This
led to Gillian's being often called off to attend to them during the
course of wet days that ensued, and thus Dolores was a good deal alone
with her aunt, who was superintending her knitting a pair of silk
stockings to send out to her father, it was hoped in time for his next
birthday.
At the first proposal, Dolores looked dull and unwilling, and at last
she squeezed out, 'I don't think father will ever want me to do
anything for him again.'
'My poor child, do you think a father does not forgive and love all the
more one who is in deep sorrow for a fault?'
'I don't think my letter seemed sorry! I was not half so sorry then as
I am now,' then at a kind word from her aunt her eyes overflowed, and
she said, 'No, I wasn't; I didn't know how good you were, or how bad I
was!'
And when Aunt Lily kissed her, she put her arms round the kind neck
that bent down to her, and laid her head against it, as if it was quite
a rest to feel that love. Her aunt encouraged her to write again to
her father, and to try to express something of her grief and entreaty
for forgiveness, and she was somewhat cheered after this; as though
something of the load on her mind was removed. One day she brought
down all the books in her room and said, 'Please, Aunt Lily, look at
them, and let them be with the rest in the schoolroom, I want to be
just like the others.'
Lady Merrifield was much pleased with this surrender. Some of the
books were really well worth having and reading, indeed, the best of
them she knew, but there were eight or ten which she suspected of being
what Mysie called silly stories, and she kept them back to look over.
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