Bessie's Fortune

"Love you? You?" he said, inquiringly, as he looked at her with an unsteady, imbecile gaze as if to ask who she was that he should love her.

"Yes," she said. "I am Daisy. Don't you remember the little girl who used to come to you under the yews?"

"Yes," and his lip trembled a little. "The girl who gave herself and her bonnet to shield me from the flies and sun. You did that then; but Bessie has given herself to me, body and soul, through cold and hunger, sunshine and storm. God bless her, God bless my darling Bessie."

"And won't you bless me, too, Archie? I should like to remember that in time to come," Daisy said, seized by some impulse she could not understand.

Archie hesitated a moment as if not quite comprehending her, then drawing her down to him he kissed her with the old, fervent kiss he used to give her when they were boy and girl together, and, laying his hand upon her head, said tremblingly: "Will God bless Daisy, too, and bring her at last to where I shall be waiting for her?"

Then Daisy withdrew herself from him, and without another word went out from his presence and never saw him again. To Bessie, sobbing by the door, she said very little; there was a passionate embrace and a few farewell kisses and then she was gone, and twenty minutes later Bessie heard the train as it passed bearing her mother away.