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DAISY
[Illustration: Daisy. Page 20.]
DAISY
BY
MARSHALL SAUNDERS
_Author of “Beautiful Joe”_
“A little child shall lead them”
PHILADELPHIA
CHARLES H. BANES
1420 Chestnut Street
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
Chapter II
Sunshine and Shadow
Chapter III
Almost Lost
Chapter IV
Life’s Benediction
CHAPTER I
A BABY’S GRACE
[Illustration]
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 suspicious of all other
mortals. Petting she despised, and invariably showed symptoms of
displeasure if disturbed in her favorite occupation of playing with an
ugly, yellow cat in dark corners of the house. But the strangest thing
of all was her quietness. She never romped like other children, never
prattled; indeed, she rarely spoke at all, so we were all attention as
she pointed to young Robertson with her spoon, and said in a clear,
babyish voice, “Dat’s a berry fine-lookin’ boy, mamma.”
Everybody smiled, for the boy in question, though manly and stalwart in
appearance, had a decidedly plain face. He blushed a little, and bent
over his plate. Mrs. Drummond took her hand from the coffee-urn long
enough to lay it on Daisy’s head: “Hush, child, you must not talk at the
table.”
“Wemove dat hand,” said the child, in a displeased tone. Then rapping on
the table with her spoon, to call Robertson’s attention, she asked,
“Boy, what’s your name?”
“Roland Robertson,” he replied, with an embarrassed laugh.
Daisy, intensely interested, and altogether regardless of the boarders’
amused glances, said in a stage whisper, while she solemnly wagged her
curly head, “Woland Wobertson, I love you.” Then scrambling out of her
high-chair, she ran down the long room, and peremptorily demanded a seat
on his knee.
He started, looked annoyed, then sheepish, and finally took her up. It
did not suit his English reserve to be made the cynosure of all eyes.
Daisy sedately arranged her flounces, then watched him playing with his
food. “Don’t you like fwicasseed chicken?” she asked, gently.
“Yes,” he said; “but I am not hungry.”
“Some mornin’s I eat nuffin too,” she said, in a relieved way; “more
partickler when I have a glass of milk in de night. Woland,” tenderly
patting the hand around her waist, “did you have a dwink in de night?”
Robertson’s face became scarlet. She viewed him with the utmost
solicitude. Then turning to a lady next her, who had finished her
breakfast, and was indolently fanning herself, “Dive me dat fan, de poor
darlin’ is hot.”
Both on that occasion and many subsequent ones, Daisy amused us by the
epithets she bestowed upon her favorite. We found that she had not been
an inattentive observer of the many newly married couples that had
sojourned at Mrs. Drummond’s.
Robertson was fanned for several minutes—Daisy striking his face, with
an extra now and then for his nose, in her awkward zeal, until I
wondered at his patience. Suddenly, he pushed back his chair, said he
had finished his breakfast and that she had better get down. This gave
rise to a stroke of childish policy. She ordered the table-maid to bring
her hitherto neglected plate of porridge, and putting the spoon in
Robertson’s hand insisted upon his feeding her. He complied with a
pretty good grace. Daisy kept up an unbroken scrutiny of his face, and
presently dodging a spoonful of milk, laid a pink forefinger on his
upper lip. There was just the faintest suspicion of a moustache there.
“I fordet what you call dis,” she said, “moss—moss——”
“Moustache,” he replied, abruptly bringing the porridge feeding
performance to a close, and putting her on her tiny feet. She ran out of
the room after him, pulling the napkin from her neck as she went. When I
reached the hall, Robertson was taking down his hat from the rack, Daisy
in close attendance. She was just prefacing a remark with, “Woland,
love,” when Mrs. Drummond came out of the dining room.—“Daisy,” she
said, peevishly, “you must say Mr. Robertson.”
“How berry cross you are dis mornin’,” said the child, throwing a glance
at her over her shoulder; then turning to Robertson, she went on to ask
him whether he would soon come back, to see her.
“No,” he replied, his hand on the door, “I lunch in town; you won’t see
me till evening.” The child’s face fell, and she turned silently away.
I went out quickly, and overtook him before he reached the corner of the
street. “That child seems to have taken quite a fancy to you,” I said
quietly; “I never before knew her to show so much interest in any one.”
“I don’t know why she does,” he answered awkwardly, and with some
impatience, “unless it is owing to my having spoken to her the other
day. When I went to engage my room, she was sitting in a corner alone,
and I gave her a picture I happened to have in my pocket.” He stopped
suddenly. He did not tell me then, nor did I find out until long
afterward, that the little, lonely child had reminded him of a dead
sister of his, and that when he gave her the picture, he gave her a kiss
with it.
I made some trite remark about the softening and good influences a child
can throw around one—I did not intend to hint at all that he was in
need of such influences; but so suspicious was he in his dawning
manhood, that he resented my remark, and relapsed into profound silence.
A minute later, he left me, under the pretence of taking a short cut to
the bank.
I did not see him again until evening. I entered the dining room on the
first stroke of the dinner bell. Mrs. Drummond had just preceded me. I
could not help smiling at her dismayed face. Daisy, with excited,
nervous movements, was dragging her high-chair from the head of the
table, to a place near Robertson’s.
“That young man has bewitched the child,” she said fretfully. “She
slapped me just now, because I would not let her put on her best dress
for him.”
While she was speaking Robertson entered the room. He was in better
spirits than in the morning. When his eye fell on Daisy, sitting flushed
with victory beside his plate, he smiled and pinched her cheek as he sat
down. During the progress of the meal he showed a certain amount of
attention to the scrap of humanity at his side; and she, with no eyes
for the other people at the table, hung on his looks, and with a more
practical interest in his welfare, watched every morsel of food that
went into his mouth. Once she said impatiently to me, “You wed-haired
man, you—don’t you see dat Woland wants some vegetables? Pass some
quick.”
Dinner over, all scattered about the house. Daisy never retired earlier
than any other person, so I watched her curiously to see what she would
do. Robertson had gone to his room. With a disappointed air she seated
herself on the lowest step of the staircase. Some young men standing
about the hall tried to tease her. “Baby dear,” said one of them
mischievously, “I’m afraid you’re going to be a flirt.”
“What’s dat?” she said, holding out inviting arms to the yellow cat that
was sneaking about my boots.
“A flirt is an animal with eyes all over its head, and an enormous
mouth, and it goes about the world eating men,” explained another.
Poor Daisy—she was yet at the stage of believing everything she heard.
She shrugged her white shoulders, as she said, “Drefful!” and hugged her
dingy cat a little closer. Presently they all laughed. She had thrown
the cat to the floor, and sprung to her feet. Robertson was coming
downstairs, very carefully dressed, a light overcoat thrown over his
arm. Evidently, it was his intention to spend the evening with some of
his friends.
Daisy inquired wistfully whether he was going out, and on his replying
in the affirmative, she asked whether it was “work” that was taking
him—that term signifying to her something that could not be neglected.
“No, Daisy,” he said, trying to escape her detaining hands, “I am going
to see a play.”
“Woland,” she said beseechingly, “won’t you stay an’ play wid me an’
Pompey?” pointing toward the yellow cat, that was glaring at him from
under a hall chair.
It was not a very inviting prospect. He laughed, put her aside, saying,
“Some other time, little girl,” and went toward the hall door. The child
watched him, her little breast heaving, her hands clenched tightly in
the folds of her dress. He was going to leave her, the only person in
the house whom she cared for. The disappointment was too great, “Oh,
Woland—I fought you would stay,” she said, in a choking voice. Then
dropping on the white fur rug at her feet, she burst into a perfect
passion of tears.
This was such an unprecedented proceeding on the part of the
self-contained child, that a crowd of anxious faces soon surrounded her.
“Whatever is the matter with the child?” said her mother querulously, as
she bent over the pink, sobbing bundle. “She hasn’t cried since the day
she fell downstairs, and nearly killed herself.”
Robertson hurried back at the sound of the wailing voice. “Has she hurt
herself?” he asked anxiously. He looked astonished when we explained the
cause of her emotion. “Don’t cry, Daisy,” he said, “I will stay with you
to-morrow evening.”
The child’s sobs redoubled. He hesitated, looked at his watch, then
muttered “I suppose I would be a brute to leave her like this.”
“Daisy,” I whispered in her curly locks, “he is going to stay with you.”
A shriek of joy, and the child was on her feet, clinging to his hand
with an enthusiasm that made him turn away with a half-foolish air. The
next two hours were uninterrupted bliss for Daisy. She spent them in one
of the parlors, leaning against Robertson’s knee, looking at photographs
of the Athenian Marbles. They were evidently Greek to her, but one
glance at Robertson would smooth out her little, puzzled forehead. At
ten o’clock her little head drooped and she soon fell fast asleep, so
that he carried her upstairs, her face bordered by its curls resting
confidingly on his shoulder. When he came down, I saw him glance
irresolutely at the clock, as if uncertain whether to go out or not. I
asked him whether he would like to come to my room. I had some curios
which I had picked up in my rambles about the world which I thought
would be of interest to him. Some of them I told him were from Athens,
and bore some relation to the Marbles he had been examining. He thanked
me very politely, but very stiffly, and said that at some future time he
would like to see them. In some way, he hardly knew why, he felt very
sleepy this evening, and would go to bed at once. He went, and thoughts
of his little companion went with him as he sunk to a rest purer and
sweeter than that which had been his during the weeks preceding.