"I don't know as I'd need," he said. "I haven't been so particular bad,—not like some folks. I've never took a thing that wasn't mine,—not like that thief that's stolen my money. He deserves to be hanged, he does."
Daisy was looking so pale that the two women came to her side.
"You've been here long enough," Mary said. "It's no use talking too long to him, Daisy. He don't half understand."
"I wanted to say more," Daisy answered sadly. "But I suppose I am too tired. Yes, I'll go back. Only I must come again—every day. Poor father."
[CHAPTER XVI.]
ISAAC'S LOSS.
DAISY came to her father again and yet again, day after day, as she had said; and as she grew better able to bear the fatigue, she stayed longer and longer with her father.
The old man's recovery was very tardy. After a while he was able to totter into the parlour, and to spend some hours in his easy-chair every afternoon; but there improvement stood still. He was by no means the man he had been before his illness.
There seemed to be failure of mind, as well as failure of body. Often his brain appeared to be surrounded by such a mist, that he could hardly grasp the sense of what was said to him. One day he would cry and sob like a child over his lost gold; and another day he would seem almost happy, in a sort of childish forgetfulness of his trouble.
As weeks went on, one change became visible, which cheered Daisy's heart greatly, and that was that he no longer showed indifference to his little daughter—Daisy was always called "little" despite her seventeen years—but clung to her and leant upon her in a way he never had done before.