The world was going well with Guy, for though Dick Trevylian had paid no
part of the hundred thousand dollars, and he still lived in the brown
cottage on the hill, he was steadily working his way to competency, if
not to wealth. His profession as a lawyer, which he had resumed, yielded
him a remunerative income, while his contributions to different
magazines were much sought after, so that to all human appearance he was
prosperous and happy. Prosperous in his business, and happy in his wife
and little ones, for there was now a second child, a baby Guy of six
weeks old, and when on his return from New York the father bent over the
cradle of his boy and kissed his baby face, that image seen in the Park
seemed to fade away, and the caresses he gave to Julia had in them no
faithlessness or insincerity. She was a noble woman, and had made him a
good wife, and he loved her truly, though with a different, less
absorbing, less ecstatic love than he had given to Daisy. But he did not
tell her of Miss McDonald. Indeed, that name was never spoken now, nor
was any reference ever made to her except when little Daisy asked where
was the lady for whom she was named, and why she did not send her a
doll.
"I hardly think she knows there is such a chit as you," Guy said to her
once, when sorely pressed on the subject, and then the child wondered
how that could be, and wished she was big enough to write her a letter
and ask her to come and see her.
Every day after that little Daisy played "make b'lieve Miss McDolly" was
there, said McDolly being represented by a bundle of shawls tied up to
look like a figure and seated in a chair. At last there came to the
cottage a friend of Julia's, a young lady from New York, who knew Daisy,
and who, while visiting in Cuylerville, accidentally learned that she
was the divorced wife of whose existence she knew, but of whom she had
never spoken to Mrs. Thornton. Hearing the little one talking one day to
Miss McDolly and asking her why she never wrote nor sent a "sing" to
her sake-name, the young lady said: "Why don't you send Miss McDonald a letter? You tell me what to say and
I'll write it down for you, but don't let mamma know till you see if you
get anything."
The little girl's fancy was caught at once with the idea, and the
following letter was the result:
"DEAR MISS MCDOLLY:--I'se an 'ittle dirl named for you, I is,
Daisy Thornton, an' my papa is Mr. Guy, an' mam-ma is Julia, and 'ittle
brother is Guy, too--only he's a baby, and vomits up his dinner and ties
awfully sometimes; an' I knows anoder 'ittle girl named for somebody who
dives her 'sings,' a whole lot, an' why doesn't youse dive me some, when
I'se your sake-name, an' loves you ever so much, and why'se you never
turn here to see me. I wish you would. I ask papa is you pretty, an' he
tell me yes, bootiful, an' every night I p'ays for you and say God bress
papa an' mam-ma, an' auntie, and Miss McDolly, and 'ittle brodder, an'
make Daisy a dood dirl, and have Miss McDolly send her sumptin' for
Tissmas, for Christ's sake. An' I wants a turly headed doll that ties
and suts her eyes when she does to seep, and wears a shash and a
pairesol, and anodder bigger dolly to be her mam-ma and pank her when
she's naughty, an' I wants an 'ittle fat-iron, an' a cookstove, an'
wash-board. I'se dot a tub. An' I wants some dishes an' a stenshun
table, an' 'ittle bedstead, an' yuffled seets, an' pillars, an' blue
silk kilt, an' ever so many sings which papa cannot buy, 'cause he
hasn't dot the money. Vill you send them, Miss McDolly, pese, an' your
likeness, too. I wants to see how you looks. My mam-ma is pretty, with
black hair an' eyes, but she's awful old--I dess. How old is you? Papa's
hair is some dray, an' his viskers, too. My eyes is bue.