"I don't see how you can endure to have him touch you," she said to Daisy. "He knows better than to lay his hands on me. I have told papa often that I want him discharged, and he ought to consider my wishes a little."
To this Daisy answered that the boy, as she persisted in calling the giant, meant well and was certainly intelligent. Her father did not like to change servants, for it took him a long time to get used to new ones. So Millicent tossed her head, returned to her collaboration with Mr. Roseleaf, and things went on as usual.
Imperceptibly Shirley began to take an interest in Daisy. She did not run away from him, and he discovered, much to his surprise, that she was worth talking to. She was not exactly the child he had supposed, and she had the full value of her eighteen years in her pretty head. He got into the habit of taking short strolls with her, on evenings when Millicent was occupied with Archie, and when, as often happened, Mr. Fern was away with Hannibal in the city. There was a sequestered nook at the far end of the lawn, in which the pair found retreat. Before he realized it, Roseleaf had developed a genuine liking for these rambles, and was pleased when the evenings came that brought Mr. Weil to dinner.
Daisy was ingenuous, to a degree, if surface indications counted for anything. The words that flowed from her red lips were as unstudied as the pretty attitudes she assumed, or the exceedingly plain but very becoming dresses that she wore. After she once got "used" to Roseleaf she treated him quite as if she had been five years his senior.
"Are you a rich man?" she asked him, on one of those early autumn evenings that they passed together.
Her manner was as simple as if she had said that it looked like rain, and his answer was hardly less so.
"No, Daisy. I have not much property, but I intend to earn more, by-and-by. Did you think, because I seem so idle, that I was a millionaire?"
"No," she answered, a shade of disappointment in her face. "I only wanted, in case you had plenty of money, to get you to lend me some."
He stared at her through the half-light. Her features were turned in a direction that did not reveal them very well. What did she want of money!