“I’m sure I wish you well, Mrs. Benson.”
“Thank you, Captain. My heart is too full for words! I know you will always be a friend to my dear daughter.”
“You surely do not mean to go where you can never see your daughter again!”
“Yes, Captain. Do you recall that tall and bronzed and handsome man of whom you bought the buffalo robe you gave to your wife a short time before her death?”
“You mean Donald McPherson?”
“Yes, sir. The fates have settled it. He is to be my husband, and Daphne and I must part.”
“You have my best wishes for success and happiness,” said the Captain, earnestly, as he offered his hand.
“There is some peculiar mystery about all this!” he exclaimed to himself the next day, as Mrs. Benson climbed into the wagon and started off to meet her fate. “But it’s the way of women. They are as fickle as the wind.” He thought bitterly of his own budding and now blighted hopes.
“Don’t grieve for her, Daphne,” said Mr. Burns, in a husky voice, as the wagon disappeared. “She was kind to me when I was crippled and cross, and I shall never forget her watchfulness and care for me under the most trying conditions. She is your mother, too, and that of itself is enough to inspire my everlasting gratitude. I have no respect for the man who fails to appreciate the woman to whom he is indebted for his wife.”
“It is well for the three of us that we have learned our lesson, Rollin. We are all young yet, and all eternity is before us.”