Daisy

"I suppose I am," I said. "I am not sick. I always say I am well."

"For instance, you are so well that you never get tired?"

"Oh I get tired very often. I always did."

"What sort of things make you tired? Do you take too long drives in your pony-chaise?"

"I have no pony-chaise now, Dr. Sandford. Loupe was left at Melbourne. I don't know what became of him."

"Why didn't you bring him along? But any other pony would do, Daisy."

"I don't drive at all, Dr. Sandford. My aunt and governess do not like to have me drive as I used to do. I wish I could!"

"You would like to use your pony and chaise again?"

"Very much. I know it would rest me."

"And you have a governess, Daisy? That is something you had not at Melbourne."

"No," I said.

"A governess is a very nice thing," said the doctor, taking off his hat and leaning back against the iron railing, "if she knows properly how to set people to play."

"To play!" I echoed. "I don't know whether Miss Pinshon approves of play."

"Oh! She approves of work then, does she?"

"She likes work," I answered.

"Keeps you busy?"

"Most of the day, sir."

"The evenings you have to yourself?"

"Sometimes. Not always. Sometimes I cannot get through with my lessons, and they stretch on into the evening."

"How many lessons does this lady think a person of your age and capacity can manage in the twenty-four hours?" said the doctor, taking out his knife as he spoke and beginning to trim the thorns off a bit of sweetbriar he had cut. I stopped to make the reckoning.

"Give me the course of your day, Daisy. And by-the-by when does your day begin?"

"It begins at half past seven, Dr. Sandford."

"With breakfast?"

"No, sir. I have a recitation before breakfast."

"Please of what?"

"Miss Pinshon always begins with mathematics."

"As a bitters. Do you find that it gives you an appetite?"

By this time I was very near bursting into tears. The familiar voice and way, the old time they brought back, the contrasts they forced together, the different days of Melbourne and of my Southern home, the forms and voices of mamma and papa, they all came crowding and flitting before me. I was obliged to delay my answer. I knew that Dr. Sandford looked at me; then he went on in a very gentle way —

"Sweetbriar is sweet, Daisy," – putting it to my nose. "I should like to know how long does mathematics last, before you are allowed to have coffee?"

"Mathematics only lasts half an hour. But then I have an hour of study in mental philosophy before breakfast. We breakfast at nine."

"It must take a great deal of coffee to wash down all that," said the doctor, lazily trimming his sweetbriar. "Don't you find that you are very hungry when you come to breakfast?"

"No, not generally," I said.

"How is that? where there is so much sharpening of the wits, people ought to be sharp otherwise."

"My wits do not get sharpened," I said, half laughing. "I think they get dull; and I am often dull altogether by breakfast time."

"What time in the day do you walk?"

"In the afternoon, when we have done with the schoolroom. But lately Miss Pinshon does not walk much."

"So you take the best of the day for philosophy?"

"No, sir, for mathematics."

"Oh! Well, Daisy, after philosophy and mathematics have both had their turn, what then? – when breakfast is over."

"Oh, they have two or three more turns in the course of the day," I said. "Astronomy comes after breakfast; then Smith's 'Wealth of Nations;' then chemistry. Then I have a long history lesson to recite; then French. After dinner we have natural philosophy, and physical geography and mathematics; and then we have generally done."

"And then what is left of you goes to walk," said the doctor.

"No, not very often now," I said. "I don't know why – Miss Pinshon has very much given up walking of late."

"Then what becomes of you?"

"I do not often want to do much of anything," I said. "To-day I came here."

"With a book," said the doctor. "Is it work or play?"

"My history lesson," I said, showing the book. "I had not quite time enough at home."

"How much of a lesson, for instance?" said the doctor, taking the book and turning over the leaves.

"I had to make a synopsis of the state of Europe from the third century to the tenth – synchronising the events and the names."

"In writing?"

"I might write it if I chose, I often do, but I had to give the synopsis from memory."