CHAPTER XXIII.
JOSEPH.
What with Joseph's music, and all he had to say to them, Daisy and Susan sat for hours on the hill side, and promised, at parting, to come very soon again.
But they found Maud ready, as usual, to spoil all their pleasure, by fretting because they had left her alone, and had not come earlier, and a hundred other foolish things.
She wouldn't hear a word about the music, but asked her sister if she was not ashamed to talk with a cow boy, and declared that neither she nor Susan should go to the hill again.
But it was no strange thing for Maud to change her mind; so, one day, she told Daisy she had dreamed about Joseph's music, and must hear it, and they would all go that very afternoon.
Daisy was glad, you may be sure; but she had great trouble with her sister on the way, for Maud would shriek at an earth worm, and start at a fly, and was afraid of bats, and snakes, and owls, and more other things than Daisy ever thought of.
Then the sharp sticks cut through her satin boots; and when she sat a while to rest, the crickets ate great holes in her new silk gown, and mosquitos kept buzzing about her, and little worms dropped down sometimes from the boughs.
When any of these things happened, of course poor Daisy had to be scolded, as if it were her fault. If a shadow moved, or a bird flew quickly past, or a bee buzzed by,—thinking of any one except Miss Maud,—the beauty would fancy that a tiger or rattlesnake was making ready to spring at her, and suffered a great deal more from fright than she would from pain if the creatures she dreaded had really been near, and she had allowed them quietly to eat her up.
When, after all this trouble, she found that Joseph wore a coarse blue frock, and did not oil his curly hair, and hardly looked at her, while he was overjoyed at seeing Daisy again, Maud began to pout, and say she must go home.