Daisy

"How she is growing tall, Grant!" said Mrs. Sandford.

"Yes," said he. "Did you sleep well, Daisy?"

"No, sir; I couldn't sleep. And then I dreamed."

"Dreaming is not a proper way of resting. So tired you could not sleep?"

"I do not think it was that, Dr. Sandford."

"Do you know what it was?"

"I think I do," I said, a little unwillingly.

"She is getting very much the look of her mother," Mrs. Sandford remarked again. "Don't you see it, Grant?"

"I see more than that," he answered. "Daisy, do you think this governess of yours has been a good governess?"

I looked wearily out of the window, and cast a weary mental look over the four years of algebraics and philosophy at the bright little child I saw at the further end of them.

"I think I have grown dull, Dr. Sandford," I said.

He came up behind me, and put his arms round me, taking my hand in his, and spoke in quite a different tone.

"Daisy, have you found many 'wonderful things' at Magnolia?"

I looked up, I remember, with the eagerness of a heart full of thoughts, in his face; but I could not speak then.

"Have you looked through a microscope since you have been there, and made discoveries?"

"Not in natural things, Dr. Sandford."

"Ha!" said the doctor. "Do you want to go and take a drive with me?"

"Oh yes!"

"Go and get ready then, please."

I had a very pleasant, quiet drive; the doctor showing me, as he said, not wonderful things but new things, and taking means to amuse me. And every day for several days I had a drive. Sometimes we went to the country, sometimes got out and examined something in the city. There was a soothing relief in it all, and in the watchful care taken of me at home, and the absence of mathematics and philosophy. All day when not driving or at meals, I lay on Mrs. Sandford's sofa or curled myself up in the depth of a great easy-chair, and turned over her books; or studied my own blue book which I had picked up in the car, and which was so little I had Margaret to make a big pocket in my frock to hold it. But this life was not to last. A few days was all Mrs. Sandford had to spend in Washington.

The place I liked best to go to was the Capitol. Several times Dr. Sandford took me there, and showed me the various great rooms, and paintings, and smaller rooms with their beautiful adornments; and I watched the workmen at work; for the renewing of the building was not yet finished. As long as he had time to spare, Dr. Sandford let me amuse myself as I would; and often got me into talks which refreshed me more than anything. Still, though I was soothed, my trouble at heart was not gone. One day we were sitting looking at the pictures in the great vestibule, when Dr. Sandford suddenly started a subject which put the Capitol out of my head.

"Daisy," said he, "was it your wish or Margaret's, that she should go North with you?"

"Hers," I said, startled.

"Then it is not yours particularly."

"Yes, it is, Dr. Sandford, very particularly."

"How is that?" said he.

I hesitated. I shrank from the whole subject; it was so extremely sore to me.

"I ought to warn you," he went on, "that if you take her further, she may, if she likes, leave you, and claim her freedom. That is the law. If her owner takes her into the free States, she may remain in them if she will, whether he does or not."

I was silent still, for the whole thing choked me. I was quite willing she should have her freedom, get it any way she could; but there was my father, and his pleasure and interest, which might not choose to lose a piece of his property; and my mother and her interest and pleasure; I knew what both would be. I was dumb.

"You had not thought of this before?" the doctor went on.

"No, sir."

"Does it not change your mind about taking her on?"

"No, sir."

"Did it ever occur to you, or rather, does it not occur to you now, that the girl's design in coming may have been this very purpose of her freedom?"

"I do not think it was," I said.

"Even if not, it will be surely put in her head by other people before she has been at the North long; and she will know that she is her own mistress."

I was silent still. I knew that I wished she might.

"Do you think," Dr. Sandford went on, "that in this view of the case we had better send her back to Magnolia when you leave Washington?"

"No," I said.

"I think it would be better," he repeated.

"Oh, no!" I said. "Oh, no, Dr. Sandford. I can't send her back. You will not send her back, will you?"

"Be quiet," he said, holding fast the hand which in my earnestness I had put in his; "she is not my servant; she is yours; it is for you to say what you will do."

"I will not send her back," I said.

"But it may be right to consider what would be Mr. Randolph's wish on the subject. If you take her, he may lose several hundred dollars' worth of property: it is right for me to warn you. Would he choose to run the risk?"

I remember now what a fire at my heart sent the blood to my face. But with my hand in Dr. Sandford's, and those blue eyes of his reading me, I could not keep back my thought.

"She ought to be her own mistress," I said.

A brilliant flash of expression filled the blue eyes and crossed his face – I could hardly tell what, before it was gone. Quick surprise – pleasure – amusement – agreement; the first and the two last certainly; and the pleasure I could not help fancying had lent its colour to that ray of light which had shot for one instant from those impenetrable eyes. He spoke just as usual.

"But, Daisy, have you studied this question?"

"I think I have studied nothing else, Dr. Sandford."

"You know the girl is not yours, but your father's."