ived at Rosebury she was the only passenger to
alight. She gave up her ticket and walked out of the station, a
forlorn and unnoticed little personage. It was still very early in the
morning, not quite six o'clock, and there were very few people about,
and the whole place had a strange, deserted, and unhomelike feeling.
Could this be the Rosebury where Daisy was born, where she had been so
petted and loved? She did not like its aspect in the cold grey morning
light. There was a little drizzling mist falling, and it chilled her
and made her shiver.

"I know I've been very, very selfish," she kept murmuring to herself.
"I oughtn't to have minded the dungeon. I ought not to have been so
terrified at the ogre. I'm afraid God is angry with me for being so
dreadfully selfish, and for letting the ogre take Primrose's money. I
always did think the sun shone at Rosebury, but perhaps even the sun
won't get up because he is angry with me."

Daisy knew her way down the familiar and straggling village street,
but there were one or two different roads to Shortlands, and she
became puzzled which to take, and what with the drizzling rain, and
her own great fatigue of body, soon really lost her way.

An early laborer going to work was the first person she met. She asked
him eagerly if she was on the right road; but he answered her so
gruffly that she instantly thought he must be a relation of Mr. Dove's
and ran, crying and trembling, away from him. The next person she came
across was a little boy of about her own age, and he was kind, and
took her hand, and put her once more in the right direction, so that,
foot-sore and weary, the poor little traveller did reach the
lodge-gates of Shortlands about nine o'clock.

But here the bitterest of her disappointments awaited her, for the
woman who attended to the gates said, in a cold and unsympathizing
voice, that the family were now in London, and there was no use
whatever in little miss troubling herself to go up to the house. No
use at all, the woman repeated, for she could not tell when the family
would return, probably not for several weeks. Daisy did not ask any
more questions, but turned away from the inhospitable gates with a
queer sinking in her heart, and a great dizziness before her eyes. She
had come all this weary, weary way for nothing. She had taken dear
Poppy's last money for nothing. Oh, now there was no doubt at all that
God was very angry with her, and that she had been bo