Mary Jane Holmes

“ McDonald asked, in a half-querulous tone, as if she did not altogether approve of her daughter's acts.
"Yes, all through, except a shawl for old Sarah Mackie, and a few more toys for Biddy Warren's blind boy," Daisy said, and her mother replied: "Well, I'm sure I shall be glad for your sake when it is over. You'll make youself sick, and you are nearly worn out now, remembering everbody in New York."
"Not quite everybody, mother," Daisy rejoined, cheerfully; "only those whom everybody forgets,—the poor, whom we have with us always. ”

“ Tom had heard from Madame Lafarcade of Guy's marriage and, like her, understood why Daisy's fever ran so high, and her mind was in such turmoil. But for himself he knew there was no hope, and with a feeling of death in his heart he watched by her day and night, yielding his place to no one, and saying to madame, when she remonstrated with him and bade him care for his own health:
"It does not matter for me. I would rather die than not." ”

“ Guy was her theme, and the letter which went "too late, too late." Then she would beg of Tom to go for Guy, to bring him to her, and tell him how much she loved him and how good she would be if he would only take her back.
"Father wants me to marry Tom," she said in a whisper, and Tom's heart almost stood still as he listened; "and Tom wanted me, too, but I couldn't, you know, even if he were worth his weight in gold. I could not love him. Why, he's got red hair, and such great freckles on his face, and big feet and hands with frecks on them. Do you know Tom?" ”

“ Take good care of my children; teach them to remember their mother, and if in time there comes another in my place, and other little ones than mine call you father, don't forget me quite, because I love you so much. Oh, Guy, my darling, it is hard to say good-bye, and know that after a little this world will go on the same as if I had never been. Don't think I am afraid. I am not, for Jesus is with me, and I know I am safe; but still there's a clinging to life, which has been so pleasant to me. ”

“ The shadow of death has passed from our house, and I can almost say the shadow of sickness too, for though Guy is still weak as a child and thin as a ghost, he is decidedly on the gain, and to-day I drove him out for the third time, and hoped from something he said that he was beginning to feel some interest in the life so kindly given back to him. Still he will never be just the same. The blow stunned him too completely for him to recover quite his old happy manner, and there is a look of age in his face which pains me to see. He knows Daisy has been here, and why. ”

“ I cannot think so when I remember the look on his face as he told me about it and swore to me solemnly that up to the very last he fully expected relief from England, where he thought he had a fortune.
"If I live I will pay you sometime," he said; but that does not help me now. I am a ruined man. Elmwood must be sold, and I must work like a dog to earn my daily bread. For myself I would not mind it much, and Fan, who, woman-like, saw it in the distance and warned me of it, behaves nobly; but it falls hard on Daisy. ”

“ Julia is dead, and her grave is in Saratoga, for Guy dare not have her moved, but he has erected a costly monument to her memory, and the mound above her is like some bright flower bed all the summer long, for he hires a man to tend it, and goes twice each season to see that it is kept as he wishes to have it. ”

“ If there was one part of his profession in which he excelled more than another it was in the divorce cases which had made Indiana so notorious. Squire McDonald, as he was called, was well known to that class of people who, utterly ignoring God's command, seek to free themselves from the bonds which once were so pleasant to wear, and as he sat alone in his office with Tom's letter in his hand, and read how rapidly that young man was getting rich, there came into his mind a plan, the very thought of which would have made Guy Thornton shudder with horror and disgust. ”

“ Julia is dead and Daisy is here again at Elmwood, which she purchased with her own money, and fitted up with every possible convenience and luxury.
Guy is ten years younger than he used to be, and we are all so happy with this little fairy, who has expanded into a noble woman, and whom I love as I never loved a living being before, Guy excepted, of course. I never dreamed when I turned her out into the rain that I should love her as I do, or that she was capable of being what she is. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was at Christmas time years ago that she first met with Guy, and all the day long, as she turned over piles of shawls, and delaines, and flannels, or ordered packages of candy, and bonbons, and dollies by the dozen, her thoughts had been with Guy and the time she met him at Leiter and Field's and he walked home with her. It seemed to her years and years ago, and the idea of having lived so long made her feel old and tired and worn. ”

“ It is astonishing how many things it takes to make up the tout ensemble of a fashionable woman," Guy said, and I thought he glanced with an unusual amount of curiosity and interest at my plain cambric wrapper and smooth hair.
Indeed he has taken it upon himself to criticise me somewhat; thinks I am too slim, as he expresses it, and that my head might be improved if it had a more snarly appearance. Daisy, of course, stands for his model, and her hair does not look as if it had been combed in a month, and yet Zillah spends hours over it. ”

“ As if I cared a straw for them or any body besides Guy and Tom!
It is very pleasant here at Elmwood, but the house is not as grand as I supposed, and there are not as many servants, and the family carriage is awful pokey. Guy is to give me a pretty little phaeton on my birthday.
I like Miss Frances very much, only she is such a raging housekeeper, and keeps me all the while on the alert. I don't believe in these raging housekeepers who act as if they wanted to make the bed before you are up, and eat breakfast before it is ready. ”

“ Some word which sounded very much like "thunderation" escaped his lips, but he said no more, for he saw in the sleeping woman's face a look he never mistook. It was death; and ten minutes after he entered the room Julia Thornton lay dead in Daisy's arms.
There was a moment or so of half consciousness, during which they caught the words, "So kind in you; it makes me easier; be good to the children; one is called for you, but Guy loved me too. Good-bye. I am going to Jesus." ”

“ Daisy McDonald Thornton's journal,—presented by my husband, Mr. Guy Thornton, who wishes me to write something in it every day; and who, when I asked him what I should write, said: "Your thoughts, and opinions, and experiences. It will be pleasant for you sometime to look back upon your early married life and see what progress you have made since then, and will help you to recall incidents you would otherwise forget. A journal fixes things in your mind, and I know you will enjoy it, especially as no one is to see it, and you can talk to it freely as to a friend." ”

“ Oh, Guy, how can I give it up? Surely there must be a way now I am of age. I was so humiliated about it, and after all that passed between father and Tom and me, I could not stay in Berlin, and never be sure whose money was paying for my bread, and when I heard that Madame Lafarcade, a French lady, who had spent the winter in Berlin, was wanting an English governess for her children, I went to her, and as the result, am here at her beautiful country-seat, just out of the city, earning my own living and feeling so proud to do it ”

“ I rather like writing in my journal after all, for here I can say what I think, and I guess I shall not let Zillah make the entries. Where did I leave off? Oh, about poor Tom.
I have had a letter from him. He had just heard of my marriage, and only said, "God bless you, my darling little Daisy, and may you be very happy."
I burned the letter up and cried myself into a headache. I wish people would not love me so much. I do not deserve it, for I know I am not what they think me to be. ”

“ 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 later exclaiming:
"I knows where it tum from, I do. My sake-name, Miss Mac-Dolly, send it, see did. I writ and ask her would see, an' see 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?" ”

“ It's the heat, I suppose. Oh! there is Max, with the mail! He is coming this way! He has,—he certainly has something for me!"
Daisy's cheeks were scarlet now, and her eyes were bright as stars as she went forward to meet the man who brought the letters to the house.
"Only a paper!—is there nothing more?" she asked, in an unsteady voice, as she took the paper in her hand, and recognizing Guy's handwriting, knew almost to a certainty what was before her.
"Oh, you are sick, I must bring some water," Pauline exclaimed, alarmed at Daisy's white face and the peculiar tone of her voice. ”

“ I could not bear the thought of being tied up to some man, and if I did marry it must be to somebody who was rich. That was in Chicago, and the night before Tom started for South America, where he was going to make his fortune, and he wanted me to promise to wait for him, and said no one would ever love me as well as he did. ”

“ I asked Guy once why he did not marry her instead of a little goose like me, and he said he liked the little goose the best, and then kissed me, and crumpled my white dress all up. Poor Guy! I wish I did love him as well as he does me, but it's not in me to love any body very much. ”

“ Guy Thornton, and Guy is good looking, and highly esteemed, and very learned, and I can see that the young ladies in the neighborhood envy me for being his wife. I wonder who is that Julia Hamilton, Miss Frances talks about so much, and why Guy did not marry her instead of me. She is very learned, and gets up in the morning and flies round and is always ready, and reads scientific articles in the Westminster Review, and teaches in Sunday-school, and thinks it wicked to waltz, and likes to discuss all the mixed-up horrid questions of the day,—religion and politics and science and everything. ”

“ She is perfectly at home in society, and knows just what to do and say so long as the conversation keeps in the fashionable round of chit-chat, but when it drifts into deeper channels she is silent at once, or only answers in monosyllables. I believe she is a good French scholar, and she plays and sings tolerably well, and reads the novels as they come out, but of books and literature, in general, she is wholly ignorant, and if Guy thought to find in her any sympathy with his favorite studies and authors he is terribly mistaken. ”

“ She had thought the grave was closed, the old wound healed by time and silence, and now a little child had torn it open, and it was bleeding and throbbing again with a pang such as she had never felt before, while there crept over her such a feeling of desolation and loneliness, a want of something unpossessed, as few have ever experienced. ”

“ But everything pertaining to Tom must be kept carefully out of sight, for the man knew his daughter would never lend herself to such a diabolical scheme as that which he was revolving, and which he at once put in progress, managing so adroitly that before Daisy was at all aware of what she was doing, she found herself the heroine of a divorce suit, founded really upon nothing but a general dissatisfaction with married life, and a wish to be free from it. ”

“ Why should he wish to marry, when he has lived to be thirty years old without a care of any kind, and has money enough to allow him to indulge his taste for books, and pictures, and travel, and is respected by everybody, and looked up to as the first man in town, and petted and cared for by me as few brothers have ever been petted and cared for? and if he must marry, why need he take a child of sixteen, whom he has only known since Christmas, and whose sole recommendation, so far as I can learn, is her pretty face? ”

“ 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, 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 ”