"Did you tell her of - my being here, Dr. Sandford?"
"It was a very natural thing to do. If I had not, somebody else would."
"I will go over to see her some time," I said. "I suppose it is not too far for me to walk."
"It is not too far for you to ride," said the doctor. "I am going that way now. Put on your hat and come. The air will be good for you."
It was not pleasant to go. Nevertheless I yielded and went. I knew how it would be. Every foot of the way pain. The doctor let me alone. I was thankful for that. And he left me alone at Juanita's cottage. He drove on, and I walked up the little path where I had first gone for a drink of water almost eleven years ago. Yet eleven years, from ten to twenty-one, is not so much, in most cases, I thought. In mine, it was a whole life- time, and the end of a life-time. So it seemed.
The interview with my old nurse was not satisfactory. Not to me, and I think not to her. I did not seem to her quite the same Daisy Randolph she had known; indeed I was not the same. Juanita had a little awe of me; and I could not be unreserved and remove the awe. I could not tell her my heart's history; and without telling it, in part, I could not but keep at a distance from my old friend. Time might bring something out of our intercourse; but I felt that this first sight of her had done me no good. So Dr. Sandford found that I felt; for he took pains to know.
Juanita was but little changed. The eleven years had just touched her. She was more wrinkled, hardly so firm in her bearing, not quite so upright, as her beautiful presence used to be. There was no deeper change. The brow was as peaceful and as noble as ever. I thought, speculating upon it, that she must have seen storms, too, in her life-time. The clouds were all cleared away, long since. Perhaps it will be so with me, I thought, some day; by and by.
I thought Dr. Sandford would be discouraged in trying to do me good; however, a day or two after this drive, I saw his horses stopping again at our gate. My mother uttered an exclamation of impatience.
"Does that man come to see you or me, Daisy?" she asked.
"Mamma, I think he is a kind friend to both of us," I said.