But when the twilight fell Daisy ceased to laugh, the anxious and troubled look returned to her face, and after a time she said to Arthur, in her pretty coaxing way—­

“Take me home now, please, Mr. Prince.”

Two days afterwards Noel called at the girls’ lodgings Daisy alone was in, but to all his entreaties she now turned a deaf ear.  No, she did not want to go out; she would rather stay in her own dear, nice old attics; she was never so happy anywhere as in her own attics.  She was very fond of Miss Egerton, but she did not think she would like to live with her.  Miss Egerton kept a bird, and Daisy had a great dislike to birds.

“Please, Mr. Prince,” she said, in conclusion, “stay with me here for an hour or two, and tell me a beautiful story.”

Noel was rather clever at making up impromptu stories, and he now proceeded to relate a tale with a moral.

“There was a kind lady who had prepared lovely guest-chambers—­beautiful they were, and worthy of a palace.”

Here Noel stopped, and looked hard at his little listener.

“Do you know why they were so lovely, little maid?”

“No; please tell me, Mr. Prince.  Oh, I am sure this is going to be a real true fairy tale—­how delicious!” and Daisy leaned back on her sofa with a sigh of content.

“The rooms were beautiful, Daisy,” continued Arthur “because the walls were papered with Goodness and the chairs, and the tables, and the carpets, and the sofas, and the thousand-and-one little knick-knacks, were placed in the rooms by Self-Denial, and the windows were polished very brightly by Love herself, and she kept the key which opened the chamber doors.”

“How sweet!” said Daisy.

“Yes; there were two rooms, and they were very sweet.  To live there meant to get into an abode of peace.  As to ogres, they would fall down dead on the threshold of such rooms.  There were only two, and they were up high in a small house, and without the gilding and the glory which I spoke of they would have seemed humble enough, but to those who knew their secret, and what their owner had done for her expected guests, they appeared a very Palace Beautiful.  Now, Daisy, I must tell you something so sad.  The rooms were ready, but the guests did not arrive.  Three guests were expected, but the kind lady who had prepared the rooms, who had papered them with Goodness, and furnished them with Self-Denial, and brightened them with Love, waited and longed for her visitors in vain.

“Two of the visitors were most anxious to come, but one—­a little one—­although she looked very gentle and had a sweet expression and blue eyes, and seemed quite the sort of little girl who would not willingly hurt a fly, held back.  It never entered into her head that she was selfish, and was making two or three people who loved her both anxious and unhappy.  She preferred to live in rooms which, by comparison, were like dungeons; for the owners had never put Love into them, and had never thought of Self-Denial in connection with them.  There, Daisy-flower, I have done.  It seems a pity that the little girl should have been so selfish, does it not?”