But Daisy only looked rather hard at the Captain and made him no answer.

“Do you expect to emulate the charge of the Light Brigade, in some tilt against fancied wrong?”

Daisy looked at her friend; she did not quite understand him, but his last words were intelligible.

“I don’t know,” she said meekly.  “But if I do it will not be because the order is a mistake, Capt.  Drummond.”

The Captain bit his lip.  “Daisy,” said he, “are you the only soldier in the family?”

Daisy sat still, looking up over the sunny slopes of ground towards the house.

The sunbeams shewed it bright and stately on the higher ground; they poured over a rich luxuriant spread of greensward and trees, highly kept; stately and fair; and Daisy could not help remembering that in all that domain, so far as she knew, there was not a thought in any heart of being the sort of soldier she wished to be.  She got up from the ground and smoothed her dress down.

“Capt.  Drummond,” she said with a grave dignity that was at the same time perfectly childish too,—­“I have told you about myself—­I can’t tell you about other people.”

“Daisy, you are not angry with me!”

“No sir.”

“Don’t you sometimes permit other people to ask your pardon in Preston Gary’s way?”

Daisy was about to give a quiet negative to this proposal, when perceiving more mischief in the Captain’s face than might be manageable, she pulled away her hand from him, and dashed off like a deer.  The Captain was wiser than to follow.

[Illustration:  MELBOURNE HOUSE.]

Later in the day, which turned out a very warm one, he and Gary McFarlane went down again to the edge of the bank, hoping to get if they could a taste of the river breeze.  Lying there stretched out under the trees, after a little while they heard voices.  The voices were down on the shore.  Gary moved his position to look.

“It’s that child—­what under the sun is she doing!  I beg pardon for naming anything warm just now, Drummond—­but she is building fortifications of some sort, down there.”

Capt.  Drummond came forward too.  Down below them, a little to the right, where a tiny bend in the shore made a spot of shade, Daisy was crouching on the ground apparently very busy.  Back of her a few paces was her dark attendant, June.

“There’s energy,” said Gary.  “What a nice thing it is to be a child and play in the sand!”

The talk down on the shore went on; June’s voice could scarcely be heard, but Daisy’s words were clear—­“Do, June!  Please try.”  Another murmur from June, and then Daisy—­“Try, June—­do, please!” The little voice was soft, but its utterances were distinct; the words could be heard quite plainly.  And Daisy sat back from her sand-work, and June began to sing something. What, it would have been difficult to tell at the top of the bank, but then Daisy’s voice struck in.  With no knowledge that she had listeners, the notes came mounting up to the top of the bank, clear, joyous and strong, with a sweet power that nobody knew Daisy’s voice had.