se the hair
was hers. Was it brown, chestnut, red, blond, black? Beneath each of
these colors in turn she imagined a face.

Long before the first habitues had arrived for supper Daisy was at her
place. All the afternoon her imagination had been so fed, and her
curiosity thereby so aroused, that she was prepared, in the face of what
she knew at heart was proper, to open the locket and see, at least, the
color of the magic hair. But she still hesitated, and for a long time.
Finally, however, overmastered, she drew out the cash-drawer a little
way and managed, without taking it out, to open the locket. The lock of
hair which it contained was white as snow.

Daisy rested, chin on hands, looking into space. She had almost always
been happy in a negative way, or, better, contented. Now she was
positively happy. But she could not have explained why. She had closed
the locket gently and tenderly, revering the white hairs and the filial
piety that had enshrined them in gold ("triple-plated gold, at that!").
And when presently the stranger entered to recover his property, Daisy
felt as if she had always known him, and that there was nothing to know
of him but good.

He was greatly and gravely concerned for his loss, but when Daisy,
without speaking, opened the cash-drawer and handed him his property,
he gave her a brilliant smile of gratitude.

"One of the girls found it under your table," she said.

"Is she here now?" he asked. "But never mind; you'll thank her for me,
won't you? And--" A hand that seemed wonderfully ready for financial
emergencies slipped into a trousers pocket and pulled from a great roll
of various denominations a dollar bill. "Thank her and give her that,"
he said. Then, and thus belittling the transaction, "I have to be in
this part of the city quite often on business," he said, "and I don't
mind saying that I like to take my meals among honest people. You can
tell the boss that I intend to patronize this place."

He turned to go, but the fact that she had been included as being one of
honest people troubled Daisy.

"Excuse me," she said. He turned back. "It was wrong for me to do it,"
she said, blushing deeply, and looking him full in the face with her
great, honest eyes. "I opened your locket. And looked in."

"Did you?" said the young man. He did not seem to mind in the least. "I
do, often. That lock of hair," he said, rather solemn now, and a little
sad, perhaps, "was my mother's."

He now al