That they lead me not astray.”
Lulled by the soft music of his own notes, little Bear closes his heavy eyelids; the crickets lend their aid to sing his lullaby, while soft zephyrs whisper in his ears themes for sweetest, purest dreams.
Daisy’s watchful ear missed the murmured song, and her quick eye saw the little sleeper under his leafy canopy,—so she slips away from the merry game of blind-man’s-buff, which had taken the place of croquet, and hastes to mount guard over her precious charge, and wage war against the persistent flies, whose chief delight seems to be tickling the faces of summer sleepers.
Pretty soon Jack appears with rather a rueful face, for the merry game of blind-man’s-buff has ended in his and Charlie’s tumbling headlong over one of the garden-seats, in their haste to get away from the blind man, and poor Jack’s head has made the acquaintance of a stone which has proved anything but soft.
A Grave Ending to a Gay Game. Page 106.
Daisy could not find it in her heart to laugh at the funny little picture her wounded brother presented. His sailor straw hat had come to grief in the fall, and from between the parted straws, hung out tufts of fair, tangled hair, buttons had flown away, and a wide crack, in the seat of his short pants, revealed a hanging of gauze drapery; but oh, the face! It was a kind of Mosaic pattern of grass, fruit, and dust-stains, all blended together by the few tears which would run down in spite of the efforts of the little dusty hand to keep them back.
Jack’s sobs ceased as he caught sight of his sleeping brother, and thoughts of aching head and scratched knees, left him, as a childish fancy sprang to his mind.
“Oh, Daisy, isn’t he just like babes in the woods? Childerns, let’s ’spose we cover him up with leaves.”
Rosie and Charlie think it would be “lovely,” and off they scamper to gather leaves and flowers, whilst Sister Daisy drops them over the sleeping child, and weaves a little wreath to rest on his pale brow, and Rosie runs to the kitchen to ask Celia and Hugh to come to see “The butifullest picture that ever was,” and wonders why Hugh turns quickly back, and Celia’s apron finds tears in the kindly eyes as she murmurs out her—