A pause. "I am—I have called—I regret—"
"Ah, yes," mentally ejaculated the old man, "he feels the burden of sin, and is under conviction, I see—"
"In short, sir, I am sorry to trouble you at this time, but I—"
"Speak out freely, my dear young man," said his benignant listener.
Is it possible he does not know what has passed?
"I regret to say that, vexed by the inattention of the scholars, and by whispering, in which Miss Annie joined, I hastily told her to leave school."
"Told my daughter Annie to leave school!"
The door of the study was thrown open, and Annie danced into the middle of the room, her bonnet hanging on her arm, flowers in her hair, and a bouquet in her hand, fresh from the woods in which she had been rambling. "Father! father!" she stopped, and gazed first at her father, and then at Mr. Hall, with a mingled expression of regret and surprise. Her long walk that afternoon had given her a heightened color; and the varied feelings which moved her were clearly depicted on her face.
"Come here, Annie," said Hall, extending his hand, "come here, and say you forgive the rudeness of this afternoon." She hesitated an instant—the crimson deepened on her cheek, and the lip slightly trembled; then looking up with one of her own radiant smiles, she gave her small, white hand to the teacher.
Not long after he made another visit to the good minister's study, not, indeed, to ask forgiveness for turning Annie out of school, but to beg permission to transplant her one day to a home of his own. Whatever was said, we suspect Annie might have served as "an instance in point" for that rather broad generalization of Swift,