DAISY'S MISSION.
No sooner had Daisy stepped inside of her mother's door, than there came
such a crash of thunder as she had never heard; and the little house
shook as if it must surely fall.
The old trees ground their boughs together, and, blown by the wind, the
night birds dashed with their wet wings against the door; the screech
owl hooted, for the young were washed out of her nest; and the rain
leaked under Susan's door sill, ran across the floor, and put out the
little fire of brushwood which was burning on the hearth.
And Daisy thought of her father, out alone in this fearful night, and
how the cold rain must be dripping into his grave.
She peeped through the window. The sharp, jagged lightning made the sky
look as if it were shattering like a dome of glass. She wondered if that
lightning might not be the light of heaven she had heard about, and
whether, if the sky should really fall, heaven and earth would be one
place, and by taking a long, long journey, she could find her father,
and live with him. And she thought that, for the sake of having him to
take her by the hand again, she would walk to the end of a hundred
worlds.
Then the sky seemed to Daisy like a great black bell; and the thunder
was the tongue of it that tolled so dismally over her father's grave.
She was startled by a bony hand laid upon her shoulder, and looking up,
heard the old woman say in her sharp, shrill voice, "Come, little girl!
don't you know I am hungry after all this work? Fly round, and get me
something to eat."
And when Daisy noticed her poor, starved face, she wondered that she
had not thought to offer her some food.
So she went to the closet,--the same one which poor Peter had shown to
his wife with so much pride,--and pointed to bread and a dish of
milk,--for the shelves were so high that Daisy could not reach
them,--and drew her mother's easy chair into the dryest place she could
find, and begged the dame to seat herself.
She did not wait to be asked twice, but hobbled into the chair, and, to
Daisy's wonder, ate all the bread at a mouthful, and drank the milk at a
swallow, and then, looking as hungry as ever, asked for more.
So the little girl brought meat, and then some meal, and some dried
fruit, and even cracked nuts; but the more she brought, the more the
fairy wanted.
If Daisy had feared any thing, she would have trembled when, at last,
the old dame fixed her glittering eyes upon her, and began to talk.
"Couldn't you do any better, Daisy, than this," she said, "for your
mother's friend and yours? Are you not ashamed, when I am so hungry and
tired, to give me such mean food?"
"I am sorry, if you do not like it," said Daisy; "it is the best we ever
have."
"Don't tell me that," and the dame began to look angry. "Do you call it
good food that leaves me thin as I was before, and as hungry, and my
clothes as ragged, and does not rest or soothe my poor old aching
bones?"
"If you wait till mother has done crying, she can make a drink out of
herbs that will stop the aching--I am sure of that," said Daisy, looking
up in the fairy's face.
"But I want it now; and, O, I am so cold! and she will cry all night.
Do, Daisy, find me something else to eat."
The poor old woman shivered as she spoke, and tears came into her eyes.
"If it were daytime, I could find you berries and nuts out doors, for
mother says I have sharp eyes."
"Have you--have you? And could you find my hut? There is a beautiful
loaf of bread and a flask of medicine on the table. O, dear! this
dreadful pain again!" and the ugly face grew uglier, as its wrinkles
seemed all knotting up with agony.
"I am almost sure I could find it, and I am so sorry your bones ache;
pray, let me try."
"What! go out into the dreadful night, with the owls, and wolves, and
snakes, and with bats flapping their wings in your face, and the thunder
rolling and rumbling overhead?"
"None of these things ever hurt me, and I don't believe they will now.
May I try?"
"Just listen to the wind and rain, and see the lightning cut through the
darkness like a sword; and think, Daisy, if you should see your father,
just as he lay in the wood, with his head all crushed."
"My father has gone to heaven," said the little girl; "that is only his
body out in the woods, just as that is his coat on the wall; and I shall
see nothing except the nice loaf of bread and the medicine, and think
only how they will cure your pain."
Without another word, the fairy took the lantern from her bosom, and
fastening it to Daisy's, led her to the door, and pointed out into the
black night.
"Who could see to hurt me, when it is so dark!" the little girl
exclaimed. "Now, tell me which way I shall turn, and see if I am not
back soon."
"Walk only where the light of the lantern falls." She was saying more;
but the wind slammed the door suddenly, and Daisy found herself alone.