Ah, thank Heaven, it was not too late! she could fling out her arms, and cry out: “Rex, my love, my darling, they are bearing me from you! Save me, Rex, my darling, save me!”
John Brooks sat quietly by her side silently wondering what had come over little Daisy––sweet, impulsive little Daisy––in a single night. “She is only a child,” he muttered to himself, “full of whims and caprices; crying her eyes out last week because she could not go off to school, and now crying because she’s got to go.”
Swiftly the stage rolled down the green sloping hill-side; in another moment it had reached the alder bushes and gained the curve of the road, and she saw Rex lying on the green grass waiting for her. The sunlight drifting through the magnolia blossoms fell upon his handsome, upturned, smiling face and the dark curls pushed back from his white forehead. “Rex! Rex!” she cried, wringing her white hands, but the words died away on her white lips, making no sound. Then the world seemed to close darkly around her, and poor little Daisy, the unhappy girl-bride, fell back in the coach in a deadly swoon.
CHAPTER VII.
“Poor little Daisy!” cried John Brooks, wiping away a suspicious moisture from his eyes with his rough, toil-hardened hand, “she takes it pretty hard now; but the time will come when she will thank me for it. Heaven knows there’s nothing in this world more valuable than an education; and she will need it, poor little, motherless child!”
As the stage drove up before the station Daisy opened her blue eyes with a sigh. “I can at least write to Rex at once,” she thought, “and explain the whole matter to him.” Daisy smiled as she thought Rex would be sure to follow on the very next train.
John Brooks watched the smile and the flush of the rosy face, and believed Daisy was beginning to feel more reconciled about going to school.
“I hope we will get there by noon,” said John, anxiously, taking the seat beside her on the crowded train. “If we missed the train at the cross-roads it would be a serious calamity. I should be obliged to send you on alone; for I must get to New York by night, as I have some very important business to 36 transact for the plantation which must be attended to at once.”