ISAAC'S LOSS.
DAISY came to her father again and yet again, day after day, as she
had said; and as she grew better able to bear the fatigue, she stayed
longer and longer with her father.
The old man's recovery was very tardy. After a while he was able to
totter into the parlour, and to spend some hours in his easy-chair
every afternoon; but there improvement stood still. He was by no means
the man he had been before his illness.
There seemed to be failure of mind, as well as failure of body. Often
his brain appeared to be surrounded by such a mist, that he could
hardly grasp the sense of what was said to him. One day he would cry
and sob like a child over his lost gold; and another day he would seem
almost happy, in a sort of childish forgetfulness of his trouble.
As weeks went on, one change became visible, which cheered Daisy's
heart greatly, and that was that he no longer showed indifference
to his little daughter—Daisy was always called "little" despite her
seventeen years—but clung to her and leant upon her in a way he never
had done before.
Was it that the loss of his gold had left his poor old heart free to
love?
Daisy thought so, and the thought made her very joyous. She was feeble
still, and could do little except sit for hours together by his side;
but often, in her new happiness, she broke into soft scraps of singing,
and Isaac's face showed that he liked to listen.
Yet this was a time of grave anxiety to Daisy; she could not at all
tell how she and her father were to live thenceforward. His money was
gone. It seemed quite a necessity that his house should be sold.
John Davis was now nearly well, and was expected to be out of the
hospital in a week or ten days. Mary would have to join her husband
then, and everything would rest upon Daisy. She looked too small and
frail for the coming burden.
"But it will be all right," Daisy said often to Mary. "It will be all
right, Nursie. God will take care of us. If only father loved God, I
should not mind about anything else."
Friends had been very kind in helping Daisy and her father through
their time of trouble. Gifts of food and of money also had come in
repeatedly, some known to Daisy, some known only to her faithful nurse.
This, of course, could not be expected to continue always. She had some
anxious conversations with Mr. and Mrs. Roper, about her own and her
father's future.
One day she was sitting with old Isaac in the parlour, Mary Davis
having gone out from Old Meadow for half a day's charing, as she had
frequently done of late. Isaac seemed unusually awake and clearheaded
this afternoon, and in consequence unusually disposed to lament over
his lost gold. Daisy bore for some time with his sorrowful murmurs, and
then she drew her chair closer to him, and took one of his aged hands
between her own, and said,—
"Father, do you mean to go on always being so unhappy about the money?"
Isaac repeated the word "always," as he was given to doing. "It's gone,
Daisy—gone!" he added.
"Yes, it has quite gone, father—every bit of it," said Daisy firmly. "I
think God has taken it from you, because you loved it too much."
"Too much?" echoed Isaac plaintively.
"Yes,—oh, a great deal too much," said Daisy, earnest in voice and
look. "You loved that bag of gold more than me, father—more than
everything—more than God."
Isaac's attention seemed arrested. He repeated "More than God!" not in
his usual dreamy manner, but as if awe-struck.
"Yes, more than you loved God," said Daisy, calmly and clearly. "And,
father, that means that you did not love God at all, for if you had you
must have loved Him best. And it means that you didn't think about the
Lord Jesus, or have Him for your Saviour. And that means that if you
had died, you would have had no Heaven to go to. For the gold was your
god and your heaven and your everything—and, father, if you had died,
you must have left that behind, and then you would have had nothing
left—nothing at all."
Isaac gazed steadfastly at Daisy's flushed and eager face.
"Nothing left?" he said.
"No, nothing—nothing!" said Daisy, almost passionately, yet she spoke
slowly still that he might understand. "O father, it is like the verse
that I read to you yesterday out of Proverbs—'THERE IS THAT MAKETH
HIMSELF RICH, YET HATH NOTHING; THERE IS THAT MAKETH HIMSELF POOR, YET
HATH GREAT RICHES.' Say the words after me, father dear."
Isaac obeyed in his half-childish way, but before finishing he stopped.
"Yes, I made myself rich, sure enough," he said, with a momentary gleam
of satisfaction. "I toiled, and I saved, and I did it all. But I didn't
make myself poor. It was that wretched thief, Daisy—as deserves to be
hung too."
"We needn't think about him," said Daisy. "He will be punished
some day, one way or another. People always are, if they go on in
wrong-doing. I like better to think of it the other way—that God took
away your money, so that you might be free to think about Him. O
father, I do so want you to learn to serve God."
Isaac was silent for some seconds, and when he spoke it was with a
recurrence to Daisy's text. "Makes himself rich—yet has nothing," he
muttered. "That wasn't me, Daisy. I'd got lots,—only it's all gone
now—all gone."
"You had lots of gold, father, but that was nothing. It couldn't make
you happy. It couldn't keep you from dying. It couldn't take you to
Heaven. You had the gold and you were poor; and now the gold is gone,
I want you to be rich—really rich. I want you to be rich in the love
of the Lord Jesus. Father dear, won't you try to come to Him, and tell
Him you are sorry you haven't thought more about Him, and ask Him to
forgive you everything and to make you His very own for ever?"
"I don't know that I durst," said Isaac tremblingly. "I don't know that
I durst, Daisy. And I don't know how."
But when Daisy knelt beside him, and prayed aloud for him, in pleading
words which presently ended in a burst of weeping, Isaac was strangely
moved. He bent his head low, and tried to join in, murmuring the words
after her; and when she broke down he said hurriedly, "Don't you—now
don't you, Daisy. I'll never speak about the gold any more, Daisy."