“Tell me about her, please,” Rena said, and Daisy replied:
“Sometime when I am stronger I will, but now it makes my brain thump so to think of her. Oh, Rena, Rena, my darling, my darling.”
She covered her face with her hands, and Rena could see the tears trickle through her fingers as she rocked to and fro, whispering of things which perplexed and puzzled the little girl to whom they did not seem strange or new.
After a little Daisy became quiet, but for many days she was not quite herself, and Rena never spoke again of the dead sister, and the autumn went by and the winter came with its dull gray clouds and wailing winds, and still Daisy tarried at the farm-house where she was to remain until after the holidays. These her husband was to spend with her, and he came the day before Christmas with gifts, some for his wife, some for Mr. and Mrs. Harris, and some for Rena. Among these last was a book—too young it might seem for a girl of thirteen, but it had been gotten up with beautiful binding and colored prints expressly for the holidays, and its title was:
“THAT SWEET STORY OF OLD;
OR
THE LIFE OF JESUS.”
Very carefully, nay, almost reverently, Daisy took the book in her hand and her eyes were full of tears as she said:
“It is beautiful, but not much like the one I bought that day for my darling. Oh, George, how the Christmas holidays bring her back to me, and I see her just as she looked that last night kneeling by the fire and talking of ‘Jesus’ birthday party,’ and what she wanted from the tree if she ever went to one—shoes, and stockings and a doll that would squeak, and some mince pie and the story of Jesus and she would give them all to me but the book, she said, because I went in the cold, and, George, her shoes were so ragged then and her little toes so blue.”
“Yes, yes, I know. Don’t talk of it any more; it excites you too much,” George said, as he drew his young wife fondly to him, but Daisy answered: