r
hopes. Daisy stood and looked at it. The sweet half-blown rose at the
top of the little tree hung ingloriously over the soil, and yet looked
so lovely and smelt so sweet; and Daisy had hoped it might win poor
Molly Skelton's favour, or at least begin to open a way for it to come
in due time.

"So ye didn't get your bush planted--" said Logan coming up.

"No."

"Your hands were not strong enough to make the hole deep for it, Miss
Daisy?"

"Yes, I think they could; but I met with an interruption yesterday,
Logan."

"Weel--it'll just bide here till ye want it."

Daisy wished it was back in its old place again; but she did not like to
say so, and she went slowly back to the house. As she mounted the piazza
steps she heard her father's voice. He was there before the library
windows.

"Come here, Daisy. What are you about?" he said drawing her up in his
arms.

"Nothing, papa."

"How do you like doing nothing?"

"Papa, I think it is not at all agreeable."

"You do! So I supposed. What were you about yesterday afternoon?"

"I went to ride with Dr. Sandford."

"Did that occupy the whole afternoon?"

"O no, papa."

"Were you doing nothing the rest of the time?"

"No sir, not _nothing_."

"Daisy, I wish you would be a little more frank. Have you any objection
to tell me what you were doing?"

"No, papa;--but I did not think it would give you any pleasure. I was
only trying to do something."

"It would give me pleasure to have you tell about it."

"I must tell you more then, papa." And standing with her arm on her
father's shoulder, looking over to the blue mountains on the other side
of the river, Daisy went on.

"There is a poor woman living half a mile from here, papa, that I saw
one day when I was riding with Dr. Sandford. She is a cripple. Papa,
her legs and feet are all bent up under her, so that she cannot walk at
all; her way of moving is by dragging herself along over the ground on
her hands and knees; her hands and her gown all down in the dirt."

"That is your idea of extreme misery, is it not, Daisy?"

"Papa, do you not think it is--it must be--very uncomfortable?"

"Very, I should think."

"But that is not her worst misery. Papa, she is all alone; the
neighbours bring her food, but nobody stops to eat it with her. She is
all alone by night and by day; and she is disagreeable in her temper, I
believe, and she has nobody to love her and she loves nobody."

"Which of those two things