II.
A CLUSTER OF DAISIES.
"WHAT are you thinking of, Frank?" said Mrs. Forster, looking at herhusband as he stood leaning against the casing of the window, gazingthoughtfully out at the lovely garden beyond.
"Of a bad habit of mine," he answered.
"You have none; at least none that I cannot put up with," she saidplayfully.
"That's not the question, dear Gertrude," he returned gravely. "It iswhether my Maker can put up with it, and I believe that He cannot,since he has said He 'will not hold him guiltless that taketh His namein vain.'"
Mrs. Forster colored as she bent her head over the sleeping baby on herlap.
"You did not know, perhaps," her husband said, after a minute'ssilence, "that I was ever guilty of this--sin?"
"I did know it, Frank; at least I have heard you now and then, when youwere speaking to your dogs and horses, or even when you were a littleimpatient with the men. But you did not mean me to hear such words; andI noticed you never used them in my presence."
"No," he said a little sadly: "I would not speak in my wife's presencewords which were not fit for her to hear; but I forgot an ear stillpurer, which I was insulting and defying. That is the second thrust Ihave had to-day, Gertrude, which has made me feel that I have treatedthe Almighty with less of reverence and respect than I would show tosome of my fellow-creatures. Let me tell you of the innocent lesson Ireceived from the little flower-girl, who sent the daisies to you."
And sitting down beside her, he told her of the teaching which had cometo him from the little wayside blossom; to whose lonely, thirstingheart his few kind words and smiles had been as drops of dew fromheaven.
But even while they talked of her and her pretty lady-like ways andsayings, which seemed so far above her station, they did not knowshe was a "Daisy," and that those were her namesakes over which Mrs.Forster bent, dropping happy tears and kisses on them, mingled withmany a blessing on the little giver.
Plucking one of the flowers from the stem, she opened her baby's tinyhand and placed it within it. The fairy fingers closed around it,clasping it tight, while the unconscious little one slept on.
"Her name is Gertrude, but we'll call her Daisy, Frank, as soon as sheis old enough to be called any thing but baby," said the young mother,"and her pretty pet name may serve as a reminder of this day's lesson,if ever it should be forgotten."
"You think I may need it," said her husband, smiling. "I trust not; forthe sin, to say nothing of the vulgarity, of taking God's name in vain,has been set forth so plainly by my innocent little teacher, that Imust have a short memory, indeed, if I failed to remember her lesson.She thought _gentlemen_ must know better."
"But, dear," said the lady, "you said you would inquire about thischild, and see if we could not be of some use to her."
"So I did," he answered; "and so I will, and should have done longsince; but day after day I have let business or pleasure keep me tillI had but just time to catch the train, and none to bestow on thepoor little creature who seems to have been so grateful for the fewkind words I have given her. You think I am rather fanciful aboutthis child, I know, Gertrude; but I am convinced that some of her fewyears must have been spent among different people than those by whomshe is now surrounded. Nor am I the only one of her customers who hasnoticed the grace of her speech and manners, so uncommon in a childof her class. Ward, and others beside, have seen it; but like myselfhave never made it their business to see after her. However, to-morrowafternoon, I shall make it a point to be at the depot in time to have atalk with her. I wonder if the woman who keeps the fruit-stall at thecorner, and whose child I believe she is, would give her up and let hergo to school."
He was as good as his word; and more than an hour earlier than usual,our little flower-girl saw "her gentleman" coming down the streettowards the depot. It was an eager, wistful little face, with somequestioning fear in it, that she raised to him, for she was anxiouslest she should have offended her kind friend, as she had learned tothink him, by her plain speech of the day before.
She had scarcely meant to speak so plainly; the words had seemed toescape her without her intending it, and, it was true, had been drawnforth by the gentleman's own questions; but when she remembered themafterwards she feared that he would think her rude and disrespectful.
She need not have been afraid. His eye and voice were even kinder thanusual as he came near to her, and he laid his hand gently on her head,saying,--
"Well, my little woman! and how does the world go with you to-day? Thelady told me to thank you very much for the daisies."
The young face brightened.
"Did she like them, sir?"
"Very much indeed,--all the more because she has a little one at homewhom she is going to call 'Daisy' after your pretty flowers."
"Is she your little girl, sir?"
"Yes, she is a mite of a Daisy, but a very precious one," he answered;then looking into the flushed face, with its soft, shining eyes andparted lips, he added, "You are a Daisy yourself."
The flowers she held dropped at her feet unheeded as she clasped bothhands upon her breast, and with quick-coming breath and filling eyes,asked eagerly, "How _did_ you know it, sir? how did you know it?"
"Know what, my child? What troubles you?"
"How did you know I was Daisy?" she almost gasped.
"I did not know it," he answered in surprise. "Is your name Daisy? Ithought it was Margaret."
"They call me Margaret, sir,--Betty and Jack; but Daisy is my _own_,_own_ name, that papa and mamma called me," she answered, recoveringherself a little.
"And where are your papa and mamma?" he asked. "I thought the woman whokeeps the fruit-stall at the corner was your mother."
"Oh, no, sir!" she said. "She is only Betty. She is very good to me,but she is not mamma. Mamma was a lady," she added, with simple,childish dignity, which told that she was a lady herself.
"But _where_ are your father and mother?" he repeated, with freshinterest in the child.
"Mamma is drowned, sir; and we could never find papa," she answered,with such pathos in her tones.
"Come into the depot with me," said General Forster: "I want to talk toyou."
She obeyed, and, taking up her basket, followed him into thewaiting-room, where, heedless of the many curious eyes around, he madeher sit down beside him, and drew from her her sad, simple story:--howlong, long ago she had lived with papa and mamma and her little brotherand baby sister in their own lovely home, far away from here; where itwas, she did not know, but in quite a different place from the greatbustling city which she had never seen till she came here with Bettyand Jack; how she had left home with mamma and the baby on a greatship, where to go she could not remember; how Betty was on board, andmamma had been kind to her; how a dreadful storm had come and there wasgreat confusion and terror; and then it seemed as if she went to sleepfor a long, long time, and knew nothing more till she found herselfliving with Betty and Jack in their poor home far up in the city.
They had been very good to her, nursing and caring for her during themany months she had been weak and ailing; and now that she was strongerand better, she tried to help them all she could, keeping the two smallrooms tidy, while Betty was away attending to her stall; and in theafternoon selling the flowers which Jack raised in his little garden,and she arranged in tasteful bouquets. And, lastly, she told how fromthe very first time she had seen General Forster, she thought he"looked so like papa" that she felt as if she must love him, and was sohappy when he stopped to buy flowers of her and spoke kindly to her.
The story was told with a straightforward and simple pathos, which wentright to the listener's heart, and left him no doubt of its truth. Butthe child could tell nothing of her own name or her parents', save thatshe was always called "Daisy" at home, and that she had never sinceheard the familiar name until to-day, when she thought this strangerhad given it to her. Betty and Jack always called her "Margaret;" andBetty thought she knew mamma's name, but she d
id not. But she loveddaisies dearly for the sake of their name, which had been her own; andshe had raised and tended with loving care the little plant she hadgiven to "my gentleman" as a token of gratitude for his kindness, andbecause he was "so like papa."
Having learned all that he could from the child herself, the gentlemanwent to the fruit-woman on the corner.
"So," he said, "the little girl whom you call Margaret is not your owndaughter?"
"Indade, no, sir," answered Betty; "niver a daughter of me own haveI barrin' Jack, and he's not me own at all, but jist me sister's sonwhat died, lavin' him a babby on me hands. More betoken that it's nota little lady like her that the likes of me would be raisin', unlessshe'd none of her own to do it."
"Will you tell me how that came about?"
Betty told the story in her turn, in as plain and simple a manner asthe child's, though in language far different.
Her husband had been steward on a sailing vessel running between NewOrleans and New York; and about three years ago, she, being sick andordered change of air, had been allowed to go with him for the voyage.But it made her worse instead of better; and on the return trip shewould have died, Betty declared, if it had not been for the kindnessand tender nursing of a lady, "Margaret's" mother. This lady--"her namehad been Saacyfut, she believed, but maybe she disremembered intirely,for Marga_ret_ said it was not"--was on her way to New York with herlittle girl who was sick, a baby, and a French nurse; but her home wasneither there nor in New Orleans,--at least so the child afterwardssaid.
Her own account of the storm was the same as the child's; but while therecollection of the little one could go no further, Betty rememberedonly too well the horrors of that day.
When it was found that the ship must sink, and that all on board mustleave her, there had been, as the little girl said, great confusion.How it was, Betty could not exactly tell; she had been placed in oneboat, the French nurse, with the child in her arms, beside her; and thelady was about to follow with the infant, when a spar fell, strikingthe Frenchwoman on the head and killing her instantly, knockingoverboard one of the three sailors who were in the boat,--while at thesame time the boat was parted from the ship and at the mercy of theraging waves. In vain did the two sailors who were left try to regainthe ship: they were swept further and further away, and soon lost sightof the vessel. They drifted about all night, and the next morning weretaken up by a fishing-smack which brought them to New York.
Fright and exposure and other hardships, while they seemed to havecured Betty, were too much for the poor little girl, and a long andterrible illness followed: after which she lay for months, too weak tomove or speak, and appearing to have lost all memory and sense. Andwhen at last she grew better and stronger, and reason and recollectioncame back, she could not tell the name of her parents or her home.
"Marga_ret_ Saacyfut," Betty persisted in saying the French nurse hadcalled her little charge, "Mamsell Marga_ret_," "and if the lady's namewasn't Saacyfut it was mightily nigh to it."
"Marguerite" had been the French woman's name for "Daisy:" that theGeneral saw plainly enough, but he could make nothing of the surname.
"But did you not seek for the child's friends, Betty?" he asked.
"'Deed did I, sir," she answered. "Didn't I even ad_ver_tise her, an'how she was to be heerd of, but all to no good. An' I writ to NewOrleans to them what owned the ship, but they were that oncivil theyniver answered, not they. An' it took a hape of money, sir, to bepayin' the paper, an' me such hard work to get along, an' Marga_ret_ onme hands, an' I had to be done with it. For ye see me man was gone widthe ship, an' niver heerd of along wid the rest to this day; an' I hadto use up the bit he'd put by in the savin's bank till the child wasmendin' enough for me to lave her wid Jack."
"It was a very generous thing for you to burden yourself with the careof her," said General Forster.
"Burden is it, sir? Niver a burden was she, the swate lamb, not evenwhen the sense had left her. An' that was what the neighbors was alwaysa sayin', and why didn't I put her in the hospital. An' why would I dothat after the mother of her savin' me from a buryin' in the say, whichI niver could abide. For sure if it hadn't been for the lady I'd 'adied on the ould ship, and they'd 'a chucked me overboard widout sayin'by your lave; and sure I'd niver have got over such a buryin' as thatall the days of me life. And would I be turnin' out her child aftherthat? An' isn't she payin' me for it now, an' 'arnin' her livin,' an'mine too? She an' Jack tends the bit of a garden, an' arternoons shecomes down an' sells her flowers, an' where'd be the heart to refuseher wid her pretty ways and nice manners; a lady every inch of her,like her mother before her."
And thrusting her head out from her stall, Betty gazed down the streetwith admiring affection on her young _protegee_.
"Och! but she's the jewel of a child," she went on; "and it issurprisin' how me and Jack is improved and become ginteel all along ofher. Ye see, sir, I did use to say a hape of words that maybe wer'n'tjist so; not that I meant 'em for swearin', but it was jist a way ofspakin'. But after Marga_ret_ began to mend and get about, ye wouldhave thought she was kilt intirely if I let one out of me mouth. Soseein' how it hurted her, I jist minded what I was about, an' Jack thesame, for he was a boy that swore awful, poor fellow; he'd been left tohimself, and how was he to know better? At first him and me minded ourtongues, for that the child shouldn't be hurted; but by and by didn'tshe make it plain to us that it was the great Lord himself what we wasoffendin', and knowin' she'd been tached better nor me, I jist heededher. And now, sir, them words that I never thought no harm of and usedto come so aisy, I jist leave them out of me spache widout troublin';and a deal better it sounds, and widout doubt more plasin' to Himthat's above. And Jack the same mostly, though he does let one slip nowand agin. So ye see, sir, it's not a burden she is at all, at all, butjist a little bit of light and comfort to the house that houlds her."
Glad to find a listener in a "gintleman the likes of him," Betty hadtalked away to the gentlemen, so taken up with her story, that she paidlittle heed to the business of her stall. She made wrong change morethan once, gave quarts instead of pints, oranges in place of apples,and peanuts for sugar-plums, and provoked some impatient customers nota little; while one wicked boy, seeing her attention was taken up withsomething else, ran off without paying for the pop-corn he asked for,and was not called back.
But Betty lost nothing by the time and thought she had given to thegentleman, or the interest she had shown in her young charge, as shefound when she looked at the number upon the note he slipped into herhand when he left her: a note which the warm-hearted Irishwoman laid by"to buy that new gown and pair of shoes Margaret needed so bad."
THE DAISY TRANSPLANTED.
Daisy's Work: The Third Commandment Page 2