DAISY

Daisy.                     Page 20.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This little story, by Miss Marshall Saunders, author of “Beautiful Joe,” appeared some years ago in England, in the interests of a benevolent institution. It has seemed worthy of a wider publication, and hence it is brought out in its present dress. The infantile grace and quaint ways of the little child; her influence in shaping a somewhat warped life, with all its incidental lessons, and the final happy ending of it all, will give the little story, we are sure, a wide audience and a cordial reception.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

A Baby’s Grace

ONE evening, Mrs. Drummond, the tired, careworn woman who presided over our boarding house, glanced down the well-spread table, and informed us that the next day we were to have a new boarder—a Mr. Robertson, a young bank clerk who had lately come from England to our prosperous Canadian town.

I knew the lad by reputation, and the next morning when he sauntered into the dining room, I looked at him carefully. Poor boy, his eye was heavy, and his step languid. In his foolish endeavors to “see life,” he was fast losing the purity of heart and mind with which he had quitted his far-away home, and it was making its mark upon him in a way not to be mistaken.

He sat opposite me, and I could see that he was making a mere pretence of taking his breakfast.

Presently, there was a remark from Mrs. Drummond’s end of the table. The child was speaking—the child par excellence, for there was not another one in the house. She was a curious little creature—willful, disdainful, neglected by her mother, and