Daisy

"She isn't anybody's," I said slowly, and with slow tears gathering in my heart.

"How do you mean?" said he, with again the quiver of a smile upon his lips.

"I mean," I said, struggling with my thoughts and myself, "I mean that nobody could have a right to her."

"Did not her parents belong to your father?"

"To my mother."

"Then she does."

"But, Dr. Sandford," I said, "nobody can belong to anybody – in that way."

"How do you make it out, Daisy?"

"Because nobody can give anybody a right to anybody else in that way."

"Does it not give your mother a right, that the mother of this girl and her grandmother were the property of your ancestors?"

"They could not be their property justly," I said, glad to get back to my ancestors.

"The law made it so."

"Not God's law, Dr. Sandford," I said, looking up at him.

"No? Does not that law give a man a right to what he has honestly bought?"

"No," I said, "it can't– not if it has been dishonestly sold."

"Explain, Daisy," said Dr. Sandford, very quietly; but I saw the gleam of that light in his eye again. I had gone too far to stop. I went on, ready to break my heart over the right and wrong I was separating.

"I mean, the first people that sold the first of these coloured people," I said.

"Well?" said the doctor.

"They could not have a right to sell them."

"Yes. Well?"

"Then the people that bought them could not have a right, any more," I said.

"But, Daisy," said Dr. Sandford, "do you know that there are different opinions on this very point?"

I was silent. It made no difference to me.

"Suppose for the moment that the first people, as you say, had no precise right to sell the men and women they brought to this country; yet those who bought them and paid honest money for them, and possessed them from generation to generation – had not they a right to pass them off upon other hands, receiving their money back again?"

"I don't know how to explain it," I said. "I mean – if at first – Dr. Sandford, hadn't the people that were sold, hadn't they rights too?"

"Rights of what sort?"

"A right to do what they liked with themselves, and to earn money, and to keep their wives?"

"But those rights were lost, you know, Daisy."

"But could they be?" I said. "I mean – Dr. Sandford, for instance, suppose somebody stole your watch from you; would you lose the right to it?"

"It seems to me that I should not, Daisy."

"That is what I mean," I said.

"But there is another view of the case, Daisy. Take Margaret, for instance. From the time she was a child, your father's, or your mother's money has gone to support her; her food and clothing and living have been wholly at their expense. Does not that give them a right to her services? ought they not to be repaid?"

I did not want to speak of my father and mother and Margaret. It was coming too near home. I knew the food and clothing Dr. Sandford spoke of; I knew a very few months of a Northern servant's wages would have paid for it all; was this girl's whole life to be taken from her, and by my father and mother, and for such a cause? The feeling of grief and wrong and shame got possession of me. I was ready to break my heart in tears; but I could not show Dr. Sandford what I felt, nor confess to what I thought of my father's action. I had the greatest struggle with myself not to give way and cry. I was very weak bodily, but I know I stood still and did not shed a tear; till I felt Dr. Sandford's hands take hold of me. They put me gently back in the chair from which I had risen.

"What is the matter, Daisy?" he said.

I would not speak, and he did not urge it; but I saw that he watched me till I gained command of myself again.

"Shall we go home now?" he asked.

"In a minute. Dr. Sandford, I do not think papa knows about all this – I do not think he knows about it as I do. I am sure he does not; and when he knows he will think as I do."

"Or perhaps you will think as he does."

I was silent. I wondered if that could be possible – if I too could have my eyes blinded as I saw other people's were.

"Little Daisy," said my friend the doctor, "but you are getting to be not little Daisy. How old are you?"

"I shall be fourteen in June."

"Fourteen. Well, it is no wonder that my friend whom I left a philosopher at ten years old, I should find a woman at fourteen; but Daisy, you must not take it on your heart that you have to teach all the ignorant and help all the distressed that come in your way; because simply you cannot do it."

I looked up at him. I could not tell him what I thought, because he would not, I feared, understand it. Christ came to do just such work, and His servants must have it on their hearts to do the same. I cannot tell what was in my look, but I thought the doctor's face changed.

"One Molly Skelton will do for one four years," he said as he rose up. "Come, Daisy."

"But, Dr. Sandford," I said, as I followed him, "you will not do anything about sending Margaret back?"

"Nothing, till you do, Daisy."

Arrived at home, the doctor made me drink a raw egg, and lie down on Mrs. Sandford's sofa; and he sat down and looked at me.

"You are the most troublesome patient that ever I had," said he.

"I am?" I exclaimed.

"Yes. Quite innocently. You cannot help it, Daisy; and you need not be troubled about it. It is all in the way of my profession. It is as if a delicate vessel of Egyptian glass were put to do the work of an iron smelting furnace; and I have to think of all the possible bands and hardening appliances that can be brought into use for the occasion."