Still Dad did not come to his little maid—to his little maid who had unconsciously learnt to think that to cry was the safe way to get everything she wanted.
The garden door stood open; the scent of the morning dew on the earth came stealing in with here and there a whiff from the sweet-pea hedge beyond the path; the sun was slanting across the threshold, and had almost reached her bed. She slipped down and ran to the door with her feet bare; she knew that she should get a scolding for that, but she was frightened, and she risked it.
What she saw when she got to the threshold did not stop her tears.
The June lilies were a-bloom against the grey wall at the garden’s edge; the wall was low and the lilies were higher—they stood white and tall against the green marsh and the blue sea in the distance.
In front of the lilies on the grass plot Daddie knelt on the ground with his head bowed down on the garden wall. She was too little to be definitely alarmed, but she was vaguely frightened, and she cried louder than ever.
Then as he did not immediately respond she gathered her little night-dress about her and trotted across the wet turf towards him.
“Daddie, Daddie!” cried she, shaking him, “I wants to get up; I wants my breakfast!”
A shiver ran through him; then slowly he pulled himself up by the wall and sat on it as though he were afraid to stand on his feet; he passed his hand across his face and through his hair: Daisy thought his face looked very funny.
She stopped crying, but fright was still in the blue eyes as she gazed at him with her finger in her mouth. Instinctively she felt that something was amiss.
“Has ’oo been to bed in the garden?” she asked in a puzzled way—“be ’oo very sleepy and cold like me was when me tummled into the river?”