Bessie's Fortune

Now, however, she was conscious of a new feeling, which she could not define, and after regarding him fixedly for a moment, without any apparent consciousness, she answered in a very matter of fact way: "I believe I could take care of you--somehow!"

"I know you could; so, suppose we call it a bargain," Archie said, but before Daisy could reply Lady Jane's maid appeared coming down the broad walk.

Stopping in front of the girl and boy, and merely noticing the former by a supercilious stare, she said to the latter interrogatively: "Mr. Archibald McPherson?"

"Present!" he answered, with a comical look at Daisy, on whom it was lost, for she was admiring the smart cap and pink ribbons of the maid, who said: "If you are Mr. Archibald, your father wishes to see you. He said I was to fetch you directly."

Rising slowly Archie shook himself together, and started for the house, while Daisy looked after him with a new and thoughtful expression on her face.

"Archie!" she called at last. "Tell Dorothy I shall not come to help her with the dishes. I have changed my mind. I do not want the shilling."

"All right," was Archie's response, as he walked on never dreaming that he had that morning sown the first germ of the ambition which was to overshadow all Daisy Allen's future life, and bear fruit a hundred-fold.