Melbourne House Part 36

"I think they were very happy, because they knew that Jesus loved them."

June made no audible answer; she mumbled something; and Daisy sat still. Presently her soft breathing made June look over at her; Daisy was asleep. In her hand, in her lap, lay a book.

June looked yet further, to see what book it was. It was Mr.

Dinwiddie's Bible.

June sat up and went on with her work, but her face twitched.

CHAPTER XII.

THE HUNDRED DOLLARS.

Daisy was at the dinner-table. After having a good sleep on June's knee, she had come home, and dressed as usual, and she was in her place when the dessert was brought on. Mr.

Randolph, from his distant end of the table, watched her a little; he saw that she behaved just as usual; she did not shun anybody, though her mother shunned her. A glove covered her right hand, yet Daisy persisted in using that hand rather than attract notice, though from the slowness of her movements it was plain it cost her some trouble. Gary McFarlane asked why she had a glove on, and Mr. Randolph heard Daisy's perfectly quiet and true answer, that "her hand was wounded, and had to wear a glove," ? given without any confusion or evasion. He called his little daughter to him, and giving her a chair by his side, spent the rest of his time in cracking nuts and preparing a banana for her; doing it carelessly, not as if she needed but as if it pleased him to give her his attention.

After dinner, Daisy sought Preston, who was out on the lawn, as he said, to cool himself; in the brightness of the setting sun to be sure, but also in a sweet light air which was stirring.

"Phew! it's hot. And you, Daisy, don't look as if the sun and you had been on the same side of the earth to-day. What do you want now?"

"I want a good talk with you, Preston."

"I was going to say 'fire up,' " said Preston, "but, no, don't do anything of that sort! If there is any sort of talking that has a chilly effect, I wish you'd use it."

"I have read of such talk, but I don't think I know how to do it," said Daisy. "I read the other day of somebody's being 'frozen with a look.'

Preston went off into a fit of laughter, and rolled himself over on the gra.s.s, declaring that it was a splendid idea; then he sat up and asked Daisy again what she wanted? Daisy cast a glance of her eye to see that n.o.body was too near.

"Preston, you know you were going to teach me."

"Oh ay! ? about the Spartans."

"I want to learn everything," said Daisy. "I don't know much."

Preston looked at the pale, delicate child, whose doubtful health he knew had kept her parents from letting her "know much"; and it was no wonder that when he spoke again, he used a look and manner that were caressing, and even tender.

"What do you want to know, Daisy?"

"I want to know everything," whispered Daisy; "but I don't know what to begin at."

"No!" said Preston, ? " 'everything' seems as big as the world, and as hard to get hold of."

"I want to know geography," said Daisy.

"Yes. Well ? you shall. And you shall not study for it neither; which you can't."

"Yes I can."

"No you can't. You are no more fit for it, little Daisy ? but look here! I wish you would be a red daisy."

"Then what else, Preston?"

"Nothing else. Geography is enough at once."

"Oh, no, it isn't. Preston, I can't do the least little bit of a sum in the world."

"Can't you? Well ? I don't see that that is of any very great consequence. What sums do _you_ want to do?"

"But I want to know how."

"Why?"

"Why, Preston, you know I _ought_ to know how. It might be very useful, and I ought to know."

"I hope it will never be of any use to you," said Preston; "but you can learn the multiplication table if you like."

"Then will you show it to me?"

"Yes; but what has put you in such a fever of study, little Daisy? It excites me, this hot weather."

"Then won't you come in and show me the multiplication table now, Preston?"

In came Preston, laughing, and found an arithmetic for Daisy; and Daisy, not laughing, but with a steady seriousness, sat down on the verandah in the last beams of the setting sun to learn that "twice two is four."

The same sort of sweet seriousness hung about all her movements this week. To those who knew what it meant, there was something extremely touching in the gentle gravity with which she did everything, and the grace of tenderness which she had for everybody. Daisy was going through great trouble.

Not only the trouble of what was past, but the ordeal of what was to come. It hung over her like a black cloud, and her fears were like muttering thunder. But the sense of right, the love of the Master in whose service she was suffering, the trust in His guiding hand, made Daisy walk with that strange, quiet dignity between the one Sunday and the other. Mr.

Randolph fancied sometimes when she was looking down, that he saw the signs of sadness about her mouth; but whenever she looked up again, he met such quiet, steady eyes, that he wondered. He was puzzled; but it was no puzzle that Daisy's cheeks grew every day paler, and her appet.i.te less.

"I do not wish to flatter you" ? said Mrs. Gary, one evening ?

"but that child has very elegant manners! Really, I think they are very nearly perfect. I don't believe there is an English court beauty who could show better."

"The English beauty would like to be a little more robust in her graces," remarked Gary McFarlane.

"That is all Daisy wants," her aunt went on; "but that will come, I trust, in time."

"Daisy would do well enough," said Mrs. Randolph, "if she could get some notions out of her head."

"What, you mean her religious notions? How came she by them, pray?"

"Why, there was a person here ? a connexion of Mrs. Sandford's ? that set up a Sunday school in the woods; and Daisy went to it for a month or two, before I thought anything about it, or about him. Then I found she was beginning to ask questions, and I took her away."

"Is asking questions generally considered a sign of danger?"

said Gary McFarlane.

"What was that about her singing the other night?" said Mrs.

Gary ? "that had something to do with the same thing, hadn't it?"

"Refused to sing an opera song because it was Sunday."