"If you are Mr. Archibald, your father wishes to see you. He said I was to fetch you directly."
Rising slowly Archie shook himself together, and started for the house, while Daisy looked after him with a new and thoughtful expression on her face.
"Archie!" she called at last. "Tell Dorothy I shall not come to help her with the dishes. I have changed my mind. I do not want the shilling."
"All right," was Archie's response, as he walked on never dreaming that he had that morning sown the first germ of the ambition which was to overshadow all Daisy Allen's future life, and bear fruit a hundred-fold.
CHAPTER II.
THE McPHERSONS.
The room in which Hugh McPherson was lying was the largest, and coolest, and best furnished in the house, for since he had been confined to his bed Dorothy had brought into it everything she thought would make it more attractive and endurable to the fastidious invalid, who, on the June morning when his son was in the garden talking to Daisy Allen, was propped upon pillows scarcely whiter than his thin, worn face, and was speaking of Archie to his brother John, who was standing before him with folded arms, and a gloomy, troubled expression on his face. Just across the room, by an open window, sat Lady Jane, pretending to rearrange a bowl of roses on the table near her, but listening intently to the conversation between the two brothers.
"I don't know what will become of Archie," the sick man said, speaking very slowly. "I shall leave him nothing but Stoneleigh, with a mortgage on it for four hundred pounds, and a little annuity which came through his mother. Strange, that from dear little Dora, who, when I married her, had nothing but her sweet voice and sweeter face, the boy should inherit all the ready money he can ever have, unless you or our sister Betsey open your hearts to him. You used to fancy the boy, and talked once of adopting him, when I had that fever at Pau, and you came to see me."
Here Lady Jane's long neck arched itself more proudly, and John felt how intently she was awaiting his reply.