tery. And I
suppose you thought I'd pet you and make much of you?"

"I didn't. I thought you'd scold me and be very cross. I came to you as
a punishment, for Polly always said you were the crossest woman she ever
met."

"Polly said that? Humph! Now eat up your breakfast quickly, Daisy. I'm
going out. Don't stir from this room until I come back."

Mrs. Cameron, who had come downstairs in her bonnet, slammed the
dining-room door after her, walked across the hall, and let herself out.
It did not take her many minutes to reach the telegraph office. From,
there she sent a brief message to Helen Maybright:

"_Sorry your father is ill. Expect me this evening with Daisy Rymple._"

CHAPTER XIII.

VERY ROUGH WEATHER.

With all her easy and languishing ways, Flower Dalrymple had often gone
through rough times. Her life in Australia had given to her experiences
both of the extreme of luxury and the extreme of roughing, but never in
the course of her young life did she go through a more uncomfortable
journey than that from Mrs. Cameron's house in Bath to Sleepy Hollow. It
was true that Scorpion, Mrs. Cameron, and Flower, traveled first-class;
it was true also that where it was necessary for them to drive the best
carriages to be procured were at their service; but, as on all and every
occasion Scorpion was king of the ceremonies these arrangements did not
add to Flower's comfort. Mrs. Cameron, who felt seriously angry with the
young girl, addressed all her conversation to the dog, and as the dog
elected to sit on Flower's lap, and snapped and snarled whenever she
moved, and as Mrs. Cameron's words were mostly directed through the
medium of Scorpion at her, her position was not an agreeable one.

"Ah-ha, my dear doggie!" said the good lady. "Somebody has come to the
wrong box, has she not? Somebody thought I would take her in, and be
kind to her, and pet her, and give her your cream, did she not? But no
one shall have my doggie's cream; no, that they shan't!"

"Mrs. Cameron," said Flower, when these particularly clever and lucid
remarks had continued for nearly an hour, "may I open the window of the
carriage at this side? I'm quite stifling."

Mrs. Cameron laid a firm, fat hand upon the window cord, and bent again
over the pampered Scorpion.

"And is my doggie's asthma not to be considered for the sake of somebody
who ought not to be here, who was never invited nor wished for, and is
now to be returned like a bad