d-morrow!" said Aunt Tabitha's treble tones, which allowed no one
else's voice to be heard at the same time. "Give you good-morrow,
Father, and the like to thee, Christie. Well, Roger, I trust you're in
a forgiving mood _this_ morrow? You'll have to hammer at it a while, I
reckon, afore you can make out that Edward Benden's an innocent cherub.
I'd as lief wring that man's neck as eat my dinner!--and I mean to tell
him so, too, afore I do it."

Aunt Tabitha left her sentence grammatically ambiguous, but practically
lucid enough to convey a decided impression that a rod for Mr Benden
was lying in tolerably sharp pickle.

"Daughter," said old Mr Hall, "methinks you have but a strange notion
of forgiveness, if you count that it lieth in a man's persuading himself
that the offender hath done him no wrong. To forgive as God forgiveth,
is to feel and know the wrong to the full, and yet, notwithstanding the
same, to pardon the offender."

"And in no wise to visit his wrong upon him? Nay, Father; that'd not
a-pay me, I warrant you."

"That a man should escape the natural and temporal consequences of his
evil doing, daughter, is not the way that God forgives. He rarely
remits that penalty: more often he visits it to the full. But he loveth
the offender through all, and seeks to purge away his iniquity and
cleanse his soul."

"Well-a-day! I can fashion to love Edward Benden that way," said
Tabitha, perversely misinterpreting her father-in-law's words. "I'll
mix him a potion 'll help to cleanse his disorder, you'll see. Bitters
be good for sick folks; and he's grievous sick. I met Mall a-coming;
she saith he snapped her head right off yester-even."

"Oh dear!" said literal Christie. "Did she get it put on again, Aunt
Tabitha, before you saw her?"

"It was there, same as common," replied Tabitha grimly.

"He's not a happy man, or I mistake greatly," remarked Roger Hall.

"He'll not be long, if I can win at him," announced Tabitha, more grimly
still. "Good lack! there he is, this minute, crossing the Second Acre
Close--see you him not? Nell, my pattens--quick! I'll have at him
while I may!"

And Tabitha flew.

Christabel, who had lifted her head to watch the meeting, laid it down
again upon her cushions with a sigh. "Aunt Tabitha wearies me, Father,"
she said, answering Roger's look of sympathetic concern, "She's like a
blowy wind, that takes such a deal out of you. I wish she'd come at me
a bit quieter