I. MY DAISY. "Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eyes; ON'T, Linda, oh! pray don't!" and the "D DON soft brown eyes of Daisy Snowflake, a young girl between ten and eleven years of age, filled with tears as she laid her hand beseechingly upon the arm of her companion, a fair-haired, merry-looking girl who was evidently only some few months younger than herself. And this was the cause of the tearful beseeching. The two girls, who had been amusing themselves in the very pretty garden of Dovedale Rectory until five minutes ago, had been attracted by the passing of a funeral upon the road which separated the Rectory grounds from the village fields. Running swiftly to a corner of the paddock, where they could watch the high road almost unobserved, slightly stooping down by a substantial wooden fence, they had looked at the solemn procession, possibly bound for a cemetery some three miles distant, with thoughtful mien and becoming gravity, until Linda, always a little wild in her fun, had bent her head in her hands endeavouring to suppress a quiet laugh. It was this action of Linda's which had called forth the tearful reproach. "The plumes did look so funny nodding to each other as they went along," whispered Linda in answer; "but I really didn't mean to be wicked, Daisy; only supposing I had, I do not think you need have cried about it;" and she gave Daisy a reproachful look. Daisy returned the look; indeed her eyes, still wet with tears, rested a full second upon Linda's face before she spoke, then she said under her breath, for the last mourning coach was just passing, "Oh! Linda, never, never laugh at a funeral ! It might be somebody's mother they were taking to be buried!" Who but a motherless girl could have said this? Linda's mood instantly changed. She looked upon her cousin with a tender, awed expression. She could not understand the deep feeling which had led Daisy to protest at her levity, but she could reverence Daisy for possessing it. She felt heartily ashamed, while at the same time she made a little excuse for herself, saying mentally, "Ah! if I had gone through Daisy's troubles, I should think of these things naturally, of course, just as she does; only, perhaps, I should not want to keep these thoughts so long." "Daisy's troubles!" After all, Linda only knew about these troubles on the outside, just as half the world knows the difficulties and the trials of the other half. To Linda her cousin's troubles were gathered into the thought of black dresses and black ribbons; and when, at the end of twelve months, they had been put on one side, Linda's idea would have been that the trouble which these dismal clothes bore witness to as having existed would become a thing also passed away, put on one side, forgotten as far as the heart's feeling concerned the individual and daily life. Hence the wonder that Daisy had not forgotten, Linda was neither heartless nor thoughtless, but simply ignorant of the power and pain of sorrow; sorrow itself being only a name to her. Her young life had been full of sunshine. Possessing the gift of natural good temper and brightness of spirits,which in many cases means simply possessing the gift of health,-Linda had just glided through life, appropriating its joys as if they were hers in virtue of her youth, and expecting life's sorrows in the days when she should be gray-haired and toothless, when, with a wrinkled face and other signs of advancing age, she would no longer be able to enjoy the pleasures which satisfied her now. Linda was as impulsive as she was high-spirited. The moment the funeral had really passed she threw her arms round her cousin's neck, and said sweetly, "Forgive me, dear old Day! I promise never to do it again." And Daisy whispered, "Thank you, Linda," and set that young lady wondering why she had not said "All right" instead. But Daisy meant the "Thank you," and she would not have meant "All right." We can never understand this sweet little woman aright unless we know something about those troubles as they concerned and touched her very life. So let us, to save further explanation by-andbye, when we can less afford to break off the story and become familiar with what has gone before,let us at once say a word or two about the past as it concerns our heroine. Daisy had come into the world as a Christmas morning gift to her gentle, sweet-faced mother. At first it was feared that the little new-born babe would soon fly away back again to the heaven from whence she came. Her mother said that she had a far-off, shadowy look in her eyes, which were ever glancing upwards as if waiting for a sign in the blue sky above to say the hour had come when she was to return, and that those tiny, waxen hands were ever unconsciously folding themselves together in prayer. But the nurse thought that, having come, "the bairn would make her mind up to stay a bit and comfort the poor, ailing mother-who wanted it sorely enough, poor darling!" and Betsy Trueman, one of the finest specimens of an old-fashioned monthly nurse, would heave a deep-drawn sigh, |