Mr. Parlow had realised what had been denied his daughter when he had first seen Carolyn May in Mandy’s arms. That was the thing lacking. The love of children, the right to care for children of her own. He had been practically the cause of this denial. Sometimes, when he thought of it, the carpenter was rather shaken. Suppose he should be called to account for his daughter’s loss?
Carolyn May, interested only in seeing her friends made happy, had no idea of the turmoil she had created in Mr. Parlow’s mind. She went her way as usual, scattering sunshine, and hiding as much as she could the trouble that gnawed in her own heart.
The love of Uncle Joe and Aunty Rose and Miss Amanda and Mr. Driggs and the host of her other friends at The Corners and in Sunrise Cove could not take the place in faithful little Carolyn May’s heart of that parental affection which had been so lavished on her all the days of her life, until the sailing of the Dunraven.
Had the little girl possessed brothers and sisters, it might have been different. Mr. and Mrs. Cameron could not, in that case, have devoted themselves so entirely to the little girl.
She had been her mother’s close companion and her father’s chum. True, it had made her “old-fashioned”—old in speech and in her attitude towards many things in life, but she was none the less charming because of this difference between her and other children.
Her upbringing had indeed made her what she was. She thought more deeply than other children of her age. Her nature was the logical outgrowth of such training as she had received from associating with older people.
She was seriously desirous of seeing Uncle Joe and Miss Amanda made happy in their love for each other. She was a born matchmaker—there was no doubt of that.
During the time that the nurse was at the abandoned lumber camp caring for Judy Mason, Carolyn May hoped that something might take Uncle Joe there. She even tried to get him to drive her over to see Miss Amanda on Sunday afternoon. But Uncle Joe did not keep a horse himself, and he would not be coaxed into hiring one for any such excursion.
“Besides, what would your Aunty Rose say?” he asked his little niece. “She would not approve of our doing such a thing on the Lord’s Day, I am sure.”
Nevertheless, he was as eager as a boy to do it. It was because he shrank from having the neighbours comment on his doing the very thing he desired to do that he so sternly refused to consider Carolyn May’s suggestion. Those neighbours might think that he was deliberately going to call on Miss Amanda!