“How is your arm, papa?” said Margaret. “Did it keep you awake?”
“Not long—it set me dreaming though, and a very romantic dream it was, worthy of Ethel herself.”
“What was it, papa?”
“Oh, it was an odd thing, joining on strangely enough with one I had three or four and twenty years ago, when I was a young man, hearing lectures at Edinburgh, and courting—” he stopped, and felt Margaret’s pulse, asked her a few questions, and talked to the baby. Ethel longed to hear his dream, but thought he would not like to go on; however, he did presently.
“The old dream was the night after a picnic on Arthur’s Seat with the Mackenzies; mamma and Aunt Flora were there. ‘Twas a regular boy’s dream, a tournament, or something of that nature, where I was victor, the queen—you know who she was—giving me her token—a Daisy Chain.”
“That is why you like to call us your Daisy Chain,” said Ethel.
“Did you write it in verse?” said Margaret. “I think I once saw some verses like it in her desk.”
“I was in love, and three-and-twenty,” said the doctor, looking drolly guilty in the midst of his sadness. “Ay, those fixed it in my memory, perhaps my fancy made it more distinct than it really was. An evening or two ago I met with them, and that stirred it up I suppose. Last night came the tournament again, but it was the melee, a sense of being crushed down, suffocated by the throng of armed knights and horses—pain and wounds—and I looked in vain through the opposing overwhelming host for my—my Maggie. Well, I got the worst of it, my sword arm was broken—I fell, was stifled—crushed—in misery—all I could do was to grasp my token—my Daisy Chain,” and he pressed Margaret’s hand as he said so. “And, behold, the tumult and despair were passed. I lay on the grass in the cloisters, and the Daisy Chain hung from the sky, and was drawing me upwards. There—it is a queer dream for a sober old country doctor. I don’t know why I told you, don’t tell any one again.”
And he walked away, muttering. “For he told me his dreams, talked of eating and drinking,” leaving Margaret with her eyes full of tears, and Ethel vehemently caressing the baby.
“How beautiful!” said Ethel.