“It was just a story,” said Dulcie, indulgently. “People often make up stories just for fun. Why, it wasn’t any sillier than the story I made up about the fairy who lives in a music-box, and when people wound it up, they could hear a real voice singing inside.”
“But we all knew that was only a make-up,” objected Daisy. “We knew it wasn’t true. But Paul really tried to make us believe they had that wonderful thing in his house, and he looked so serious when he was telling it, that if it hadn’t been so perfectly impossible, I think I should have believed it was true.”
CHAPTER XII
DAISY WRITES A LETTER
THE May of 1880 was long remembered as the hottest spring month in many years. Not a drop of rain fell between April and June, and for weeks the sun poured down upon the city streets, with almost the scorching heat of July. Many people left town earlier than usual, and the ferries and the near-by beaches were thronged with tourists, in search of a cool breeze. But in the Winslow house things went on much as usual. For years it had been Mrs. Winslow’s custom to remain in town until June fifteenth, on which date she moved her household to the old family homestead on the Hudson, there to remain for precisely three months, and she was not a person to be turned from a custom of years by a little hot weather.
How the children longed for Lizzie, and the trips to Central Park. The daily walk in Washington Square seemed very tame and uninteresting in comparison, and on some afternoons the heat there was almost unbearable. But they were not allowed to venture farther from home, and without car-fare the trip to Central Park was an impossibility. Lessons became a daily drudgery, which even Dulcie dreaded, and Miss Hammond was so tired and nervous, after a long winter’s work, that she was not much better able to teach than her pupils were to study.
Daisy, who was not very strong, suffered more than the others, and became so pale and languid that even Grandma noticed it, and administered a most disagreeable tonic three times a day, which made the approach of meal-times a veritable nightmare to the child. The tonic helped Daisy’s appetite, but did not cure the headaches, and the little girl spent more than one hot afternoon lying on the nursery sofa, while Dulcie or Molly sponged her forehead with cold water drawn from the tap in the bath-room.
It was a broiling Sunday afternoon, towards the end of the month, and Daisy was just recovering from one of those distressing headaches. The others had all gone to afternoon service, with Grandma and Aunt Kate, but she had been excused, because she had grown so white and faint during the morning service that Grandma had been obliged to send her out of church before the sermon, with Molly to look after her, and take her home. But a long nap on the sofa, with her head swathed in a wet towel, had cured the headache, and as the clock struck four she awoke to the realization that she was feeling much better.
“I believe I’ll go and see Miss Polly,” she decided, after a little reflection. “We haven’t any of us been for more than a week, and if I try to read my head may get bad again.”
So she rose from the sofa, and having removed the wet towel, and smoothed her hair, started for her call. But just outside the nursery door she paused, and her face brightened.
“I’ll run down to the yard first, and pick her a bunch of syringa,” she said to herself. “The bush is all out, and Grandma will never notice if I take a little. Miss Polly loves flowers.”