"Yours, sincerely, "Ella Barker."
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Daisy's face was pale as ashes as she read Miss Barker's letter, and then snatching up the other devoured its contents almost at a glance, while her breath came in panting gasps, and her heart seemed trying to burst through her throat. She could neither move nor cry out for a moment, but sat like one turned to stone, with a sense of suffocation oppressing her, and a horrible pain in her heart. She had thought the grave was closed, the old wound healed by time and silence, and now a little child had torn it open, and it was bleeding and throbbing again with a pang such as she had never felt before, while there crept over her such a feeling of desolation and loneliness, a want of something unpossessed, as few have ever experienced.
But for her own foolishness that sweet little child might have been hers, she thought, as her heart went after the little one with an indescribable yearning which made her stretch out her arms as if to take the baby to her bosom and hold it there forever. Guy had called it for her, and that touched her more than anything else. He had not forgotten her then. She had never supposed he had, but to be thus assured of it was very sweet, and as she thought of it, and read again little Daisy's letter, the tightness about her heart and the choking sensation in her throat began to give way, and one after another the great tears rolled down her cheeks, slowly at first, but gradually faster and faster until they fell in torrents, and a tempest of sobs shook her frame, as with her head bowed upon her dressing-table she gave vent to her grief. It seemed to her she never could stop crying or grow calm again, for as often as she thought of the touching words, "I pays for you," there came a fresh burst of sobs and tears, until at last nature was exhausted, and with a low moan Daisy sank upon her knees and tried to pray, the words which first sprang to her lips framing themselves into thanks that somewhere in the world there was one who prayed for her and loved her too, even though the love might have for its object merely dolls, and candies, and toys. And these the child should have in abundance, and Miss McDonald found herself longing for the morrow in which to begin again the shopping she had thought was nearly ended.
It was in vain next day that her mother remonstrated against her going out, pleading her white, haggard face and the rawness of the day. Daisy was not to be detained at home, and before ten o'clock she was down on Broadway, and the dolly with the "shash," and "pairesol," which she had seen the day before under its glass case was hers for twenty-five dollars, and the plainer bit of china, who was to be dollie's mother and perform the parental duty of "panking her when she was naughty," was also purchased, and the dishes, and the table, and stove, and bedstead, with ruffled sheets, and pillow-cases, and blue satin spread, and the washboard, and clothes-bars, and tiny wringer, and diverse other toys, were bought with a disregard of expense which made Miss McDonald a wonder to those who waited on her. Such a Christmas-box was seldom sent to a child as that which Daisy packed in her room that night, with her mother looking on and wondering what Sunday-school was to be the recipient of all those costly presents, and suggesting that cheaper articles would have answered just as well.
Everything the child had asked for was there except the picture. That Daisy dared not send, lest it should look too much like thrusting herself upon Guy's notice and wound Julia his wife.
Daisy was strangely pitiful in her thoughts of Julia, who would in her turn have pitied her for her delusion, could she have known how sure she was that but for the tardiness of that letter Guy would have chosen his first love in preference to any other.
And it was well that each believed herself first in the affection of the man to whom Daisy wanted so much to send something as a proof of her unalterable love. They were living still in the brown cottage; they were not able to buy Elmwood back. Oh, if she only dared to do it, how gladly her Christmas gift should be the handsome place which they had been so proud of. But that would hardly do; Guy might not like to be so much indebted to her; he was proud and sensitive in many points, and so she abandoned the plan for the present, thinking that by and by she would purchase and hold it as a gift to her namesake on her bridal day. That will be better, she said, as she put the last article in the box and saw it leave her door, directed to Guy Thornton's care.
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Great was the surprise at the Brown Cottage, when, on the very night before Christmas the box arrived and was deposited in the dining-room, where Guy and Julia, Miss Barker and Daisy, gathered eagerly around it, the later exclaiming: