very sweet. To live there
meant to get into an abode of peace. As to ogres, they would fall down
dead on the threshold of such rooms. There were only two, and they
were up high in a small house, and without the gilding and the glory
which I spoke of they would have seemed humble enough, but to those
who knew their secret, and what their owner had done for her expected
guests, they appeared a very Palace Beautiful. Now, Daisy, I must tell
you something so sad. The rooms were ready, but the guests did not
arrive. Three guests were expected, but the kind lady who had prepared
the rooms, who had papered them with Goodness, and furnished them with
Self-Denial, and brightened them with Love, waited and longed for her
visitors in vain.

"Two of the visitors were most anxious to come, but one--a little
one--although she looked very gentle and had a sweet expression and
blue eyes, and seemed quite the sort of little girl who would not
willingly hurt a fly, held back. It never entered into her head that
she was selfish, and was making two or three people who loved her both
anxious and unhappy. She preferred to live in rooms which, by
comparison, were like dungeons; for the owners had never put Love into
them, and had never thought of Self-Denial in connection with them.
There, Daisy-flower, I have done. It seems a pity that the little girl
should have been so selfish, does it not?"

"But how does the story end, Mr. Arthur? You have really only just
begun."

"I only know the beginning, Daisy," said Noel, as he rose to leave. "I
have not an idea whether that Palace Beautiful will ever receive its
visitors, whether that kind lady will ever be made happy, or whether
that little girl will ever cease to be selfish."

A few moments afterwards Noel went away, and poor Daisy turned her
face to the wall and wept.

Of course, the very obvious moral had hit her hard, poor little maid!
Oh! if she could really only confide in Arthur--he was so nice and
strong, and he looked so contemptuously at Mr. Dove that day when he
was carrying Daisy across the road to Miss Egerton's.

"I don't believe he would be afraid of Mr. Dove," she whispered
softly, under her breath. "Oh dear! why am I so terribly frightened?
Why does he make my heart beat? and why do I shake so when I see him?
Well, I'll never tell about his bringing me up the sticky
sweetmeats--of course I'll not tell. I promised I wouldn't; it would
be dreadful to break one's promise. O