was keeping it from me. It is so bad to have things kept from me; nothing annoys me so much. And you didn't look well at breakfast. Are you sick, Eyebright?"
"No, mamma, not a bit. But I have been naughty—very naughty indeed, mamma; and I ran away."
Then she climbed up on the bed beside her mother, and told the story of the morning, keeping nothing back—all her hard feelings and anger at everybody, and her thoughts about dying, and about becoming a nun. Her mother held her hand very tight indeed when she reached this last part of the confession. The idea of the wood, also, was terrible to the poor lady. She declared that she shouldn't sleep a wink all night for thinking about it.
"It wasn't a dangerous wood at all," explained Eyebright. "There wasn't any thing there that could hurt me. Really there wasn't, mamma. Nothing but trees, and stones, and ferns, and old tumbled-down trunks covered with tiny-weeny mosses,—all green and brown and red, and some perfectly white,—so pretty. I wish I had brought you some, mamma."
"Woods are never safe," declared Mrs. Bright, "what with snakes, and tramps, and wildcats, and getting lost, and other dreadful things, I hardly take up a paper without seeing something or other bad in it which has happened in a wood. You must never go there alone again, Eyebright. Promise me that you won't."
Eyebright promised. She petted and comforted her mother, kissing her over and over again, as if to make up for the anxiety she had caused her, and for the cross words and looks of the morning. The sad thing is, that no one ever does make up. All the sweet words and kind acts of a lifetime cannot undo the fact that once—one bad day far away behind us—we were unkind and gave pain to some one whom we love. Even their forgiveness cannot undo it. How I wish we could remember this always before we say the words which we afterward are so sorry for, and thus save our memories from the burden of a sad load of regret and repentance!
When Eyebright went downstairs, she found a white napkin, her favorite mug filled with milk, a plateful of bread and butter and cold lamb, and a large pickled peach, awaiting her on the kitchen table. Wealthy hovered about as she took her seat, and seemed to have a disposition to pat Eyebright's shoulder a good deal, and to stroke her hair. Wealthy, too, had undergone the repentance which follows wrath. Her morning, I imagine, had been even more unpleasant than Eyebright's, for she had spent it over a hot ironing table, and had not had the refreshment of running away into the woods.
"It's so queer," said Eyebright, with her mouth full of bread and butter. "I didn't know I was hungry a bit, but I am as hungry as can be. Every thing tastes so good, Wealthy."