"Yes ma'am," I said. But then - "What, Miss Cardigan?"
"There's our duty" - she said, with a pause at that part of her sentence; - "and then, how to do it. Yes, Daisy, you need not look at me, nor call the bloom up into your cheeks, that Christian says are such an odd colour. Don't you think you have duties, lassie? and more to-day than a fortnight syne?"
"But - Miss Cardigan," I answered, - "yes, I have duties; but
- I thought I knew them."
"It will do no harm to look at them, Daisy. It is good to see all round our duties, and it's hard too. Are you in a hurry to go back to school?"
"No, ma'am - I can have the evening."
Miss Cardigan pushed her work-baskets and table away, and drew her chair up beside mine, before the fire; and made it blaze, and sat and looked into the blaze, till I wondered what was coming.
"I suppose this is all a fixed thing between Christian and you," she began at last.
I hardly knew what she meant. I said, that I could not unfix it.
"And he will not, no fear! So it is fixed, as we may say; fixed as two hearts can make it. But it's very sudden, Daisy; and you are a young thing, my dear."
"I know it is sudden," I said, meekly. "It is sudden to me.
But he will not like me less for my being so young."