ust be prepared to answer it to my father. Perhaps,--yes, I felt sure
as I thought about it--I must contrive to save the amount of her wages
out of what was given to myself; or else my grant might be reversed
and my action disallowed, or at least greatly disapproved. And my
father had given me no right to dispose of Margaret's wages, or of
herself.

So I came into the parlour. Dr. Sandford alone was there, lying on the
sofa. He jumped up immediately; pulled a great arm chair near to the
fire, and taking hold of me, put me into it. My purchases were lying
on the table, where they had been disapproved, but I knew what to
think of them now. I could look at them very contentedly.

"How do they seem, Daisy?" said the doctor, stretching himself on the
cushions again, after asking my permission and pardon.

"Very well,"--I said, smiling.

"You are satisfied?"

I said yes.

"Daisy," said he, "you have conquered me to-day--I have yielded--I
owned myself conquered; but won't you enlighten me? As a matter of
favour?"

"About what, Dr. Sandford?"

"I don't understand you."

I remember looking at him and smiling. It was so curious a thing,
both that he should, in his philosophy, be puzzled by a child like me,
and that he should care about undoing the puzzle.

"There!" said he,--"that is my old little Daisy of ten years old.
Daisy, I used to think she was an extremely dainty and particular
little person."

"Yes--" said I.

"Was that correct?"

"I don't know," said I. "I think it was."

"Then Daisy, honestly--I am asking as a philosopher, and that means a
lover of knowledge, you know,--did you choose those articles to-day to
please yourself?"

"In one way, I did," I answered.

"Did they appear to you as they did to Mrs. Sandford,--at the time?"

"Yes, Dr. Sandford."

"So I thought. Then, Daisy, will you make me understand it? For I am
puzzled."

I was sorry that he cared about the puzzle, for I did not want to go
into it. I was almost sure he would not make it out if I did.

However, he lay there looking at me and waiting.

"Those other things cost too much, Dr. Sandford--that was all."

"There is the puzzle!" said the doctor. "You had the money in your
bank for them, and money for Margaret's things too, and more if you
wanted it; and no bottom to the bank at all, so far as I could see.
And you like pretty things, Daisy, and you did not choose them?"

"No, sir."

I hesitated, and he waited. How was I