Daisy gave him a quick look of wisdom and suspicion mingled.  The doctor was getting a very good amusement himself, and quite entered into the matter.  He waited for Daisy’s answer.  It came diplomatically.

“Isn’t everything good for something, sir?”

“’Pon my word, I don’t know,” said the doctor.  “My enquiry was for the grounds of your opinion, Daisy.”

“It was not an opinion.  I do not think I am old enough to have an opinion.”

“What was it, Daisy?”

The doctor was still crouching down by the side of the rock examining carelessly whatever he found there.  Daisy looked at him and waited, and felt at last that good manners required her to speak.

“You said, sir, that baskets were made to hold something.”

“So your remark was an inference from mine?”

“No, sir.”

“Go on, Daisy.”

“I only said it, sir, because I knew it was true.”

There was an odd contrast between the extreme modesty of Daisy’s manner and the positiveness of her words.

“It is said to be a great philosophical truth, Daisy; but what I want to know is how you, not being a philosopher, have got such firm hold of it?”

He faced Daisy now, and she gave way as usual before the searching blue eyes.  One soft look, and her eyes fell away.

“I only thought it.  Dr. Sandford, because in the beginning—­when God had made everything—­the Bible says he saw that it was all good.”

“Daisy, how came you to be such a lover of the Bible?”

Daisy did not speak at once, and when she did it was a departure from the subject.

“Dr. Sandford, I felt a drop of rain on my face!”

“And here is another,” said the doctor getting up.  “This is what I have expected all day.  Come, Daisy—­you must be off in your chaise-a-porteurs without delay.”

“But Nora, and Ella, and the boys!—­they are away off on the lake.”

“They will scuttle home now,” said the doctor, “but I have nothing to do with them.  You are my business, Daisy.”

Accordingly he carried her back to the lunching place, not indeed in his arms, but with a strong hand that made her progress over the stones and moss very rapid, and that gave her a great flying leap whenever occasion was, over any obstacle that happened to be in the way.  There was need enough for haste.  The light veil of haze that had seemed to curtain off the sunlight so happily from the lake and the party, proved now to have been only the advancing soft border of an immense thick cloud coming up from the west.  No light veil now; a deep, dark covering was over the face of the sky, without break or fold; the drop or two of rain that had been felt were merely the outriders of an approaching storm.  Low threatening, distant mutterings of thunder from behind the mountains, told the party what they might expect before long.