She passed from the residential street to a corner where a trolley-line crossed, and caught a car. It was the Wares' chauffeur's afternoon "off", and Daisy's own little runabout was being repaired at the garage downtown.
Her destination was the postoffice. She had answered that grim letter from her mother with a brief note in which she had asked that any further letters from the home farm should be addressed to her, in her maiden name, at the city "general delivery". Her object in this note, which mentioned nothing of her marriage, was to pique the curiosity of John Nixon and his wife, so that they would, in all probability, actually fulfil their expressed intention of coming to town and taking her back to the farm.
She had not called at the "general delivery" wicket since despatching this note home; and this was her self-appointed mission to-day.
Evidently she had succeeded in waking the interest of her mother and stepfather; for the clerk, with a smile, passed out a letter addressed in the sloping irregular handwriting of Mrs. Lovina Nixon; the postmark showing it had been in the office some days. Daisy took the missive to one of the side-tables and opened it.
"Your pa and me," wrote Mrs. Lovina, "will be in town to get you, like I said, right after thrashen. You neento think your goen to get away the like of that. Yon can be looken fur us about the end of Oktobr. Mebbe we wont be so hard on you when we get you back, if youl come down to the train and meet us and save us trouble but if we have to put the police onto you or go to any expens to get aholt of you, wel take it out of your hide when we get you home here and you can bet on that, so mind, itl be just like Im tellen you, so you can do wichever you like for to do."
Daisy twinkled and dimpled from brow to chin-point as she folded the letter and slipped it into her hand-bag. She knew Mrs. Lovina Nixon!
When Daisy had commenced to read her letter, broad daylight had filled the postoffice rotunda, and a little sunbeam had slanted like a slung javelin from the window-sash down across the desk against which she leaned. As she looked up now, however, after depositing the missive in her reticule, she saw that, across the big room, the electric lights had been turned on; and, glancing toward the window-pane, she saw that heavy clouds had come up and that, already, there showed here and there on the glass, the splash of a raindrop.
As the trolley line did not approach within three blocks of the Ware gate, and as there was quite a walk across the lawn as well, Daisy decided the best way to avoid a wetting was to take one of the taxis which were parked in a long line by the curb, just outside the postoffice. Hastily hooking her parasol over her arm, she hurried out of the revolving door and across the sidewalk. Just as she was about to step into one of the dingy vehicles labelled "Auto for Hire", a jitney drew up by the curb to let out a passenger; and Daisy, out of the corner of her eye, saw a dry-smiling face, a profusion of riotously "kinky" hair that made it necessary to set the peaked chauffeur's cap a little to one side, and a pair of narrowed humorous eyes that, however, looked soberly away as she said, "Hello, Jimmy Knight. Want a dead-head passenger?"
"Step in, ma'am," said Jimmy, formally, holding his eyes steadily forward as he reached back, deftly felt for the latch, and opened the tonneau door.
"Haven't you any room in front?" Daisy raised her lashes very slowly, then dropped them and put her head on one side.