Everything the child had asked for was there except the picture. That
Daisy dared not send, lest it should look too much like thrusting
herself upon Guy's notice and wound Julia, his wife.
Daisy was strangely pitiful in her thoughts of Julia, who would in her
turn have pitied her for her delusion could she have known how sure she
was that but for the tardiness of that letter Guy would have chosen his
first love in preference to any other.
And it was well that each believed herself first in the affection of the
man to whom Daisy wanted so much to send something as a proof of her
unalterable love. They were living still in the brown cottage; they were
not able to buy Elmwood back. Oh, if she only dared to do it, and could
do it, how gladly her Christmas gift should be the handsome place which
they had been so proud of! But that would hardly do; Guy might not like
to be so much indebted to her; he was proud and sensitive in many
points, and so she abandoned the plan for the present, thinking that by
and by she would purchase and hold it as a gift to her namesake on her
bridal day. That will be better, she said, as she put the last article
in the box and saw it leave the door, directed to Guy Thornton's care.
* * * * * Great was the surprise at the brown cottage, when, on the very night
before Christmas, the box arrived and was deposited in the dining room,
where Guy and Julia, Miss Barker and Daisy gathered eagerly around it,
the latter exclaiming: "I knows where it tum from, I do. My sake-name, Miss McDolly, send it,
see did. I writ and ask her would see an' she hab."
"What!" Guy said, as, man-like, he began deliberately to untie every
knot in the string which his wife in her impatience would have cut at
once. "What does the child mean? Do you know, Julia?"
"I do. I'll explain," Miss Barker said, and in as few words as possible
she told what she had done, while Julia listened with a very grave face,
and Guy was pale even to his lips as he went on untying the string and
opening the box.
There was a letter lying on the top which he handed to Julia, who
steadied her voice to read aloud:
"DARLING LITTLE SAKE-NAME DAISY: Your letter made Miss McDolly
very happy, and she is so glad to send you the doll with a shash, and
the other toys. Write to me again and tell me if they suit you. God
bless you, sweet little one, is the prayer of "MISS MCDONALD."