just coming out and were entitled to--"

"_Six years_!... Why ... why, then I'm responsible for it _all_!...
Why--_I've been on his back all the time_!"

"I'm glad you realize it at last.... Oh, well!" said her mother,
throwing out both hands and speaking with a kind of gruff
tolerance,--"there's no use to _cry_ about it."

"I'm not crying," said Cally.

She was, indeed, not crying as her mother had usually seen her cry; not
with storm and racking. Nevertheless, two indubitable drops suddenly
glittered upon the gay lashes, and now fell silently as Cally spoke.

"But I could cry," said she, "I'm so happy ... I'm so glad, to know
it's all been my fault.... You don't know ... I went to the Works the
other day--"

"Oh, you did!" said her mother, bitterly, but enlightened a little. "And
have been criticizing your father, I suppose, the father who has
sacrificed--"

"He'll forgive me.... He _must_. I'll find a way."

Mrs. Heth, flinging herself down in her chair again, said in a voice
full of sudden depression: "I should say you owed him apologies, for
that among other things.... Well, I give you up."

Cally stood unmoving, slim hands locked behind her head, staring toward
the window. Gone was the albatross from her young neck, melted the cloud
from the azure round. Wisdom had come with such startling unexpectedness
that she could not take in all that had happened to her just now. But
all that mattered was as plain and bright as the sunshine waiting for
her out there. She, and not papa whom she had so wronged in her
thoughts, had made the bunching-room what it was; she, and nobody else,
should make it better after this. And through the splendid confusion of
sensations that, mounting within, seemed to float her away from this
solid floor, she heard one clear voice sounding ever louder and louder.
It was the voice of the prodigal, chastened and penitent: _"I will arise
and go to my father."_

Cally turned toward the door.

Her mother, stirring from her heavy rebuking apathy, said: "Oh, there's
no use bothering him now to say you're sorry. You've not thought of him
all these years ..."

"That's why I can't wait--now," said Cally. "And besides, there's
something else I want to speak to him about.... A--a business matter."

Mamma demanded an explanation. And Cally, pausing briefly at the door,
turned upon that censorious gaze a face radiant as the morning.

"I'm going to give him my fifty thousand dollars to buil