"You do look lovely and sing so sweet; I know there's nothing nicer in heaven," said a little piece of deformity to her one day as it lay dying in her arms. "I'se goin' to heaven, which I shouldn't have done if you'se hadn't gin me the nice bun and told me of Jesus. I loves him now, and I'll tell him how you bringed me to him."
Such was the testimony of one dying child, and it was dearer to Daisy than all the words of flattery ever poured into her ear. As she had brought that little child to God, so she would bring others, and she made her work among the children especially, finding there her best encouragement and greatest success.
Once when Guy Thornton chanced to be in the city and driving in the Park, he saw a singular sight—a pair of splendid bays arching their graceful necks proudly, their silver-tipped harness flashing in the sunlight, and their beautiful mistress radiant with happiness as she sat in her large open carriage, not in the midst of gayly dressed friends, but amid a group of poorly clad, pale-faced little ones, to whom the Park was a paradise, and she was the presiding angel.
"Look—that's Miss McDonald," Guy's friend said to him, "the greatest heiress in New York, and I reckon the one who does the most good. Why, she supports more old people and children and runs more ragged schools than any half-dozen men in the city, and I don't suppose there's a den in New York where she has not been, and never once, I'm told, was she insulted, for the vilest of them stand between her and harm. Once a miscreant on Avenue A knocked a boy down for accidentally stepping in a pool of water and sprinkling her white dress in passing. Friday nights she has a reception for these people, and you ought to see how well they behave. At first they were noisy and rough, and she had to have the police, but now they are quiet and orderly as you please. Perhaps you'd like to go to one. I know Miss McDonald, and will take you with me."
Guy said he should not be in town on Friday, as he must return to Cuylerville the next day, and with a feeling he could not quite analyze, he turned to look at the turnout which always excited so much attention. But it was not so much at the handsome bays and the bevy of queer-looking children he gazed as at the little lady in their midst, clad in velvet and ermine, with a long white feather falling among the curls of her bright hair. When Daisy first entered upon her new life she had affected a nun-like garb as one most appropriate, but after a little child said to her once, "I'se don't like your black gown all the time. I likes sumptin' bright and pretty," she changed her mind and gave freer scope to her natural good taste and love of what was becoming. And the result showed the wisdom of the change, for the children and inmates of the dens she visited, accustomed only to the squalor and ugliness of their surroundings, hailed her more rapturously than they had done before, and were never weary of talking of the beautiful woman who was not afraid to wear her pretty clothes into their wretched houses, which, lest she should soil and defile them, gradually grew more clean and tidy for her sake.
"It wasn't for the likes of them gownds to trail through sich truck," Bridget O'Donohue said, and so, on the days when Daisy was expected, she scrubbed the floor, which, until Daisy's advent had not known water for years, and rubbed and polished the one wooden chair kept sacred for the lady's use.
Other women, too, caught Biddy's spirit and scrubbed their floors and their children's faces on the day when Miss McDonald was expected to call, and when she came her silk dress and pretty shawl were watched narrowly lest by some chance a speck of dirt should fasten on them, and her becoming dress and handsome face were commented on and remembered as some fine show which had been seen for nothing. Especially did the children like her in her bright dress, and the velvet and ermine in which she was clad when Guy met her in the Park were worn more for their sakes than for the gaze of those to whom such things were no novelties. To Guy she looked more beautiful than he had ever seen her before, and there was in his heart a smothered feeling as of a want of something lost, as her carriage disappeared from view and he lost sight of the fair face and form which had once been his own.
The world was going well with Guy, for though Dick Trevylian had paid no part of the hundred thousand dollars, and he still lived in the brown cottage on the hill, he was steadily working his way to competency, if not to wealth. His profession as a lawyer, which he had resumed, yielded him a remunerative income, while his contributions to different magazines were much sought after, so that to all human appearance he was prosperous and happy. Prosperous in his business, and happy in his wife and little ones, for there was now a second child, a baby Guy of six weeks old, and when on his return from New York the father bent over the cradle of his boy and kissed his baby face, that image seen in the Park seemed to fade away, and the caresses he gave to Julia had in them no faithlessness or insincerity. She was a noble woman, and had made him a good wife, and he loved her truly, though with a different, less absorbing, less ecstatic love than he had given to Daisy. But he did not tell her of Miss McDonald. Indeed, that name was never spoken now, nor was any reference ever made to her except when little Daisy asked where was the lady for whom she was named, and why she did not send her a doll.
"I hardly think she knows there is such a chit as you," Guy said to her once, when sorely pressed on the subject, and then the child wondered how that could be, and wished she was big enough to write her a letter and ask her to come and see her.
Every day after that little Daisy played "make b'lieve Miss McDolly" was there, said McDolly being represented by a bundle of shawls tied up to look like a figure and seated in a chair. At last there came to the cottage a friend of Julia's, a young lady from New York, who knew Daisy, and who, while visiting in Cuylerville, accidentally learned that she was the divorced wife of whose existence she knew, but of whom she had never spoken to Mrs. Thornton. Hearing the little one talking one day to Miss McDolly and asking her why she never wrote nor sent a "sing" to her sake-name, the young lady said: