Daisy
"But won't you explain it? I ought to know what I am giving my consent
to, Daisy; for just now I am constituted your guardian. What has
Margaret to do with your cloaks? There is enough for both."
"But," said I, in a great deal of difficulty,--"there is not enough
for me and everybody."
"Are you going to take care of the wants of everybody?"
"I think--I ought to take care of all that I can," I said.
"But you have not the power."
"I won't do but what I _have_ the power for."
"Daisy, what would your father and mother say to such a course of
action? would they allow it, do you think?"
"But _you_ are my guardian now, Dr. Sandford," I said, looking up at
him. He paused a minute doubtfully.
"I am conquered!" he said. "You have absolutely conquered me, Daisy. I
have not a word to say. I wonder if that is the way you are going
through the world in future? What is it now about Margaret?--for I was
bewildered and did not understand."
"A warm cloak and dress," I said, delighted; "that is what I want. Can
I get them here?"
"Doubtful, I should say," he answered; "but we will try."
And we did succeed in finding the dress, strong and warm and suitable;
the cloak we had to go to another shop for. On the way we stopped at
the milliner's. My Aunt Gary and Mrs. Sandford employed the same one.
"I put it in your hands, Daisy!" Dr. Sandford said, as we went in.
"Only let me look on."
I kept him waiting a good while, I am afraid; but he was very patient
and seemed amused. _I_ was not. The business was very troublesome to
me. This was not so easy a matter as to choose between stuffs and have
the yards measured off. Bonnets are bonnets, as my aunt always said;
and things good in themselves may not be in the least good for you.
And I found the thing that suited was even more tempting here than it
had been in the cloak wareroom. There was a little velvet hat which I
fancied mamma would have bought for me; it was so stylish, and at the
same time so simple, and became me so well. But it was of a price
corresponding with its beauty. I turned my back on it, though I seemed
to see it just as well through the back of my head, and tried to find
something else. The milliner would have it there was nothing beside
that fitted me. The hat must go on.
"She has grown," said the milliner, appealing to Dr. Sandford; "and
you see this is the very thing. This tinge of colour inside is just
enough to relieve the pale cheeks. Do you see, sir?"
"It is without a fault," said the doctor.
"Take it off, please," I said. "I want to find something that will not
cost so much--something that will not cost near so much."
"There is that cap that is too large for Miss Van Allen--" the
milliner's assistant remarked.
"It would not suit Mrs. Randolph at all," was the answer aside.
But I begged to see it. Now this was a comfortable, soft quilted silk
cap, with a chinchilla border. Not much style about it, but also
nothing to dislike, except its simplicity. The price was moderate, and
it fitted me.
You are going to be a different Daisy Randolph from what you have been
all your life--something whispered to me. And the doctor said, "That
makes you look about ten years old again, Daisy." I had a minute of
doubt and delay; then I said I would have the cap; and the great
business was ended.
Margaret's purchases were all found, and we went home, with money
still in my bank, Dr. Sandford informed me. I was very tired; but on
the whole I was very satisfied, until my things came home, and I saw
that Mrs. Sandford did not like them.
"I wish I could have been with you!" she said.
"What is the matter?" said the doctor. It was the evening, and we were
all together for a few minutes, before Mrs. Sandford went to her
sister.
"Did you choose these things, Grant?"
"What is the matter with them?"
"They are hardly suitable."
"For the third time, what is the matter with them?" said the doctor.
"They are neat, but they are not _handsome_."
"They will look handsome when they are on," said Dr. Sandford.
"No they won't; they will look common. I don't mean _vulgar_--you
could not buy anything in bad taste--but they are just what anybody's
child might wear."
"Then Mrs. Randolph's child might."
Mrs. Sandford gave him a look. "That is just the thing," she said.
"Mrs. Randolph's child might _not_. I never saw anybody more elegant
or more particular about the choice of her dress than Mrs. Randolph;
it is always perfect; and Daisy's always was. Mrs. Randolph would not
like these."
"Shall we change them, Daisy?" said the doctor.
I said "No."
"Then I hope they will wear out before Mrs. Randolph comes home," he
said.
All this, somehow, made me uncomfortable. I went off to the room which
had been given to me, where a fire was kept; and I sat down to think.
Certainly, I would have liked the other coat and hat better, that I
had rejected; and the thought of the rich soft folds of that silky
merino were not pleasant to me. The plaid I had bought _did_ wear a
common look in comparison. I knew it, quite as well as Mrs. Sandford;
and that I had never worn common things; and I knew that in the
merino, properly made, I should have looked my mother's child; and
that in the plaid my mother would not know me. Was I right? was I
wrong? I knelt down before the fire, feeling that the straight path
was not always easy to find. Yet I had thought I saw it before me. I
knelt before the fire, which was the only light in the room, and
opened the page of my dear little book that had the Bible lessons for
every day. This day's lesson was headed, "That ye adorn the doctrine
of God our Saviour in all things."
The mist began to clear away. Between adorning and being adorned, the
difference was so great, it set my face quite another way directly. I
went on. "Let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of
Christ."
And how should that be? Certainly, the spirit of that gospel had no
regard to self-glorification; and had most tender regard to the wants of
others. I began to feel sure that I was in the way and not out of it.
Then came--"If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye. But
let none of you suffer ... _as a thief, or as an evildoer_"--"Let your
light so shine before men"--"Let not mercy and truth forsake thee; bind
them about thy neck;"--"Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are
honest, whatsoever things are _just_ ... think on these things."
The words came about me, binding up my doubts, making sound my heart,
laying a soft touch upon every rough spot in my thoughts. True,
honest, just, lovely, and of good report,--yes, I would think on these
things, and I would not be turned aside from them. And if I suffered
as a Christian, I determined that I would not be ashamed; I prayed
that I might never; I would take as no dishonour the laughter or the
contempt of those who did not see the two sides of the question; but
as a _thief_ I would not suffer. I earnestly prayed that I might not.
No beauty of dresses or stylishness of coats or bonnets should adorn
me, the price of which God saw belonged and was due to the sufferings
of others; more especially to the wants of those whose wants made my
supply. That my father and mother, with the usage of old habit, and
the influence of universal custom, should be blind to what I saw so
clearly, made no difference in my duty. I had the light of the Bible
rule, which was not yet, I knew, the lamp to their feet. _I_ must walk
by it, all the same. And my thought went back now with great
tenderness to Mammy Theresa's rheumatism, which wanted flannel; to
Maria's hyacinths, which were her great earthly interest, out of the
things of religion; to Darry's lonely cottage, where he had no lamp to
read the Bible o' nights, and no oil to burn in it. To Pete's solitary
hut, too, where he was struggling to learn to read well, and where a
hymn-book would be the greatest comfort to him. To the old people,
whose one solace of a cup of tea would be gone unless I gave it them;
to the boys who were learning to read, who wanted testaments; to the
bed-ridden and sick, who wanted blankets; to the young and well, who
wanted gowns (not indeed for decency, but for the natural pleasure of
looking neat and smart)--and to Margaret, first and last, who was
nearest to me, and who, I began to think, might want some other
trifles besides a cloak. The girl come in at the minute.
"Margaret," I said, "I have got you a warm gown and a good thick warm
cloak, to-day."
"A cloak! Miss Daisy--" Margaret's lips just parted and showed the
white teeth between them.
"Yes. I saw you were not warm in that thin shawl."
"It's mighty cold up these ways!--" the girls shoulders drew together
with involuntary expression.
"And now, Margaret, what other things do you want, to be nice and
comfortable? You must tell me now, because after I go to school I
cannot see you often, you know."
"Reckon I find something to do at the school, Miss Daisy. Ain't there
servants?"
"Yes, but I am afraid there may not be another wanted. What else ought
you to have, Margaret?"
"Miss Daisy knows, I'll hire myself out, and reckon I'll get a right
smart chance of wages; and then, if Miss Daisy let me take some
change, I'd like to get some things--"
"You may keep all your wages, Margaret," I said hastily; "you need not
bring them to me; but I want to know if you have all you need _now_,
to be nice and warm?"
"'Spect I'd be better for some underclothes--" Margaret said, half
under her breath.
Of course! I knew it the moment she said it. I knew the scanty coarse
supply which was furnished to the girls and women at Magnolia; I knew
that more was needed for neatness as well as for comfort, and
something different, now that she was where no evil distinction would
arise from her having it. I said I would get what she wanted; and went
back again to the parlour. I mused as I went. If I let Margaret keep
her wages--and I was very certain I could not receive them from her--I
must be prepared to answer it to my father. Perhaps,--yes, I felt sure
as I thought about it--I must contrive to save the amount of her wages
out of what was given to myself; or else my grant might be reversed
and my action disallowed, or at least greatly disapproved. And my
father had given me no right to dispose of Margaret's wages, or of
herself.
So I came into the parlour. Dr. Sandford alone was there, lying on the
sofa. He jumped up immediately; pulled a great arm chair near to the
fire, and taking hold of me, put me into it. My purchases were lying
on the table, where they had been disapproved, but I knew what to
think of them now. I could look at them very contentedly.
"How do they seem, Daisy?" said the doctor, stretching himself on the
cushions again, after asking my permission and pardon.
"Very well,"--I said, smiling.
"You are satisfied?"
I said yes.
"Daisy," said he, "you have conquered me to-day--I have yielded--I
owned myself conquered; but won't you enlighten me? As a matter of
favour?"
"About what, Dr. Sandford?"
"I don't understand you."
I remember looking at him and smiling. It was so curious a thing,
both that he should, in his philosophy, be puzzled by a child like me,
and that he should care about undoing the puzzle.
"There!" said he,--"that is my old little Daisy of ten years old.
Daisy, I used to think she was an extremely dainty and particular
little person."
"Yes--" said I.
"Was that correct?"
"I don't know," said I. "I think it was."
"Then Daisy, honestly--I am asking as a philosopher, and that means a
lover of knowledge, you know,--did you choose those articles to-day to
please yourself?"
"In one way, I did," I answered.
"Did they appear to you as they did to Mrs. Sandford,--at the time?"