Meanwhile attention ceased to be filled with her particular affairs, and conversation flowed off as usual, away from her.  Preston still held his station at the back of the sofa, where he dipped sponge cake in tea with a wonderful persistency; in fact the question seemed to be whether he or the cake basket would give out first; but for a while Daisy eat her toast in happy quiet; watching everybody and enjoying everything.  Till Gary McFarlane drew near, and took a seat, as if for a regular siege.

“So what about those incantations, Daisy?” he said.

“I do not know what you mean, Mr. McFarlane.”

“No? don’t you?  That’s odd.  You have been so long in the witch’s precincts.  You have heard them, of course?”

“I do not know what you mean, Mr. McFarlane.”

“Why you must have been bewitched.  I wonder, now, if the witch’s house did not seem to you a palace?”

“It seemed a very nice place.”

“And the witch herself a sable princess?”

“I think she is a great deal better than a princess.”

“Exactly so,” said Gary with a perfectly sober face.  “The witch drew water, didn’t she?”

“I don’t know what you mean.  Mrs. Benoit used to bring pails of water from her well.”

“Very good.  And you never heard her incantations, muttering in the morning before the dew was off the grass, or at night just as the first beams of the moon, lighted on the topmost boughs of the trees?”

Daisy was confounded.  “Mr. McFarlane,” she said after a moment’s looking at him—­“I hope I do not know what you mean.”

At that, Gary McFarlane went off into an ecstacy of laughter, delighted and amused beyond count.  Preston interrupted the sponge cake exercise, and Daisy felt her sofa shaking with his burden of amusement.  What had she done?  Glancing her eye towards Dr. Sandford, who sat near, she saw that a very decided smile was curling the corners of his mouth.  A flush came up all over Daisy’s face; she took some tea, but it did not taste good any longer.

“What did you think I meant?—­come Daisy, tell me,” said Gary, returning to Daisy as soon as he could get over his paroxysm of laughter.  “What did you think I meant?  I shouldn’t wonder if you had some private witchcraft of your own.  Come! what did you think I meant?”

While he had been laughing, Daisy had been trying to get command of herself and to get her throat clear for talking; there had been a very uncomfortable thick feeling in it at first.  Now she answered with simple dignity and soberness,

“I did not know, Mr. McFarlane, but you meant Juanita’s prayers.”

“Does she pray?” said Gary innocently.

“Yes.”

“Long prayers, Daisy?”

“Yes,” (unwillingly now.)

“Then that must have been what you heard!” Gary said looking up to
Preston.  No answer came from him.  Gary was as sober now as seven judges.