June in vain protested.  Daisy divided the strawberries into two parts, sugared them both, broke the remaining roll in two, and obliged June to take her share.  When this was over, Daisy seated herself near June and laid her head against her knee.  She could hardly hold it up.

“June,”—­she said presently, “I think those people in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews—­you know?”

“Yes, Miss Daisy.”

“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.

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 grass, 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 nobody was too near.

“Preston, you know you were going to teach me.”

“O, ay!—­about the Spartans.”