Melbourne House Part 138

"I do not suppose he looks like that, papa."

"I do not think there is such a personage at all, Daisy. I am sure you need not trouble your little head with thinking about it."

Daisy made no answer.

"There is a struggle always going on, no doubt, between good and evil; but we cannot paint good and evil without imagining shapes for them."

"But papa, ?" said Daisy, and stopped. It was no place or time for talking about the matter, though her father spoke low. She did not want even Dr. Sandford to hear.

"What is it, Daisy?"

"Yes," said the doctor, "I should like to know what the argument is."

"Papa," said Daisy, awesomely, ? "there is a _place_ prepared for the devil and his angels."

Mr. Randolph was silent now. But he felt again that Daisy was nervously excited, by the quiver that pa.s.sed over her little frame.

"So you think, Daisy," said the doctor leaning towards her, ?

"that the white and the black spirits have a fight over the people of this world?"

Daisy hesitated, struggled, quivered with the feeling and the excitement which were upon her, tried for self-command and words to answer. Mr. Randolph saw it all and did not hurry her, though she hesitated a good deal.

"You think they have a quarrel for us?" repeated the doctor.

"I don't know, Dr. Sandford ?" Daisy answered, in a strangely tender and sober voice. It was strange to her two hearers.

"But you believe in the white spirits, I suppose, as well as in the other branch of the connexion?"

"Papa," said Daisy, her feeling breaking a little through her composure so much as to bring a sort of cry into her voice ?

"there is joy among the angels of heaven whenever anybody grows good! ?"

She had turned to her father as she spoke and threw her arms round his neck, hiding her face, with a clinging action that told somewhat of that which was at work in her mind. Mr.

Randolph perhaps guessed at it. He said nothing; he held her close to his breast; and the curtain drew at that moment for the last tableau. Daisy did not see it, and Mr. Randolph did not think of it; though people said it was very good. It was only the head and shoulders of Theresa Stanfield as an old country schoolmistress, seen behind a picture frame, with her uplifted finger and a bundle of rods. Theresa was so transformed that n.o.body would have known her; and while the company laughed and applauded, Daisy came back to her usual self; and slid out of her father's arms when the show was over, all ready for supper and Nora Dinwiddie.

There was a grand supper, and everybody was full of pleasure and complimentary speeches and discussion and praise of the tableaux. That was among the elder portion of the company. The four or five children were not disposed to such absolute harmony. Grapes and ices and numberless other good things were well enjoyed, no doubt; but amidst them all a spirit of criticism was rife.

"Daisy, your wings didn't look a bit like real wings ?" said Jane Linwood.

"No," echoed Nora, "I guess they didn't. They were like ? let me see what they were like! They were like the wings of a windmill."

"No, they weren't!" said Ella. "I was in the drawing-room ?

and they didn't look like a windmill a bit. They looked queer, but pretty."

"Queer, but pretty!" repeated Nora.

"Yes, they did," said Ella. "And you laughed when you were Red Riding-hood, Nora Dinwiddie."

"I didn't laugh a bit!"

"It is no matter if you did laugh, Nora," said Daisy; ? "you got grave again, and the picture was very nice."

"I didn't laugh!" said Nora; "and if I did, everybody else did. I don't think the pictures I saw were at all like pictures ? they were just like a parcel of people dressed-up."

Some gay paper mottoes made a diversion and stopped the little mouths for a time; and then the people went away.

"Well, Daisy," said Mrs. Gary, ? "how do you like this new entertainment?"

"The pictures? I think they were very pretty, aunt Gary."

"How happened it that somebody else wore my diamonds?" said her mother, ? "and not you. I thought you were to be dressed for Queen Esther?"

"Yes, mamma, so I was at first; and then it was thought best ?

"Not by me," said Preston. "It was no doing of mine. Daisy was to have been Esther, and she herself declared off ? backed out of it, and left me to do as best I could."

"What was that for, Daisy?" said Mrs. Gary. "You would have made an excellent Esther."

"What was that for, Daisy?" said Mrs. Randolph. "Did you not like to be Esther?"

"Yes, mamma ? I liked it at one time."

"And why not at another time?"

"I found out that somebody else would like it too, mamma; and I thought ?"

Mrs. Randolph broke out with a contemptuous expression of displeasure.

"You thought you would put yourself in a corner! You were not manager, Daisy; and you must remember something is due to the one that is. You have no right to please yourself."

"Come here, Daisy," said her father, "and bid me good-night. I dare say you were trying to please somebody else. Tell mamma she must remember the old fable, and excuse you."

"What fable, Mr. Randolph?" the lady inquired, as Daisy left the room.

"The one in which the old Grecian told the difficulty of pleasing more people than one or two at once."

"Daisy is ruined!" said Mrs. Randolph.

"I do not see how it appears."

"She has not entered into this thing at all as we hoped she would ? not at all as a child should."

"She looked a hundred years old, in the Game of Life," said Mrs. Gary. "I never saw such a representation in my life. You would have said she was a real guardian angel of somebody, who was playing his game not to please her."

"I am glad it is over!" said Mrs. Randolph. "I am tired of it all." And she walked off.

So did Mr. Randolph, but as he went he was thinking of Daisy's voice and her words ? "There is joy among the angels of heaven whenever anybody grows good."