"So I did," he answered; "and so I will, and should have done long since; but day after day I have let business or pleasure keep me till I had but just time to catch the train, and none to bestow on the poor little creature who seems to have been so grateful for the few kind words I have given her. You think I am rather fanciful about this child, I know, Gertrude; but I am convinced that some of her few years must have been spent among different people than those by whom she is now surrounded. Nor am I the only one of her customers who has noticed the grace of her speech and manners, so uncommon in a child of her class. Ward, and others beside, have seen it; but like myself have never made it their business to see after her. However, to-morrow afternoon, I shall make it a point to be at the depot in time to have a talk with her. I wonder if the woman who keeps the fruit-stall at the corner, and whose child I believe she is, would give her up and let her go 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 street towards the depot. It was an eager, wistful little face, with some questioning fear in it, that she raised to him, for she was anxious lest she should have offended her kind friend, as she had learned to think him, by her plain speech of the day before.
She had scarcely meant to speak so plainly; the words had seemed to escape her without her intending it, and, it was true, had been drawn forth by the gentleman's own questions; but when she remembered them afterwards she feared that he would think her rude and disrespectful.
She need not have been afraid. His eye and voice were even kinder than usual 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? The lady 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 home whom 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 and parted lips, he added, "You are a Daisy yourself."
The flowers she held dropped at her feet unheeded as she clasped both hands 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? I thought 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, recovering herself a little.
"And where are your papa and mamma?" he asked. "I thought the woman who keeps 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 fresh interest 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 to you."
She obeyed, and, taking up her basket, followed him into the waiting-room, where, heedless of the many curious eyes around, he made her sit down beside him, and drew from her her sad, simple story: – how long, long ago she had lived with papa and mamma and her little brother and baby sister in their own lovely home, far away from here; where it was, she did not know, but in quite a different place from the great bustling city which she had never seen till she came here with Betty and Jack; how she had left home with mamma and the baby on a great ship, where to go she could not remember; how Betty was on board, and mamma had been kind to her; how a dreadful storm had come and there was great confusion and terror; and then it seemed as if she went to sleep for a long, long time, and knew nothing more till she found herself living 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 the many months she had been weak and ailing; and now that she was stronger and better, she tried to help them all she could, keeping the two small rooms tidy, while Betty was away attending to her stall; and in the afternoon selling the flowers which Jack raised in his little garden, and she arranged in tasteful bouquets. And, lastly, she told how from the 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 so happy when he stopped to buy flowers of her and spoke kindly to her.
The story was told with a straightforward and simple pathos, which went right to the listener's heart, and left him no doubt of its truth. But the child could tell nothing of her own name or her parents', save that she was always called "Daisy" at home, and that she had never since heard the familiar name until to-day, when she thought this stranger had given it to her. Betty and Jack always called her "Margaret;" and Betty thought she knew mamma's name, but she did not. But she loved daisies dearly for the sake of their name, which had been her own; and she had raised and tended with loving care the little plant she had given to "my gentleman" as a token of gratitude for his kindness, and because he was "so like papa."
Having learned all that he could from the child herself, the gentleman went to the fruit-woman on the corner.
"So," he said, "the little girl whom you call Margaret is not your own daughter?"
"Indade, no, sir," answered Betty; "niver a daughter of me own have I barrin' Jack, and he's not me own at all, but jist me sister's son what died, lavin' him a babby on me hands. More betoken that it's not a little lady like her that the likes of me would be raisin', unless she'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 as the child's, though in language far different.
Her husband had been steward on a sailing vessel running between New Orleans and New York; and about three years ago, she, being sick and ordered 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 she would have died, Betty declared, if it had not been for the kindness and tender nursing of a lady, "Margaret's" mother. This lady – "her name had been Saacyfut, she believed, but maybe she disremembered intirely, for Margaret said it was not" – was on her way to New York with her little girl who was sick, a baby, and a French nurse; but her home was neither there nor in New Orleans, – at least so the child afterwards said.
Her own account of the storm was the same as the child's; but while the recollection of the little one could go no further, Betty remembered only too well the horrors of that day.
When it was found that the ship must sink, and that all on board must leave her, there had been, as the little girl said, great confusion. How it was, Betty could not exactly tell; she had been placed in one boat, the French nurse, with the child in her arms, beside her; and the lady was about to follow with the infant, when a spar fell, striking the Frenchwoman on the head and killing her instantly, knocking overboard one of the three sailors who were in the boat, – while at the same time the boat was parted from the ship and at the mercy of the raging waves. In vain did the two sailors who were left try to regain the ship: they were swept further and further away, and soon lost sight of the vessel. They drifted about all night, and the next morning were taken up by a fishing-smack which brought them to New York.
Fright and exposure and other hardships, while they seemed to have cured Betty, were too much for the poor little girl, and a long and terrible illness followed: after which she lay for months, too weak to move or speak, and appearing to have lost all memory and sense. And when at last she grew better and stronger, and reason and recollection