“That is what Marian—what you always called me when you were a child, my dear. Nothing would please me better.”
“Then ‘daddy’ it shall be. And now, do you know, daddy, I’m beginning to remember things in a vague sort of way. I’m just like some one waking up after a good sleep. Things, you know, that happened before one went to sleep, come back by degrees at such a time; and, in the same way, recollections are growing on me now of my childhood, and especially of the time when I was lost. Let me see, now! I’m like some one looking into a magic crystal to see the future, only I want to recall the past. After thinking very hard, I’ve been able to call up some remembrance of the day I ran away from home. I seem to remember being very angry with someone, and wanting to get away. Then there was a woman, and a man, but chiefly a woman, and some dark place that I was in. And I think they must have treated me badly in some way.”
“Cobbler” Horn thought for a moment.
“Why,” he said, “that dark place must have been the wood, on the other side of the field where I found your shoe.”
“Yes, no doubt; and wasn’t it in that wood that you picked up the string of my sun-bonnet?”
“To be sure it was!”
“Yes; and perhaps it was there that I was stripped of my clothes. When I fell into the hands of Mr. and Mrs. Burton, my chief garment was an old ragged shawl. My one shoe, and my socks, and my sun-bonnet, were almost all I had besides. I’ve kept all the things except the socks, and you must see them by and bye, daddy.”
“Of course I must.”
But, having found his child, he did not greatly care just now about anything else.
Presently she spoke again.