I may be wilful still.
My old hot temper is not all subdued, though I hope I am a better woman than I used to be when I cared for nothing but myself.

God has been so good to me who have forgotten Him so long; but we will serve Him together now." As Ethie talked she had nestled closer and closer to her husband, whose arms encircled her form and whose face bent itself down to hers, while a rain of tears fell upon her hair and forehead as the strong man,--the grave Judge and the honored Governor,--confessed where he, too, had been in fault, and craving his young wife's pardon, ascribed also to God the praise for bringing them both to feel their dependence on Him, as well as to see this day, the happiest of their lives.
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.

I shan't forget it right away." Perhaps the sweetest, most joyful tears Ethelyn shed that day were those which came to her eyes when they brought her Ethelyn, her namesake, the little three-year-old, who pushed her brown curls back from her baby face with such a womanly air, and said: "I'se glad to see Aunt Ethie.