An unfamiliar voice suddenly interrupted her task, demanding:
“Girl! Why are you despoiling my property, trampling my choicest ferns, trespassing upon my private park?”
The paperknife went one way, Dorothy’s red Tam another, as she sprang up to confront the most masterful looking woman she had ever seen. Tall as an Amazon, yet handsome as she was forbidding, she towered above the astonished child as if she would annihilate her.
“I—I couldn’t do very much—with a paperknife, could I? I didn’t know—I’m sorry, I’ll plant them right back—I only did what the others said—Nobody warned me—us—”
“Us? Are there others then? Where? This is outrageous! Can’t you read? Didn’t you see the signs ‘No Trespassing’ everywhere? Where are the rest? This must be put a stop to—I wouldn’t have had it happen for anything. My park—Eunice’s precious playground, where she is safe and—Oh! I am so sorry, so sorry.”
The lady was in riding habit. A little way off stood a horse and beside it a tiny pony with a child upon its back. A groom was at the pony’s side, apparently holding its small rider safe. The child’s face peered out from a mass of waving hair, frail and very lovely, though now frightened by her own mother’s loud tones.
These tones had roused others also. Wheeling about the lady faced Corny and the Colonel, slowly rising from the log where they had been resting. A moment she stared as if doubting the evidence of her own eyes, then her whole expression changed and springing forward she threw her strong arms about the trembling Colonel and drew his tired face to her shoulder.
“Oh! Daddy, Daddy! You have come home—you have come home at last. And on my wedding day! To make it a glorious day, indeed! Ten years since I have had a chance to kiss your dear old face, ten years lost out of a lifetime just because I married—Jabb!”
But now her strong, yet cultured voice, rang out in mirth, and Dorothy looked at her in amazement, almost believing she had found a crazy woman in these woods. Then Mr. Corny, as she called him, came to where she stood, observing, and gently pushed her back again upon the heap of ferns.