"I don't care which," I replied despondingly.
He saw that my eyes were full of tears, and yet that I submitted.
"Poor little thing!" he observed with a touch of pity. "I must think of something else.—Let me see.—Eureka! Kate, what do you say to Daisy, the botanical diminutive of Margaret?"
"Anything you like, Cornelius," she replied sadly, "but don't teaze the poor child."
"She shall decide."
He called me to him, and left the matter to me. I was glad to escape from
Meg and Peg; and Daisy I was called from that hour.
"You already have it quite your own way with that child," observed Miss
O'Reilly, looking at her brother; "and yet she looks a little wilful!"
"That is just what makes it pleasant having one's way with her," he replied, smiling down at me, as if amused at his triumph over my obstinacy, and gently pulling my hair by way of caress. "News from the city?" he added after a while.
"There came a message yesterday and two to-day."
Cornelius shook his head impatiently, in a manner habitual to him, and which was ever displaying the heavy masses of his dark hair, but, catching the eye of his sister, he smoothed his brow, and said, smiling—