“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.”

“O 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 shew 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 shew 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 appetite 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 shew better.”