“Lift your eyes, Daisy! your eyes!  Priscilla was too much astonished not to look at her lover.  You may be even a little indignant, if you choose.  I am certain she was.”

Poor Daisy—­it was a piece of the fortitude that belonged to her—­thus urged, did raise her eyes and bent upon her winking coadjutor a look so severe in its childish distaste and disapproval that there was a unanimous shout of applause.  “Capital, Daisy!—­capital!” cried Preston.  “If you only look it like that, we shall do admirably.  It will be a tableau indeed.  There, get up—­you shall not practise any more just now.”

“It will be very fine,” said Mrs. Sandford.

“Daisy, I did not think you were such an actress,” said Theresa.

“It would have overset me, if I had been John Alden—­” remarked Hamilton Rush.

Daisy withdrew into the background as fast as possible, and as far as possible from Alexander.

“Do you like to do it, Daisy?” whispered Nora.

“No.”

“Are you going to have a handsome dress for that?”

“No.”

“What sort, then?”

“Like the picture.”

“Well—­what is that?”

“Brown, with a white vandyke.”

“Vandyke? what is a vandyke?”

“Hush,” said Daisy; “let us look.”

Frederica Fish was to personify Lady Jane Grey, at the moment when the nobles of her family and party knelt before her to offer her the crown.  As Frederica was a fair, handsome girl, without much animation, this part suited her; she had only to be dressed and sit still.  Mrs. Sandford threw some rich draperies round her figure, and twisted a silk scarf about the back of her head; and the children exclaimed at the effect produced.  That was to be a rich picture, for of course the kneeling nobles were to be in costly and picturesque attire; and a crown was to be borne on a cushion before them.  A book did duty for it just now, on a couch pillow.

“That is what I should like—­” said Nora.  “I want to be dressed and look so.”

“You will be dressed to be one of the queen’s women in Esther and Ahasuerus, you know.”

“But the queen will be dressed more—­won’t she?”

“Yes, I suppose she will.”

“I should like to be the queen; that is what I should like to be.”

Daisy made no answer.  She thought she would rather Nora should not be the queen.

“Doesn’t she look beautiful?” Nora went on, referring again to Frederica.

Which Frederica did.  The tableau was quite pretty, even partially dressed and in this off hand way as it was.

Next Mrs. Sandford insisted on dressing Daisy as Fortitude.  She had seen perhaps a little of the child’s discomposure, and wished to make her forget it.  In this tableau Daisy would be quite alone; so she was not displeased to let the lady do what she chose with her.  She stood patiently, while Mrs. Sandford wound a long shawl skilfully around her, bringing it into beautiful folds like those in Sir Joshua Reynolds’ painting; then she put a boy’s cap, turned the wrong way, on her head, to do duty for a helmet, and fixed a nodding plume of feathers in it.  Daisy then was placed in the attitude of the picture, and the whole little assembly shouted with delight.