“You are not well,” said he.  “You are not fit to be up; and my orders to you, Daisy, are to go immediately to bed.  I’ll send you some medicine by and by.  Good night!”

He kissed her, and Daisy needed no second bidding.  She sprang away, getting into the house by another door; and lost no time.  Her fear was that her mother might send for her before she could get undressed.  But no summons came; June was speedy, thinking and saying it was a very good thing for Daisy to do; and then she went off and left her alone with the moonlight.  Daisy was in no hurry then.  She knelt by her beloved window, where the scent of the honeysuckle was strong in the dewy air; and with a less throbbing heart prayed her prayer.  But she was not at ease yet; it was very uncertain in her mind how her mother would take this order of her father’s; and what would come after, if she was willing to let it pass.  So Daisy could not go to sleep, but lay wide awake and fearing in the moonlight, and listening to every sound in the house that came to her ears.

The moonlight shone in peacefully, and Daisy lying there and growing gradually calmer, began to wonder in herself that there should be so much difficulty made about anybody’s doing right.  If she had been set on some wrong thing, it would have made but a very little disturbance—­if any; but now, when she was only trying to do right, the whole house was roused to prevent her.  Was it so in those strange old times that the eleventh chapter of Hebrews told of?—­when men, and women, were stoned, and sawn asunder, and slain with the sword, and wandered like wild animals in sheepskins and goatskins and in dens and caves of the earth? all for the name of Jesus.  But if they suffered once, they were happy now.  Better anything, at all events, than to deny that name!

The evening seemed excessively long to Daisy, lying there on her bed awake, and listening with strained ears for any sound near her room.  She heard none; the hours passed, though so very slowly, as they do when all the minutes are watched; and Daisy heard nothing but dim distant noises, and grew pretty quiet.  She had heard nothing else, when turning her head from the moonlight window she caught the sight of a white figure at her bedside; and by the noble form and stately proportions Daisy knew instantly whose figure it was.  Those soft flowing draperies had been before her eyes all day.  A pang shot through the child, that seemed to go from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet.

“Are you awake, Daisy?”

“Yes, mamma,” she said feebly.

“Get up.  I want to speak to you.”

Daisy got off the bed, and the white figure in the little night dress stood opposite the other white figure, robed in muslin and laces that fell around it like a cloud.

“Why did you come to bed?”

“Papa—­papa ordered me.”

“It’s all the same.  If you had not come to bed, Daisy if you had been well,—­would you have sung when I ordered you to-night?”