"They are closing now. You need sleep, poor child. Go up to your room."
"Have you nothing to say to me?"
"It will do to-morrow. Go! a long night's rest will do you so much good.
Sleep well and long."
I said it was too early yet, but even as I spoke, a heaviness not to be conquered by will, pressed down my eyelids. He urged the point and I yielded. How soon I slept that night; how long, deep and peaceful were my slumbers! how light and happy I felt when the morning sun awoke me, and opening my window, I drank in with delight the air still cool with the dews of night. I came down in a happy mood, and ran out to join Cornelius in the garden. He stood by the pine tree, smoking and looking at the sea in a fit of abstraction so deep, that he never heard me, until I passed my arm within his, and said:
"How are you to-day?"
"Quite well, child."
"Then let us have a good, long walk," I said eagerly. "Let us visit once more our old haunts, and take a few green images to smoky London. Shall we?"
"As you please, Daisy."
"I do please. I have a pastoral longing for breezy freshness, lanes, dells, and streams flowing in the shade. So let as go in to breakfast."
He yielded, but with little sympathy for my impatience, he lingered at the meal for an hour and more. When I sought to hurry him, he invariably replied: