An hour passed, and still Daisy listened for Jasmine’s light and springing step on the attic stairs.

She was very tired now, and her head ached.  She thought she would go into the bedroom and, lying down on her little white bed, sleep away the weary moments.  Taking the Pink with her, she did so, wrapping the counterpane well up over them both.

In a very few moments the child was in a heavy slumber.

She awoke, after what seemed to herself a very short nap, to hear sounds in the bedroom.  She stirred sleepily, and, opening her eyes, said—­

“Oh, Jasmine, what a time you’ve been away!”

No answer from Jasmine, but a smothered exclamation from some one else; a heavy tread on the uncarpeted boards, and Dove, his face red, his shoes off, and something which looked like a screw-driver in his hands, came up and bent over the child.

“Oh! what are you doing here, Mr. Dove?” exclaimed little Daisy.  The man bent down over her, and stared hard into her wide open blue eyes.

[Illustration:  THE MAN BENT DOWN OVER HER.  Palace B]

“I didn’t know you was here, missie; it was very cunning of you to feign sleep like that—­it was very cunning and over sharp, but it don’t come round me.  No, no; you has got to speak up now, and say what you has seen, and what you hasn’t seen.  I allow of no nonsense with little girls, and I can always see through them when they mean to tell a lie.  You know where the children who tell lies go to, so you’d better speak up, and the whole truth, missie.”  Dove spoke in a very rough voice, and poor Daisy felt terribly frightened.

“I didn’t see anything,” she began, in her innocent way.  “I was fast, fast asleep.  I thought you were Jasmine—­Jasmine should have been back long ago.  I have a bad cold, and I was trying to pass the time by going to sleep.  I haven’t seen anything, Mr. Dove.”

“Let me look into your eyes, miss,” said Dove; “open them wide, and let me look well into them.”

“Oh! you frighten me, Mr. Dove,” said Daisy, beginning to cry.  “I was very lonely, and I’d have liked you to come up half an hour ago; but you look so queer now, and you speak in such a rough voiced—­what is the matter?  Perhaps you were bringing up some of those books for Jasmine.  Oh!  I don’t know why you should speak to me like that.”

Dove’s brow cleared; he began to believe that the child had really been asleep, and had not seen the peculiar manner in which he had been employing himself for the last ten minutes.

“Look here, miss,” he said, “I don’t mean to be rough to you, you pretty little lady.  Look here, what I was after was all kindness.  I only spoke rough as a bit of a joke.  I has got some lollipops in my pocket for a nice little maid; I wonder now who these yere lollipops are for?”

“For me, perhaps?” said Daisy, who, although she could not have swallowed a sweety to save her life at that moment, had sense enough to know that her wisest plan was to propitiate Dove.