And she does like her, though this little pink and white pet of mine is a new revelation to her, and puzzles her amazingly.  She would have been glad if I had married Julia Hamilton of Boston; but those Boston girls are too strong-minded and positive to suit me.  Julia is nice, it is true, and pretty and highly educated, and Fan says she has brains and would make a splendid wife.  As Fan had never seen Daisy she did not, of course, mean to hint that she had not brains, but I suspect even now she would be better pleased if Julia were here, but I should not.  Julia is self-reliant; Daisy is not.  Julia has opinions of her own and asserts them, too; Daisy does not.  Julia can sew and run a machine; Daisy cannot.  Julia gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night; Daisy does neither.  Nobody ever waits for Julia; everybody waits for Daisy.  Julia reads scientific works and dotes on metaphysics; Daisy does not know the meaning of the word.  In short, Julia is a strong, high-toned, energetic, independent woman, while Daisy is—­a little innocent, confiding girl, whom I would rather have without brains than all the Boston women like Julia with brains!

And yet I sometimes wish she did care for books, and was more interested in what interests me.  I have tried reading aloud to her an hour every evening, but she generally goes to sleep or steals up behind me to look over my shoulder and see how near I am to the end of the chapter, and when I reach it she says:  “Excuse me, but I have just thought of something I must tell Zillah about the dress I want to wear to-morrow.  I’ll be back in a moment”; and off she goes, and our reading is ended for that time, for I notice she never returns.  The dress is of more importance than the book, and I find her at ten or eleven trying to decide whether black or white or blue is most becoming to her.  Poor Daisy!  I fear she had no proper training at home.  Indeed, she told me the other day that from her earliest recollection she had been taught that the main object of her life was to marry young and to marry money.  Of course she did not mean anything or know how it sounded, but I would rather she had not said it, even though she had refused a millionaire for me, who can hardly be called rich as riches are rated these days.  If Dick Trevylian should fail to meet his payment I should be very poor, and then what would become of Daisy, to whom the luxuries which money buys are so necessary?

(Here followed several other entries in the journal, consisting mostly of rhapsodies on Daisy, and then came the following:)

DECEMBER 15, 18—.

Dick has failed to meet his payment, and that after having borrowed of me twenty thousand more!  Is he a villain, and did he know all the time that I was ruining myself?  I cannot think so when I remember that look on his face as he told me about it and swore to me solemnly that up to the very last he fully expected relief from England, where he thought he had a fortune.