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."

June accomplished both parts of her business. The "cathedral" was a beautiful model of a famous one, made in ivory. It was rather more than a foot long, and high, of course, in proportion. Every window and doorway and pillar and arcade was there, in its exact place and size, according to the scale of the model; and a beautiful thing it was to look upon for any eyes that loved beauty. Daisy's eyes loved it well, and now for a long time she lay back on her pillow watching and studying the lights among those arcades, which the rich colour of the ivory, grown yellow with time, made so very pleasant to see. Daisy studied and thought. The Chinese puzzle got no attention. At last she cried, "June, I should like to have my Egyptian spoon."

[Illustration]

"What is that, Miss Daisy?"

"My Egyptian spoon—it is a long, carved, wooden thing, with something like a spoon at one end; it is quite brown. Look for it in the next drawer, June, you will find it there. It don't look like a spoon."

"There is nothing like it in this drawer, Miss Daisy."

"Yes, it is. It is wrapped up in paper."

"Nothing here wrapped in paper," said June, rummaging.

"Aren't my chessmen there? and my Indian canoe? and my moccasins?—"

"Yes, Miss Daisy, all them's here."

"Well, the spoon is there too, then; it was with the canoe and the moccasins."

"It ain't here, Miss Daisy."

"Then look in all the other drawers, June."

June did so; no spoon. Daisy half raised herself up for a frightened look towards her "cabinet."

"Has anybody done anything to my drawers while I have been away?"

"No, Miss Daisy, not as I know of."

"June, please look in them all—every one."

"'Taint here, Miss Daisy."

Daisy lay down again and lay thinking.

"June, is mamma in her room?"

"Yes, Miss Daisy."

"Ask her—tell her I want to speak to her very much."

Mrs. Randolph came.

"Mamma," said Daisy, "do you know anything about my Egyptian spoon?"

"Do you want it, Daisy?"

"O yes, mamma! I do. June cannot find it. Do you know where it is?"

"Yes—it is not a thing for a child like you, Daisy, and I let your aunt Gary have it. She wanted it for her collection. I will get you anything else you like in place of it."

"But mamma, I told aunt Gary she could not have it. She asked me, and I told her she could not have it."

"I have told her she might, Daisy. Something else will give you more pleasure. You are not an ungenerous child."

"But, mamma! it was mine. It belonged to me."

"Hush, Daisy; that is not a proper way to speak to me. I allow you to do what you like with your things in general; this was much fitter for your aunt Gary than for you. It was something beyond your appreciation. Do not oblige me to remind you that your things are mine."

Mrs. Randolph spoke as if half displeased already, and left the room. Daisy lay with a great flush upon her face, and in a state of perturbation.

Her spoon was gone; that was beyond question, and Daisy's little spirit was in tumultuous disturbance—very uncommon indeed with her. Grief, and the sense of wrong, and the feeling of anger strove together. Did she not appreciate her old spoon? when every leaf of the lotus carving and every marking of the duck's bill had been noted and studied over and over, with a wondering regard to the dark hands that so many, many years and ages ago had fashioned it. Would Mrs. Gary love it as well? Daisy did not believe any such thing. And then it was the gift of Nora and Mr. Dinwiddie, and precious by association; and it was gone. Daisy lay still on her pillow, with a slow tear now and then gathering in her eyes, but also with an ominous line on her brow. There was a great sense of injustice at work—the feeling that she had been robbed; and that she was powerless to right herself. Her mother had done it; in her secret thought Daisy knew that, and that she would not have done it to Ransom. Yet in the deep fixed habit of obedience and awe of her mother, Daisy sheered off from directly blaming her as much as possible, and let the burden of her displeasure fall on Mrs. Gary. She was bitterly hurt at her mother's action, however; doubly hurt, at the loss and at the manner of it; and the slow tears kept coming and rolling down to wet her pillow. For a while Daisy pondered the means of getting her treasure back; by a word to her father, or a representation to Preston, or by boldly demanding the spoon of Mrs. Gary herself. Daisy felt as if she must have it back somehow. But any of these ways, even if successful, would make trouble; a great deal of trouble; and it would be, Daisy had an inward consciousness all the time, unworthy of a Christian