ellow to Bessie, who, the moment she
looked at him exclaimed:

"Why, Grey, he is exactly like Neil; his eyes, his hair, his expression,
and Neil will be so glad. We must have his picture taken at once and
sent to Neil, with a lock of his hair."

Grey thought it doubtful if Neil would be quite as enthusiastic over
Bessie's baby as she seemed to think, but when a few hours later she
drew his face down to hers and whispered to him:

"We will call baby Neil McPherson, won't we?" he fondly kissed the
little mother, and answered hesitatingly:

"Yes, darling, we will call our baby Neil McPherson, if you like."

And so with a birth, a christening, and a wedding the winter passed
rapidly at No. ---- Beacon street, and by the first of May Bessie was
again in Allington, armed and equipped for settling Stoneleigh Cottage,
and giving the finishing touches to the plateau, which with the advance
of summer, began to show marks of great beauty, and to attract general
attention. Bessie's idea of raising it two feet above the level of the
ground had been carried out, and the sods which had been placed upon it,
and the terrace around it in the autumn, were fresh and green as velvet
in the early spring, while of the roses, and lilies, and flowering
shrubs which had been planted with so much care, not one had died, and
many of them blossomed as freely as plants of older growth. The plateau
was Bessie's especial pride and care, particularly that corner of it
over which the bedroom once stood. Here she had an immense bed of
pansies, heart-shaped and perfect in outline, and in the center a cross,
where only white daisies were growing.

"Grandmother liked pansies and daisies the best, and I thought, perhaps,
he did, too; and then mother's name was Daisy, you know," she said to
Hannah, who rightly guessed that this bank of flowers was Bessie's _In
Memoriam_, not only to her uncle, but to her mother as well.

And very beautiful the heart-shaped bed of human-faced pansies, with the
daisy cross in the center, looked all the summer long, and many admired
and commented upon it, but only five persons ever knew that the white
cross marked a grave.

CHAPTER XX.

After Five Years.

"Noiselessly as I be spring-time
Her crown of verdure weaves,
And all the trees on all the hills
Open their thousand leaves,"

So noiselessly and quickly have the years come and gone since we first
saw our heroine, Bessie, a little girl on the