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DAISY THORNTON
[CHAPTER I.—EXTRACTS FROM MISS FRANCES THORNTON'S JOURNAL.]
Elmwood, June 15th, 18—.
I have been working among my flowers all the morning, digging, weeding and transplanting, and then stopping a little to rest. My roses are perfect beauties this year, while my white lilies are the wonder of the town, and yet my heart was not with them to-day, and it was nothing to me that those fine people from the Towers came into the grounds while I was at work, "just to see and admire," they said, adding that there was no place in Cuylerville like Elmwood. I know that, and Guy and I have been so happy here, and I loved him so much, and never dreamed what was in store for me until it came suddenly like a heavy blow.
Why should he wish to marry, when he has lived to be thirty years old without a care of any kind, and has money enough to allow him to indulge his taste for books, and pictures, and travel, and is respected by everybody, and looked up to as the first man in town, and petted and cared for by me as few brothers have ever been petted and cared for? and if he must marry, why need he take a child of sixteen, whom he has only known since Christmas, and whose sole recommendation, so far as I can learn, is her pretty face?
Daisy McDonald is her name, and she lives in Indianapolis, where her father is a poor lawyer, and as I have heard, a scheming, unprincipled man. Guy met her last winter in Chicago, and fell in love at once, and made two or three journeys West on "important business," he said, and then, some time in May, told me he was going to bring me a sister, the sweetest little creature, with beautiful blue eyes and wonderful hair. I was sure to love her, he said, and when I suggested that she was very young, he replied that her youth was in her favor, as we could more easily mould her to the Thornton pattern.
Little he knows about girls; but then he was perfectly infatuated and blind to everything but Daisy's eyes, and hair, and voice, which is so sweet and winning that it will speak for her at once. Then she is so dainty and refined, he said, and he asked me to see to the furnishing of the rooms on the west side of the house, the two which communicate with his own private library, where he spends a great deal of time with his books and writing. The room adjoining this was to be Daisy's boudoir or parlor, where she could sit when he was occupied and she wished to be near him. This was to be fitted up in blue, as she had expressed a wish to that effect, and he said no expense must be spared to make it as pretty and attractive as possible. So the walls were frescoed and tinted, and I spent two entire days in New York hunting for a carpet of the desirable shade, which should be right both in texture and design.
Guy was exceedingly particular, and developed a wonderful proclivity to find fault with everything I admired. Nothing was quite the thing for Daisy, until at last a manufacturer offered to get a carpet up which was sure to suit, and so that question was happily settled for the time being. Then came the furniture, and unlimited orders were given to the upholsterer to do his best, and matters were progressing finely when order number two came from the little lady, who was sorry to seem so fickle, but her mamma, whose taste was perfect, had decided against all blue, and would Guy please furnish the room with drab trimmed with blue?
"It must be a very delicate shade of drab," she wrote, and lest he should get too intense an idea, she would call it a tint of a shade of drab, or, better yet, a hint of a tint of a shade of drab would describe exactly what she meant, and be so entirely unique, and lovely, and recherche.