For answer to which, Daisy clasped her arms round his neck and gave him some very earnest caresses, comprised in one great kiss and a clinging of her little head in his neck for the space of half a minute.  It meant a great deal; so much that Mr. Randolph was unable for the rest of the day to get rid of a sort of lingering echo of Daisy’s Bible words; they haunted him, and haunted him with a strange sense of the house being at cross purposes, and Daisy’s line of life lying quite athwart and contrary to all the rest.  “Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you;”—­who else at Melbourne considered that for one moment?

However, Mr. Randolph had a fresh talk with his wife; the end of which was that he gave Daisy leave to do what she liked in the matter of Molly Skelton; and was rewarded on the spot by seeing the pink tinge which instantly started into the pale cheeks.

No lack of energy had Daisy for the rest of that day.  She went off first to see what was the condition of her rose-bush; pretty fair; lying by the heels seemed to agree with it quite well.  Then the pony chaise was ordered and a watering pot of water again; much to the boy’s disgust who was to carry it; and Daisy took her dinner with quiet satisfaction.  So soon as the afternoon had become pleasantly cool, Daisy’s driving gloves and hat went on, the chaise was summoned, and rose-bush and all she set forth on her expedition.  Mr. Randolph watched her off, acknowledging that certainly for the present the doctor was right; whether in the future Mrs. Randolph would prove to have been right also, he was disagreeably uncertain.  Still, he was not quite sure that he wished Daisy anything other than she was.

Troubled by no fears or prognostications, meanwhile, the pony chaise and its mistress went on their way.  No, Daisy had no fears.  She did doubt what Molly’s immediate reception of her advances might be; her first experience bade her doubt; but the spirit of love in her little heart was overcoming; it poured over Molly a flood of sunny affections and purposes, in the warmth and glow of which the poor cripple’s crabbedness and sourness of manner and temper were quite swallowed up and lost.  Daisy drove on, very happy and thankful, till the little hill was gained, and slowly walking up it Loupe stopped, nothing loth, before the gate of Molly Skelton’s courtyard.

A little bit of hesitation came over Daisy now, not about what was to be done, but how to do it.  The cripple was in her flowery bit of ground, grubbing around her balsams as usual.  The clear afternoon sunbeams shone all over what seemed to Daisy all distressing together.  The ragged balsams—­the coarse bloom of prince’s feather and cockscomb—­some straggling tufts of ribband grass and four-o’clocks and marigolds—­and the great sunflower nodding its head on high over all; while weeds were only kept away from the very growth of the flowers and started up everywhere else, and grass grew irregularly where