A prodigal might see the face of God, then! He was no grand
monarch, but a homely father. He would receive her one day, and let her
look in his face.
Nor did the trouble return any more. From that one moment, no feeling
of repugnance ever mingled with her thought of Alec. For such a one as
he could not help repenting, she said. He would be sure to rise and go
back to his Father. She would not have found it hard to believe even,
that, come early, or linger late, no swine-keeping son of the Father
will be able to help repenting at last; that no God-born soul will be
able to go on trying to satisfy himself with the husks that the swine
eat, or to refrain from thinking of his Father's house, and wishing
himself within its walls even in the meanest place; or that such a wish
is prelude to the best robe and the ring and the fatted calf, when the
Father would spend himself in joyous obliteration of his son's past and
its misery???-having got him back his very own, and better than when he
went, because more humble and more loving.
When Mrs Forbes came home, she entered into no detail, and was
disinclined to talk about the matter at all, probably as much from
dissatisfaction with herself as with her son, But Annie's heart
blossomed into a quiet delight when she learned that the facts were not
so bad as the reports, and that there was no doubt he would yet live
them all down.
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