CHAPTER II.

The next day Daisy felt very much at home.  Her orders were not to stir till the doctor came.  So after breakfast and after receiving visits from everybody in the house, she was left to her own devices, for it happened that everybody had something on hand that morning and nobody staid with her.

Left with June, Daisy lay for awhile feasting her eyes on all the pleasant wonted objects around her.  She was a particular little body, and very fond of her room and its furniture and arrangements.  Then came a hankering for the sight of some of her concealed treasures from which she had been separated so long.

“June, I wish you would open the drawer of my bureau, the second drawer from the top, and put your hand back at the left side and give me a book that lies there.”

June got the key and rummaged.  “Don’t feel nothing, Miss Daisy.”

“Quite back, June, under everything—­”

“Why, Miss Daisy, it’s tucked away as though you didn’t mean nobody should never find it!”

Precisely what Daisy did mean.  But there it was, safe enough—­Mr. Dinwiddie’s Bible.  Daisy’s hands and eyes welcomed it.  She asked for nothing more in a good while after that; and June curiously watched her, with immense reverence.  The thin pale little face, a little turned from the light, so that she could see better; the intent eyes; the wise little mouth, where childish innocence and oldish prudence made a queer meeting; the slim little fingers that held the book; above all, the sweet calm of the face.  June would not gaze, but she looked and looked, as she could, by glances; and nearly worshipped her little mistress in her heart.  She thought it almost ominous and awful to see a child read the Bible so.  For Daisy looked at it with loving eyes, as at words that were a pleasure to her.  It was no duty-work, that reading.  At last Daisy shut the book, to June’s relief.

“June, I want to see my old things.  I would like to have them here on the bed.”

“What things, Miss Daisy?”

“I would like my bird of paradise first.  You can put a big book here for it to stand on, where it will be steady.”

The bird of paradise June brought, and placed as ordered.  It was a bird of spun glass only, but a great beauty in Daisy’s eyes.  Its tail was of such fine threads of glass that it waved with the least breath.

“How pretty it is!  You may take it away, June, for I am afraid it will get broken; and now bring me my Chinese puzzle, and set my cathedral here.  You can bring it here without hurting it, can’t you?”

“Where is your puzzle, Miss Daisy?”

“It is in the upper drawer of my cabinet,” (so Daisy called a small chest of drawers which held her varieties) “and the cathedral stands on the top, under the glass shade.  Be very careful, June.”