e to do what she liked in the matter of Molly
Skelton; and was rewarded on the spot by seeing the pink tinge which
instantly started into the pale cheeks.

No lack of energy had Daisy for the rest of that day. She went off first
to see what was the condition of her rose-bush; pretty fair; lying by
the heels seemed to agree with it quite well. Then the pony chaise was
ordered and a watering pot of water again; much to the boy's disgust who
was to carry it; and Daisy took her dinner with quiet satisfaction. So
soon as the afternoon had become pleasantly cool, Daisy's driving gloves
and hat went on, the chaise was summoned, and rose-bush and all she set
forth on her expedition. Mr. Randolph watched her off, acknowledging
that certainly for the present the doctor was right; whether in the
future Mrs. Randolph would prove to have been right also, he was
disagreeably uncertain. Still, he was not quite sure that he wished
Daisy anything other than she was.

Troubled by no fears or prognostications, meanwhile, the pony chaise and
its mistress went on their way. No, Daisy had no fears. She did doubt
what Molly's immediate reception of her advances might be; her first
experience bade her doubt; but the spirit of love in her little heart
was overcoming; it poured over Molly a flood of sunny affections and
purposes, in the warmth and glow of which the poor cripple's crabbedness
and sourness of manner and temper were quite swallowed up and lost.
Daisy drove on, very happy and thankful, till the little hill was
gained, and slowly walking up it Loupe stopped, nothing loth, before the
gate of Molly Skelton's courtyard.

A little bit of hesitation came over Daisy now, not about what was to be
done, but how to do it. The cripple was in her flowery bit of ground,
grubbing around her balsams as usual. The clear afternoon sunbeams shone
all over what seemed to Daisy all distressing together. The ragged
balsams--the coarse bloom of prince's feather and cockscomb--some
straggling tufts of ribband grass and four-o'clocks and marigolds--and
the great sunflower nodding its head on high over all; while weeds were
only kept away from the very growth of the flowers and started up
everywhere else, and grass grew irregularly where grass should not; and
in the midst of it all the poor cripple on her hands and knees in the
dirt, more uncared-for, more unseemly and unlovely than her little plot
of weeds and flowers. Daisy looked at her, with a new tid