The song of life would lose its mirth,
Were there no children to begin it.”
Daisy Havens was awakened from a sound sleep, one bright June morning, by a fearful banging on her bedroom door, and as she rubbed her sleepy eyes, and curled herself up for another nap, there came a shrill volley of boy’s talk through the key-hole.
“I say, Daisy Havens, I’d be ashamed to be such a sleepy-head. There’s no end of fun going on in the nursery. The Menagerie are all up and dressed, and Mamma has invited them to feed in the dining-room. I say, sleeping beauty, open your ears, if your eyes are shut. Mamma has a letter from Papa, with a surprise for us. So there—sleep on now, as much as you can. I’m off, for one.”
The last shot through the key-hole has taken effect, and Daisy’s bare feet patter quickly across the hall, where, leaning over the bannisters, she catches a glimpse of Artie’s blue sailor-suit, disappearing through the nursery door, from whence proceeds a merry clangor of high-pitched young sopranos and the deeper tones of desperate nurses.
Daisy hastens back, almost forgetting the surprise in store, for very vexation that “Artie couldn’t just wait a minute.”
What trials await her now! Those little elves from the “city of mischief,” so prone to visit children all agog with excitement about some expected pleasure, are all about and around her; now tangling her crimped locks, and cruelly waylaying her comb in its way through them, now whisking off a button or the tin of a boot-lace, now shaking her arm and tumbling her tooth-brush into the slop-jar. Poor Daisy! tears are in her eyes, as she bends over to fish for the troublesome little brush. Alas! her trials are not over, for turning hastily around, she forgets the full pitcher, which, in her bewilderment, she placed on the floor, and now a cool douche reminds her of its presence.
“There’s water, water all around,
But not a drop to drink.”