Tears!_

Mortimer was still sleeping an "azure-lidded sleep," as Keats has it, when
Daisy again came softly to the door.

A pretty little woman was Daisy Snarle.

She had one of those faces which you sometimes pass in the street and
remember afterward, ever connecting it with some exquisite picture, or, if
you happen to be in a poetical mood, a dainty bit of music. That face was
very sweet in the coquettish red and white "kiss-me-quick" which used to
shade it sunny mornings, when Daisy went to market--a very beautiful face
when she looked up earnestly--a very holy face when she sat thoughtfully
in her room at twilight. Her hair was dark chestnut, and she wore it in one
heavy braid over her forehead. Her eyes were so gentle and saucy by turns
that I could never tell whether they were gray or hazel; but her smile was
frank, her laugh musical, and her whole presence so purely womanly, that
one could not but be better for knowing her. Yet Daisy was not faultless.
She had a wild little will of her own--none the worse for that, however.
She could put her foot down--and a sweet little foot it was!--a temptation
of a foot, cased in a tight boot--high in the instep, and arched like the
proud neck of an Arabian mare, or the eye-brows of a Georgian girl. And
then the heel of said boot!--But I daren't trust myself further.

Daisy stood looking at Mortimer with her fond, thoughtful eyes. Soon she
grew tired of this, and, placing a stool by his chair, sat down and
commenced sewing. From time to time she looked up from her work and smiled
quietly.

"How he sleeps!" said Daisy, with a low laugh. "Will he be cross if I
disturb him?"--and she laughed again. "I wonder," she said, at length, "if
a tiny song would awaken him?"

So she sang in a gentle voice those touching lines of Barry Cornwall,
commencing with--

"Touch us gently, Father Time!
As we glide adown the stream."

She sang them bewitchingly. The music must have stolen into Mortimer's
dream, for he slept a quieter sleep than before. Miss Daisy did not like
that, and pouted quite prettily, and shook her finger at him.

"O, how tiresome you are!" she said. Then she sewed for ten minutes quite
steadily.

"I guess I'll arrange your books, Rip Van Winkle! and when you wake up, a
half century hence, you won't know them, they'll be in such good order!"

And facetious Miss Daisy broke out in such a wild, merry laugh, that an
early robin, perched on a tree beside