As for Amos, he was ready to sink into the earth with dismay and vexation. All he could do was to look up reproachfully at Harry, who, now that the explosion had burst forth, and had driven his master apparently almost out of his senses, looked round him with an utterly crestfallen air, and then, coming up to Amos, said, while the big tears rolled rapidly down his cheeks, “Oh, dear Master Amos, you must forgive me. I didn’t go for to do it with no bad meaning; but I couldn’t bear it no longer. I daresay the master ’ll turn me off for it, so I shall be punished if I’ve done wrong.”
And how felt Walter? He was utterly crushed for a time beneath the old man’s words. All the truth flashed upon him now. And this was the brother whom he had been holding up to ridicule and accusing of meanness. As thoughts of shame and stings of conscience stabbed into his heart with their thousand points, he sank down lower and lower to the ground till he had buried his face in the grass, sobbing convulsively. Then, before Amos could reply to the old butler’s pitiful apology, he sprang up, and flinging his arms round his brother’s neck and hiding his head in his bosom, wept for a time as if his heart would break. At last he looked up at Amos, who had pressed him close to him and had lovingly kissed him, and cried out, “Was there ever such a beastly, ungrateful sneak of a brother as I am? Here have I been calling Amos all sorts of names, and treating him worse than a dog, and he’s been acting like a hundred thousand moral heroes all the time! Can you forgive your cowardly snob of a brother, Amos dear?”
There was no reply to this but another long and close embrace.
As for old Harry, his face calmed down into its usual peacefulness. He no longer waited for any reply from his young master, but turned towards the house with a smile beaming all over his countenance, and saying half out loud, “All’s well as ends well. There’ll be good come out of this here trouble as sure as my name’s Harry.”
When he was fairly gone, both nephews drew close to their aunt, and took each a hand as they sat one on either side of her. Smiling at Walter through happy tears, she said, “I cannot cross my hands, you see, for my dear nephews have each got possession of one.”
“But they ought to be crossed,” said Walter in a low, sad voice.
“Not now, dear boy,” she replied; “I think we may let bygones be bygones, for surely better and brighter days are coming.”
“I hope so, aunt,” said Walter, now more cheerily, “But you must give me the example for all that; for you have one to the purpose, I know.”
“Yes,” was her reply, “I think I have, and I will tell it because it may help to confirm you in keeping on the right side that new leaf which I feel sure you are now turning over.”
“Ah, tell it me then, auntie; if it shames me a hit it will do me no harm.”