Such was the testimony of one dying child, and it was dearer to Daisy than all the words of flattery ever poured into her ear. As she had brought that little child to God so she would bring others, and she made her work among the children especially, finding there her best encouragement and greatest success.
Once when Guy Thornton chanced to be in the city and driving in the Park, he saw a singular sight--a pair of splendid bays arching their graceful necks proudly, their silver-tipped harness flashing in the sunlight, and their beautiful mistress radiant with happiness as she sat in her open carriage, not with gayly-dressed friends, but amid a group of poorly-clad pale-faced little ones, to whom the Park was paradise, and she the presiding angel.
"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 accidently stepping in a pool of water and spattering 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 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 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 most appropriate, but after a little child said to her once: "I don't like your black gown all the time. I likes sumptin' bright and pretty," she changed her dress 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 squallor 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 gradually grew more clean and tidy for her sake.