THE next day was Sunday. As I came downstairs in the morning I saw that Daisy was in her old place, on the lowest step of the staircase. My salutation she returned with reserve, but presently I heard a gay, “Mornin’, dear,” and turning around, saw that she was holding up her face to Robertson for a kiss. Before they entered the dining room, she made solicitous inquiries about his night’s rest. He laughed shortly. “I haven’t slept so well for many a night,” he said. Her little face brightened, and they went together to the table.

The church bells were ringing when we finished breakfast, and some one laughingly asked Daisy where she was going to attend service. “You are teasin’ me,” she said rebukingly; “you know I berry seldom go out.”

“Does no one take you for walks?” asked Robertson. The child shook her head, and said that her mamma was always busy. The lad drew up his stalwart frame, stifled some kind of an indignant exclamation, and looked pityingly down at the pale, delicate figure of the child. Daisy was watching him attentively. “Woland,” she said inquiringly, “Have you any work dis mornin’?”

“No, Daisy.”

“Then can’t you dive me a walk?”

Her little hand stole confidingly in his. Her tone was coaxing in the extreme. He laughed, and said: “Very well—go ask your mamma.”

In delighted surprise, she scampered to her mother’s end of the table. “Mamma, may I go a-walkin’ wid Wo—wid Mithter Wobertson?” Mrs. Drummond looked up, hastily ran her eyes over Daisy’s shabby frock, then over Robertson’s handsome suit of clothes. “You have nothing fit to wear, child.”

Daisy’s face became the picture of despair. “The child looks very well as she is,” interposed Robertson dryly, as he walked toward them, “and it is a warm day; she only wants a bonnet.” Daisy listened in delight, then when her mother’s consent was gained, seized Robertson’s fingers and pressed them to her lips. Not long after I had taken my seat in church that morning, a tall young man with a child clinging to him, came walking up the aisle to a seat in front of me. To my surprise, I saw Robertson and Daisy. He, I fear, napped a little during the sermon. Not a word was lost on Daisy. She sat bolt upright, her hands clasped in front of her, her eyes fixed on the clergyman. At the close of the service, we found ourselves near each other and walked home together. As we passed through the hot, sunny streets, Robertson, as if to apologize for being in church, said, “After we got outdoors this morning, Daisy insisted upon going to church, to see the clergyman ‘wing de bells.’”

“The child is almost a heathen,” I answered, in a low voice; “I wish her mother would send her to Sunday-school.”

Daisy’s sharp ears caught my remark. “Is dat where little chillens go Sunday afternoons, wid pretty books under dere arms?”

“Yes,” I replied; “wouldn’t you like to go too?”

“May I, Woland?” eagerly. “I will be berry good.”

He laughed, and said that they must ask her mamma to give the subject her consideration.

For the rest of the day, Daisy followed Robertson about the house like a pet dog. Toward evening, some of his friends came in, and he shook himself free from her, and went up to his room with them. After a time, they all came trooping downstairs. The sound of their merry voices floated to the room where I was sitting. But they were all hushed, when a babyish voice asked, “Are you going out, Woland?”

Robertson resorted to artifice to prevent the recurrence of a scene. “Daisy,” he said, “my friend here, Mr. Danforth”—laying his hand on the shoulder of the youth nearest him—“is a great admirer of yellow cats. Do you suppose that Pompey could be persuaded to walk upstairs and say ‘How-do-you-do’ to him?”

“Oh yes, dear boy,” said the child, trotting downstairs to fulfill her favorite’s behest. When the sound of her footsteps died away, there was subdued laughter, and some one said, “Who is that pretty child, Robertson?” Then the door banged, and there was silence.

When I heard Daisy returning, I went to the door. She came hurrying along, firmly holding the disconsolate-looking, yellow animal under her arm. A blank look overspread her face when she saw that I was sole occupant of the hall. “Where is Mithter Wobertson?” she inquired of me in a dignified way.

“He has gone out,” I said, as gently as I could. “Won’t you come and talk to me for a little while?” Disregarding the latter part of my sentence, she said mournfully, “Do you weally fink so?”

I nodded my head. She let the cat slip to the floor, with a wrathful “Get downstairs, you wetched beast,” and then went silently away. There was a little, dark corner near a back staircase, to which she often retreated in times of great trouble. There I think, she passed the next hour. About nine o’clock she appeared and from that time until nearly every one in the house had gone to bed, she wandered restlessly, but quietly, about the parlors and halls. I knew what she was waiting for—poor, little, lonely creature. Shortly after eleven, Mrs. Drummond put her head in the room. “Why, Daisy,” fretfully, “aren’t you in bed yet? Go right upstairs.”

The child silently obeyed, refusing, by a disdainful gesture, my offer to carry her. That night I could not get to sleep. It seemed as if I too was listening for a returning footstep. About one o’clock, there was a sound on the staircase. I got up, opened my door, and seeing that the night-light was burning in the hall, stepped out.

Robertson, with his hand on the railing, and a terribly red face, was coming slowly upstairs. Just as he reached his door, a little, white-robed figure stole into the hall. She ran up to him. “Oh my darlin’, darlin’ boy,” with a curious catching of her breath, “I fought you was lost, like de Babes in de Wood.”

He steadied himself against the wall, only half comprehending what she said. Then he muttered thickly, “Go to bed, child.”

“Vewy well,” she murmured obediently, then standing on tip-toe, “Kiss me good-night, Woland.”

With abashed eyes and shamed countenance, the young man looked down at the innocent, baby face, shining out of its tangle of curls. He was not fit to kiss her and he knew it. He turned his head from her, and in tones harsher than he really meant said, “Go away, Daisy.”

The child still clung to him. She did not understand why the caress should be denied her. Suddenly his mood changed. He uttered an oath, pushed her violently from him, and staggered into his room.

The child fell, struck her head heavily against the floor, then lay quite white and still. I hastened toward her, took her up in my arms, and rapped at her mother’s door. Mrs. Drummond was still up, sitting before a table, making entries in an account book. She started in nervous surprise, then when I explained matters, looked toward the empty crib, and said, “She must have slipped by me when my back was turned. Has she fainted? She sometimes does. I don’t know why she should be such a delicate child. Please put her in the crib. I will get some brandy.”

I glanced uneasily at the child’s pale face, then quitted the room. Early the next morning, Mrs. Drummond knocked at my door. “I wish you would come and look at Daisy,” she said querulously; “she has not slept all night, and now she has fallen into a kind of stupor; I can’t get her to speak to me.”

I hurried to the child’s cot, and bending over it said, “Daisy, don’t you want some breakfast?”

She neither moved nor spoke, and after making other ineffectual attempts to rouse her, I said, “The child is ill—you must call a doctor.”

“Suppose we get Mr. Robertson to speak to her,” she replied. “This may be only temper.”

On going to his room I shook him vigorously. “Robertson, Robertson, wake up.” After some difficulty, I roused him. He shuffled off the bed as I told him my errand, and in a moment we were beside the sick child.

“Speak to her,” said Mrs. Drummond impatiently; “she is ill.”

He brushed his hand over his face, and leaning over her said, “Daisy, won’t you speak to me?”

At the sound of his voice, the child opened her eyes, and looked up at him dreamily. Then in a low voice, she repeated the terrible oath he had uttered a few hours before. It sounded unspeakably dreadful coming from her childish lips.

“Put on your coat,” I said, “and go for a doctor; the child’s mind is wandering.”

CHAPTER III

Almost Lost

THAT was the beginning of troublous times. For that day, and many subsequent days, the angel of death hovered over the child. A fever had seized upon her, and her little body became wasted and spent till she was but a shadow of her former self. In her delirium, Robertson’s name was constantly on her lips. He, poor fellow, could do nothing. From the first day a nurse was installed in the sick-room, and no one was allowed to enter.

It was on that day that I met, on my way to my office, one of Robertson’s superiors in the bank. “By the way,” he said, “one of our clerks boards where you do—Roland Robertson, his name is. Do you know anything about him? Can you tell me anything in regard to his habits?”

“Very little,” I said hesitatingly. I knew that the man before me was a model of all virtues, and had very little patience with youthful follies. He spoke a few words in a disparaging way, and I knew that Robertson’s careless habits were drawing suspicion upon him, and endangering the remarkably good position he held. The thought flashed into my mind, that perhaps it would be as well for little Daisy to die. The shock of having been the indirect means of her death would sober the lad her little lonely heart had clung to, and make a man of him for life. God was going to take her from us. I pitied Robertson from the bottom of my heart. He was going about the house with a set face which assured me that he had not the slightest hope of the child’s recovery. He never spoke to any one, and after the bank closed, came home and shut himself up in his room. How he passed the time no one knew. One night, I heard Mrs. Drummond come to his door, knock gently, and ask whether he would like to come and say good-bye to Daisy. The doctor had said that she would probably not live through the night, and the nurse thought that now she was having the lucid interval which sometimes comes before death—and she wanted to see him. I stole quietly out of my room, Robertson stood in the hall, his hand on the door-handle, an expression of terrible anguish on his face. Suddenly he composed his features, and went toward the child’s room. I paused on the threshold. The room was dimly lighted and as quiet as the grave. Between the windows, on her mother’s large bed, the child lay—a little, frail, white ghost, her skin deathly pale, and drawn very tightly over her bones, her beautiful, dark eyes fixed languidly on Robertson. He stood at the foot of the bed, his hands clasped around the iron bars with a kind of stony composure on his face.

Daisy gave him a little, wistful smile. Her affection for him was as strong as ever. The fever had not burnt it up, nor was it killed by the pains that racked her tender body. Presently, she murmured a request that he would come beside her. The nurse made room for him by the pillow. He knelt down, clenching one hand in the white counterpane with a vice-like grasp, and holding gently in the other the wasted fingers that Daisy stole feebly toward him.

“Woland, dear boy,” she murmured, in a scarcely audible voice, “I’ve been werry ill.”

His forehead contracted a little. “Yes, I know,” and his voice was very soft and tender and had the sound of tears in it.

“But I’m better now. Mebbe I’ll get up in de mornin’.”

He looked at her. For one instant the rigid control in which he held himself almost gave way. But he recovered himself and she went on feebly: “Will you carry me down to breakfus’?” Then her eyes closed. She seemed to be slipping away.

His face became like marble. The child was dying, and she did not know it. He put his lips to her ear: “Daisy,” in an agonized voice, “this is a sad world; wouldn’t you like to go and leave it?”

The child lifted her heavy lids. “Leave it,” she lisped.

“Yes, and go to heaven,” he ejaculated in a desperate, broken voice. “where the Lord Jesus our Savour is. You will be very happy there. He will give you a white robe and a golden harp, and you will have other little children to play with you; and there will be beautiful fields and flowers—”

“How werry nice,” half sighed, half breathed the exhausted child. A sweet, almost seraphic smile, flitted over her little face. Then a doubt assailed her. With a last, supreme effort, she tried to raise herself and look in his face. “Are you comin’ too, Woland?”

A look of blank despair met her loving glance. Surprised and bewildered, she shook off for an instant her coming lethargy. “Woland,” she said sharply, “I sha’n’t go to heaven widout you.” Then she sank back on the pillow—her eyes closed.

The frightful tension in which the lad held himself gave way. Her little fingers slipped from his grasp, and he fell back, in a dead faint. It did not disturb the little one however, and in a little time he was himself again, and anxiously watching the coming of the end.

CHAPTER IV

Life’s Benediction