"It was John's wish. I expect he couldn't do without a Lily."
The old apple-trees seemed more bent, more mossy; their shade seemed deeper on the green garden paths; and there, her grandmother's faltering steps left far behind, a little child came running—a little shy child—and buried her face in her mother's gown. The girl, her namesake, looked down at this small creature wonderingly. This was the first strange element in her old home; a child who had more right there than she. The garden that used to be her own, with all its fruit and flowers, where she was queen, and the first of her subjects used to carry her throned on his shoulder—her garden now belonged to this fat, rosy creature of five years old, whose life had been troubled with no adventures, no wild changes of losing and finding, who had a little brown face and dark eyes like John's, and hair of that brown fairness which means to become dark by-and-by. This was Lily—John's Lily now;—but the child of fourteen, with all her sweet fancies and romantic recollections, shook her head and thought that this baby's name did not rightly belong to her. A dear little loving child, but not one of the flowers that rule the garden. She would be John's little maid, her father's pet and darling, but never a princess that ruled him with a look or touch, never the real "John's Lily."
But Mrs. Randal, looking eagerly over her spectacles, rather lame with rheumatism, came hobbling hastily along the path by the strawberry-bed, and her welcome was loving enough to make Lily Maxwell feel that there was one heart here, at least, where she still had the warmest corner. And then John came, with clean hands and face and in his Sunday coat. He was a little shy with this young lady, who was somehow so very different from the child who had been taken away from him seven years before. Just a shadow of her old wistfulness came into Lily's blue eyes as he turned away from her after a few words and caught up his own little girl to his shoulder, and whispering, "Lily like a ride?" rushed off with her round the long old path, the nice green slope round the strawberry-bed, so familiar to another child long ago.
But it was all peaceful and happy. There could not, indeed, be a happier village home than this where Lily came to visit her old friends. She stayed to tea with them in the quaint old kitchen, and lingered there, talking and telling them long stories about her life and that of her brothers, till the shadows were growing long, and the evening sweet and cool. Then she left them, promising to come again soon.
And little Lily Randal, John's own little girl, proudly showed her father what the pretty young lady had fastened round her neck: a gold chain with a small locket engraved with the letter L, just like one she wore herself, except that the hair in it was not dark, but pale gold like her own.
"She always was a sweet child, and she is still," said Mrs. Randal. "They haven't spoilt her. She told me the four years with us was the happiest of her life. I hope not. I hope there's many blessings in store for her."
"She was always something like an angel," said John thoughtfully. "When I looked up and see her standing in the door, all in white like that, I remembered when she come to me in the railway carriage. There was always the same look in her eyes."
And Mary smiled and said, "Ah! she'll always be John's Lily."
THE END.
LONDON AND WESTMINSTER:
WELLS GARDNER, DARTON AND CO.