Daisy

"Where have you come from?"

"From my study," I said. "I have a nice place down by the river which is my study."

"Rather a public situation for a private withdrawing place," said the doctor.

"Oh no!" said I. "At this hour – " But there I stopped and began again. "It is really very private. And it is the pleasantest study place I think I ever had."

"To study what?"

I held up my book.

"It agrees with you," said the doctor.

"What?" said I, laughing.

"Daisy!" said Dr. Sandford – "I left a quiet bud of a flower a few days ago – a little demure bit of a schoolgirl, learning geology; and I have got a young princess here, a full rose, prickles and all, I don't doubt. What has Mrs. Sandford done with you?"

"I do not know," said I, thinking I had better be demure again. "She took me to the hop."

"The hop? – how did you like that?"

"I liked it very much."

"You did? You liked it? I did not know that you would go, with your peculiar notions."

"I went," I said; "I did not know what it was. How could I help liking it? But I am not going again."

"Why not, if you like it?"

"I am not going again," I repeated. "Shall we have a walk to the hills to-day, Dr. Sandford?"

"Grant!" said his sister-in-law's voice, "don't you mean the child shall have any breakfast? What made you so late, Daisy? Come in, and talk afterwards. Grant is uneasy if he can't see at least your shadow all the while."

We went in to breakfast, and I took a delightful walk with Dr. Sandford afterward, back in the ravines of the hills; but I had got an odd little impression of two things. First, that he, like Preston, was glad to have me give up going to the hops. I was sure of it from his air and tone of voice, and it puzzled me; for he could not possibly have Preston's dislike of Northerners, nor be unwilling that I should know them. The other thing was, that he would not like my seeing Mr. Thorold. I don't know how I knew it, but I knew it. I thought – it was very odd – but I thought he was jealous; or rather, I felt he would be if he had any knowledge of our friendship for each other. So I resolved he should have no such knowledge.

Our life went on now as it had done at our first coming. Every day Dr. Sandford and I went to the woods and hills, on a regular naturalist's expedition; and nothing is so pleasant as such expeditions. At home, we were busy with microscopic examinations, preparations, and studies; delightful studies, and beautiful lessons, in which the doctor was the finest of instructors, as I have said, and I was at least the happiest of scholars. Mrs. Sandford fumed a little, and Mr. Sandford laughed; but that did no harm. Everybody went to the hops, except the doctor and me; and every morning and evening, at guardmounting and parade, I was on the ground behind the guard tents to watch the things done and listen to the music and enjoy all the various beauty. Sometimes I had a glimpse of Thorold; for many both of cadets and officers used to come and speak to me and rally me on my seclusion, and endeavour to tempt me out of it. Thorold did not that; he only looked at me, as if I were something to be a little wondered at but wholly approved of. It was not a disagreeable look to meet.

"I must have it out with you," he said one evening, when he had just a minute to speak to me. "There is a whole world of things I don't understand, and want to talk about. Let us go Saturday afternoon and take a long walk up to 'Number Four' – do you like hills?"

"Yes."

"Then let us go up there Saturday – will you?"

And when Saturday came, we went. Preston luckily was not there; and Dr. Sandford, also luckily, was gone to dine at the General's with his brother. There were no more shadows on earth than there were clouds in the sky, as we took our way across the plain and along the bank in front of the officers' quarters looking north, and went out at the gate. Then we left civilization and the world behind us, and plunged into a wild mountain region; going up, by a track which few feet ever used, the rough slope to "Number Four." Yet that a few feet used it was plain.

"Do people come here to walk much?" I asked, as we slowly made our way up.

"Nobody comes here – for anything."

"Somebody goes here," I said. "This is a beaten path."

"Oh, there is a poor woodcutter's family at the top; they do travel up and down occasionally."

"It is pretty," I said.

"It is pretty at the top; but we are a long way from that. Is it too rough for you?"

"Not at all," I said. "I like it."

"You are a good walker for a Southern girl."

"Oh, but I have lived at the North; I am only Southern born."

Soon, however, he made me stop to rest. There was a good grey rock under the shadow of the trees; Thorold placed me on that and threw himself on the moss at my feet. We were up so high in the world that the hills on the other side of the river rose beautifully before us through the trees, and a sunny bit of the lower ground of the plain looked like a bit of another world that we were leaving. It was a sunny afternoon and a little hazy; every line softened, every colour made richer, under the mellowing atmosphere.

"Now you can explain it all to me," said Thorold, as he threw himself down. "You have walked too fast. You are warm."

"And you do not look as if it was warm at all."

"I! This is nothing to me," he said. "But perhaps it will warm me and cool you if we get into a talk. I want explanations."

"About what, Mr. Thorold?"

"Well – if you will excuse me – about you," he said, with a very pleasant look, frank and soft at once.

"I am quite ready to explain myself. But I am afraid, when I have done it, that you will not understand me, Mr. Thorold."

"Think I cannot?" said he.

"I am afraid not – without knowing what I know."

"Let us see," said Thorold. "I want to know why you judge so differently from other people about the right and the wrong of hops and such things. Somebody is mistaken – that is clear."

"But the difficulty is, I cannot give you my point of view."

"Please try," said Thorold, contentedly.

"Mr. Thorold, I told you, I am a soldier."

"Yes," he said, looking up at me, and little sparkles of light seeming to come out of his hazel eyes.

"I showed you my orders."

"But I did not understand them to be what you said."

"Suppose you were in an enemy's country," I said; "a rebel country; and your orders were, to do nothing which could be construed into encouraging the rebels, or which could help them to think that your king would hold friendship with them, or that there was not a perfect gulf of division between you and them."

"But this is not such a case?" said Thorold.