Gradually, as she could bear it, the family came in one by one to see
her, Mrs. Markham, Sen., waiting till the very last, and refusing to go
until Ethelyn had expressed a wish to see her.
"I was pretty hard on her, I s'pose, and it would not be strange if she
laid it up against me," she said to Melinda; but Ethie had nothing
against her now.
The deep waters through which she had passed had obliterated all traces
of bitterness toward anyone, and when her mother-in-law came in she
feebly extended her hand and whispered: "I'm too tired, mother, to talk
much, but kiss me once for the sake of what we are going to be to
each other."
Mrs. Markham was not naturally a bad or a hard woman, either. She was
only unfortunate that her ideas had run in one rut so long without any
jolt to throw them out. Circumstances had greatly softened her, and
Ethie's words touched her deeply.
"I was mighty mean to you sometimes, Ethelyn, and I've been sorry for
it," she said, as she stooped to kiss her daughter-in-law, and then
hurried from the room, "Only to think, she called me mother," she said
to Melinda, to whom she reported the particulars of her interview with
Ethelyn--"me, who had been meaner than dirt to her--called me mother,
when I used to mistrust her she didn't think any more of me than if I'd
been an old squaw.
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