knew what was the meaning underneath people’s faces and voices.  Her father had been very much hurt; quite well Daisy was assured of that.  He was too ill to see her, or too ill for her mother to like her to see him.  Daisy knelt down; she remembered she had a Father in heaven, but it seemed at first as if she was too broken hearted to pray.  Yet down there through the still moonlight she remembered his eye could see her and she knew he had not forgotten his little child.  Daisy never heard her door open; but it did once, and some time after it did again.

“I do not know what to do—­” said Mrs. Sandford down stairs.  There the lamps made a second bright day; and the two gentlemen were busy over the table with newspapers and books.  Both of them looked up, at the sound of her perplexed voice.

“That child,—­” said Mrs. Sandford.  “She is not in bed yet.”

The lady stood by the table; she had just come from Daisy’s room.

“What is she doing?” her husband asked.

“I don’t know.  She is kneeling by the open window.  She was there an hour ago, and she is there yet.  She has not moved since.”

“She has fallen asleep—­” suggested Mr. Sandford.  “I should say, wake her up.”

“She is too wide awake now.  She is lifting her little face to the sky, in a way that breaks my heart.  And there she has been, this hour and more.”

“Have some supper directly, and call her down,—­” was the second suggestion of the master of the house.  “It will be supper-time soon.  Here—­it’s some time after nine.”

“Grant, what is the matter with Mr. Randolph?  Is it very serious?”

“Mrs. Randolph thinks so, I believe.  Have you spoken to Daisy?”

“No, and I cannot.  Unless I had good news to carry to her.”

“Where is she?” said the doctor getting up.

“In the room next to yours.”

So Mrs. Sandford sat down and the doctor went up stairs.  The next thing he stood behind Daisy at her window.  She was not gazing into the sky now; the little round head lay on her arms on the window-sill.

“What is going on here?” said a soft voice behind her.

“O!  Dr. Sandford—­” said the child jumping up.  She turned and faced her friend, with a face so wistful and searching, so patient, yet so strained with its self-restraint and fear, that the doctor felt it was something serious with which he had to do.  He did not attempt a light tone before that little face; he felt that it would not pass.

“I came up to see you” he said.  “I have nothing new to tell, Daisy.  What are you about?”

“Dr. Sandford,” said the child, “won’t you tell me a little?”

The inquiry was piteous.  For some reason or other, the doctor did not answer it with a put-off, nor with flattering words, as doctors are so apt to do.  Perhaps it was not his habit, but certainly in other respects he was not too good a man to do it.  He sat down and let the moonlight show Daisy his face.