Dolores looked puzzled. “I had to do it,” she said slowly.

“Had to do it? But you insisted upon doing it!”

“I had to!” Dolores repeated. “And now Nell is well, and Bob and Bill are flourishing, and so are the others.” Dolores’ golden feet had provided her family with everything that fate had denied them. The sisters had a farm in the country bought by Dolores, the twins were settled in California on a ranch of their own, and the boy Jim, whose eyes once bore the stain of tears, was at Cambridge, and was the crown of Dolores’ labours.

“You couldn’t have done more for them, but nothing compelled you to do anything.”

“Oh yes, something compelled me,” Dolores asserted.

“Did you hear anything?” inquired her adopted mother.

“No,” said Dolores.

“Did you see anything?”

“No, but I just knew what I had to do,” Dolores answered vaguely.

In spite of her natural curiosity her adopted mother refrained from further questioning. Dolores had followed her destiny blindly, as other people obey their instincts, without questioning the power that guided her. Now she was as glad as a child released from school.

“It’s my birthday,” she exclaimed, pressing her small dark head to her adopted mother’s shoulder. “As I am so happy, couldn’t you re-christen me to-day? Wouldn’t it be lovely to be called Joy instead of Dolores?”

A few months after this Dolores made a brilliant marriage that lifted her completely out of the sphere of her brothers and sisters. She was passionately in love, and the present obliterated the past. Dolores at the altar was nothing but a happy bride absorbed in her bridegroom.

Her adopted mother, standing at her side afterwards when she signed her name, smiled as she saw the breezy flourish of the pen under Joy!

—From The Occult Review, London, April, 1921

The Ninth Child 3

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