Still silence, but a shiver ran over Daisy’s frame.

“Do you know it?” said Mr. Randolph, noticing also that Daisy’s cheek had grown a shade paler than it was.

“Papa—­I wish I could die!” was the answer of the child’s agony.

“Do you mean that you will not obey her, Daisy?”

“How can I, papa? how can I!” exclaimed Daisy.

“Do you think that song is so very bad, Daisy?”

“No. papa, it is very good for other days; but it is not holy.”  Her accent struck strangely upon Mr. Randolph’s ear; and sudden contrasts rushed together oddly in his mind.

“Daisy, do you know that you are making yourself a judge of right and wrong?  Over your mother and over me?”

Daisy hid her face again in his breast; what could she answer?  Mr. Randolph unfolded the little palm swollen and blistered from the marks of his ruler.

“Why did you offend me, Daisy?” he said gravely.

“Oh papa!” said Daisy beside herself,—­“I didn’t—­I couldn’t—­I wouldn’t, for anything in the world!  But I couldn’t offend the Lord Jesus!”

She was weeping again bitterly.

“That will not do,” said Mr. Randolph.  “You must find a way to reconcile both duties.  I shall not take an alternative.”  But after that he said no more and only applied himself to soothing Daisy; till she sat drooping in his arms, but still and calm.  She started when the sound of steps and voices came upon the verandah.

“Papa, may I go?”

He let her go, and watched her measured steps through the long room, to the door, and heard the bound they made as soon as she was outside of it.  He rang the bell and ordered June to be called.

She came.

“June,” said Mr. Randolph, “I think Daisy wants to be taken care of to-day—­I wish you would not lose sight of her.”

June courtesied her obedience.

A few minutes afterwards her noiseless steps entered Daisy’s room.  June’s footfall was never heard about the house.  As noiseless as a shadow she came into a room; as stealthily as a dark shadow she went out.  Her movements were always slow; and whether from policy or caution originally, her tread would not waken a sleeping mouse.  So she came into her little mistress’s chamber now.  Daisy was there, at her bureau, before an open drawer; as June advanced, she saw that a great stock of little pairs of gloves was displayed there, of all sorts, new and old; and Daisy was trying to find among them one that would do for her purpose.  One after another was tried on the fingers of her right hand, and thrown aside; and tears were running over the child’s cheeks and dropping into the drawer all the time.  June came near, with a sort of anxious look on her yellow face.  It was strangely full of wrinkles and lines, that generally never stirred to express or reveal anything.  Suddenly she exclaimed, but June’s very exclamations were in a smothered tone.