So Suzanna and Maizie left him with his dog. They had just ensconced themselves comfortably on the steps of the cottage when a distressing accent struck upon their ears, and simultaneously they turned in the direction of the sound. There on a tiny verandah, almost hidden behind a large fern growth, a little girl sat on a low chair crying softly and pathetically as though her small heart were broken. The children stood for a moment not knowing just what to do. Then Maizie, the same one, thought Peter satirically (he could see all that went on from his place beyond) who had suggested his losing his dog on a prairie, went to the pathetic figure and sitting beside it said in a tremulous low voice, full of sympathy and pity: "What's the matter, little girl?" The one thus addressed took her hands down from her face and looked around at her questioner. Her eyes were dark, with black lashes, and she had wonderful, curly hair. When she had finished looking at Maizie, which was a long moment, she put her hand behind her and produced a doll, sadly deficient as to features. Indeed, noseless, entirely, and with one eye gone. But in a very fever of love, she held it to her. "Are you crying because your doll is broken?" asked Suzanna, now coming a little closer and standing straight and slim before the child. "No, she's not broken," said the little girl, "but she's got the whooping cough and she keeps my father awake nights coughing." Suzanna instantly responded. "Oh, that's too bad," she said. "Can't your mother fix her some flaxseed tea?" Now down once more went the little girl's head upon her knee, and once more she was shaking with sobs. And at this moment young Graham returned and in his wake, David. "David says," began Graham cheerfully to Suzanna and Maizie, "that he can find room for an extra dog, so you may leave yours. Where's your brother?" "He is right over there," pointed Maizie. Then the gardener's glance fell upon the little girl, with her head bent as she still wept. "She's crying awfully hard," said Suzanna to the gardener. "Do you know whose little girl she is?" "She's mine," said the man with a big world of tenderness in his voice. "She's my little Daphne." "We thought she was crying because her doll was broken," said Suzanna. "Then she said it had the whooping cough and kept you awake all night and I asked her why her mother didn't make some flaxseed tea for it." A swift shadow darkened David's fine face and he shaded his eyes with his hand. Then he went to the little girl and raised her as though she were one of his carefully cherished flowers. Her sobs ceased as she found herself in her father's arms. "You see," said her father, "she has no mother!"