This was early in February, and six weeks before, on Christmas Eve, there had come to that same house on Beacon street a little black-eyed, black-haired boy, as unlike either Bessie or Grey as a baby well could be.
"He is not like any one I have ever seen of your family," the old nurse said, when she brought the sturdy fellow 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.