Daisy

"I know him."

I thought the tone of the words, careless as they were, signified little value for the knowledge.

"I have not seen him anywhere," I remarked.

"Do you want to see him? He has seen you."

"No, he cannot," I said, "or he would have come to speak to me."

"He would if he could," replied Mr. Thorold – "no doubt; but the liberty is wanting. He is on guard. We crossed his path as we came into the camp."

"On guard!" I said. "Is he? Why, he was on guard only a day or two ago. Does it come so often?"

"It comes pretty often in Gary's case," said my companion.

"Does it?" I said. "He does not like it."

"No," said Mr. Thorold, merrily. "It is not a favourite amusement in most cases."

"Then why does he have so much of it?"

"Gary is not fond of discipline."

I guessed this might be true. I knew enough of Preston for that. But it startled me.

"Does he not obey the regulations?" I asked presently, in a lowered tone.

Mr. Thorold smiled. "He is a friend of yours, Miss Randolph?"

"Yes," I said; "he is my mother's nephew."

"Then he is your cousin?" said my companion. Another of those penetrative glances fell on me. They were peculiar; they flashed upon me, or through me, as keen and clear as the flash of a sabre in the sun; and out of eyes in which a sunlight of merriment or benignity was even then glowing. Both glowed upon me just at this moment, so I did not mind the keen investigation. Indeed, I never minded it. I learned to know it as one of Mr. Thorold's peculiarities. Now, Dr. Sandford had a good eye for reading people, but it never flashed, unless under strong excitement. Mr. Thorold's were dancing and flashing and sparkling with fifty things by turns; their fund of amusement and power of observation were the first things that struck me, and they attracted me too.

"Then he is your cousin?"

"Of course, he is my cousin."

I thought Mr. Thorold seemed a little bit grave and silent for a moment; then he rose up, with that benign look of his eyes glowing all over me, and told me there was the drum for parade. "Only the first drum," he added; so I need not be in a hurry. Would I go home before parade?

I thought I would. If Preston was pacing up and down the side of the camp ground, I thought I did not want to see him nor to have him see me, as he was there for what I called disgrace. Moreover, I had a secret presentiment of a breezy discussion with him the next time there was a chance.

And I was not disappointed. The next day in the afternoon he came to see us. Mrs. Sandford and I were sitting on the piazza, where the heat of an excessive sultry day was now relieved a little by a slender breeze coming out of the north-west. It was very hot still. Preston sat down and made conversation in an abstracted way for a little while.

"We did not see you at the hop the other night, Mr. Gary," Mrs. Sandford remarked.

"No. Were you there?" said Preston.

"Everybody was there – except you."

"And Daisy? Were you there, Daisy?"

"Certainly," Mrs. Sandford responded. "Everybody else could have been better missed."

"I did not know you went there," said Preston, in something so like a growl that Mrs. Sandford lifted her eyes to look at him.

"I do not wonder you are jealous," she said composedly.

"Jealous!" said Preston, with growl the second.

"You had more reason than you knew."

Preston grumbled something about the hops being "stupid places." I kept carefully still.

"Daisy, did you go?"

I looked up and said yes.

"Whom did you dance with?"

"With everybody," said Mrs. Sandford. "That is, so far as the length of the evening made it possible. Blue and grey, and all colours."

"I don't want you to dance with everybody," said Preston, in a more undertone growl.

"There is no way to prevent it," said Mrs. Sandford, "but to be there and ask her yourself."

I did not thank Mrs. Sandford privately for this suggestion; which Preston immediately followed up by inquiring "if we were going to the hop to-night?"

"Certainly," Mrs. Sandford said.

"It's too confounded hot!"

"Not for us who are accustomed to the climate," Mrs. Sandford said, with spirit.

"It's a bore altogether," muttered Preston. "Daisy, are you going to-night?"

"I suppose so."

"Well, if you must go, you may as well dance with me as with anybody. So tell anybody else that you are engaged. I will take care of you."

"Don't you wish to dance with anybody except me?"

"I do not," said Preston, slowly. "As I said, it is too hot. I consider the whole thing a bore."

"You shall not be bored for me," I said. "I refuse to dance with you. I hope I shall not see you there at all."

"Daisy!"

"Well?"