I found Wangie and Horace, with the other servants, still at their breakfast; so, without saying anything, I went up to the window and began to blow my breath against the glass, and make figures on it with my fingers. Once I turned my head, and found Horace looking at me with an earnest, wistful look that seemed to say, "I am ready to make up;" but I was proud, and could not bring myself to say anything--though a little soundless voice down in my heart kept urging me to, and though I knew I had been most in fault--until just as Horace was getting up from the table, when the little voice overcame my pride, and, tilting one of the loose flag-stones of the floor up and down with my foot, I said, without looking at him,
"Horace, I ain't mad at you, if you ain't mad at me." When I had got thus far I felt so much better that I looked up frankly into his face, and added, "And I am sorry I called you what I did."
"Lor' bress de chile!" said he; "Ise sorry too. I know'd de boy couldn't stay mad at ole Horace long, and ole Horace couldn't at him, sartin. But ye see, Mass' L----, when you com'd to me I was busy; and den Mass' B---- had jis been talking sharp to de ole nigger, 'cause he forgit to take de gray pony to be shod. I tells ye what, Mass' L----, it make ole Horace feel 'siderably bunkshus[A] for a leetle bit; but Missus says we must forgib and forgit. De Lor' knows I kin do de _forgittin_' part so well, 'tain't no use to say nothin' 'bout t'other. De ole nigger all right now, though, and he got de purtiest sight to show de boy he ebber see in all he born days."
[Footnote A: This is one of Horace's own words, and I never heard any translation of it.]
With that he picked up his hat, took me by the hand, and off we started, the best of friends again.
How well I remember that day! It was in the middle of May, and the sunshine was so warm and bright, the sky so clear and blue, and the grass, as we passed through the orchard, looked so beautiful, with here and there a snowy drift of apple-blossoms, into whose honeyed hearts the little pilfering bees were diving--and the birds sang so joyously, and such fragrant prophecies of the golden summer-time came floating to us upon every breath of the wind, that I said to Horace, I thought it must be a Sunday that had slipped out of Heaven, by mistake.