"Look--that's Miss McDonald," Guy's friend said to him, "the greatest
heiress in New York, and I reckon the one who does the most good. Why,
she supports more old people and children and runs more ragged schools
than any half-dozen men in the city, and I don't suppose there's a den
in New York where she has not been, and never once, I'm told, was she
insulted, for the vilest of them stand between her and harm. Once a
miscreant on Avenue A knocked a boy down for accidentally stepping in a
pool of water and sprinkling her white dress in passing. Friday nights
she has a reception for these people, and you ought to see how well they
behave. At first they were noisy and rough, and she had to have the
police, but now they are quiet and orderly as you please. Perhaps you'd
like to go to one. I know Miss McDonald, and will take you with me."
Guy said he should not be in town on Friday, as he must return to
Cuylerville the next day, and with a feeling he could not quite analyze,
he turned to look at the turnout which always excited so much attention.
But it was not so much at the handsome bays and the bevy of
queer-looking children he gazed as at the little lady in their midst,
clad in velvet and ermine, with a long white feather falling among the
curls of her bright hair. When Daisy first entered upon her new life she
had affected a nun-like garb as one most appropriate, but after a little
child said to her once, "I'se don't like your black gown all the time. I
likes sumptin' bright and pretty," she changed her mind and gave freer
scope to her natural good taste and love of what was becoming. And the
result showed the wisdom of the change, for the children and inmates of
the dens she visited, accustomed only to the squalor and ugliness of
their surroundings, hailed her more rapturously than they had done
before, and were never weary of talking of the beautiful woman who was
not afraid to wear her pretty clothes into their wretched houses, which,
lest she should soil and defile them, gradually grew more clean and tidy
for her sake.
"It wasn't for the likes of them gownds to trail through sich truck,"
Bridget O'Donohue said, and so, on the days when Daisy was expected, she
scrubbed the floor, which, until Daisy's advent had not known water for
years, and rubbed and polished the one wooden chair kept sacred for the
lady's use.
Other women, too, caught Biddy's spirit and scrubbed their floors and
their children's faces on the day when Miss McDonald was expected to
call, and when she came her silk dress and pretty shawl were watched
narrowly lest by some chance a speck of dirt should fasten on them, and
her becoming dress and handsome face were commented on and remembered as
some fine show which had been seen for nothing. Especially did the
children like her in her bright dress, and the velvet and ermine in
which she was clad when Guy met her in the Park were worn more for their
sakes than for the gaze of those to whom such things were no novelties.
To Guy she looked more beautiful than he had ever seen her before, and
there was in his heart a smothered feeling as of a want of something
lost, as her carriage disappeared from view and he lost sight of the
fair face and form which had once been his own.