'It would be,' said Estelle, taking her courage in both hands, 'if you believed in forgiveness at all. Auntie told us what a hard time you had with Dick's illness,' continued Estelle, as Peet's face had not relented, 'but you are all right now. Jack has had a hard time too, because he was so dreadfully sorry for the wrong he had done. But it is not all right with him, and he says it never will be, because he cannot undo the harm.'
'No, he can't,' replied Peet, grimly.
'Well,' said Estelle, with a sigh, 'I am glad he has Dick's forgiveness, and that Dick called him his friend. Jack felt that more than anything. He said it was like coals of fire on his head.'
Seeing Peet made no attempt to reply, but continued his work as if the subject were ended, Estelle sighed again, and went slowly back to join the others, who were crossing the lawn with Jack, on their way to the Bridge House, where he was to say good-bye to Dick.
'Oh, Jack,' cried Georgie, 'Estelle says you sing so beautifully! Will you sing to Dick? He loves music, and some day I shall buy him a barrel-organ to play to him always.'
Jack shook his head. 'He won't care to hear me, Master George.'
But Georgie was so sure Dick would care, that he ran on ahead of the party to ask him. As the rest came up, Mrs. Peet was at the door to receive them. She looked into Jack's face and held out her hand.
'For his sake!' she said, motioning with her head towards her son. 'I can't go against his wishes.'
Grasping her hand in his big palms, Jack could only murmur gratefully, 'Thank you.' The next moment he had been seized upon by Georgie, and dragged to Dick's chair to sing. Turning very red, he said he did not know if he could trust his voice. Mrs. Peet, however, urging her son's fondness for music, begged him to give them something. Against such an appeal Jack could make no resistance. He sang as he had never sung before. Dick's eyes never left his face, and when Jack rose to go, Dick shook his hands with a world of feeling and pardon in eyes and clasp.
There had been one listener unseen by all, who stood with bowed head, leaning heavily on the gate of the porch. Perhaps it was Aunt Betty's gentle pleadings which had fallen like the 'gentle rain from heaven' upon his hard temper, preparing the ground for Estelle's soft words on behalf of Jack. Perhaps it was that his own better nature had asserted itself when all outside arguments had failed, and made him see how 'to err is human, to forgive divine.' Peet waited there in front of his house; and when Jack's voice came to him through the half-closed door in the concluding words of the last song, he understood dimly, in his own fashion, that no one could have sung in that way who had not known what real suffering was.