age and capacity can manage in the twenty-four hours?" said the doctor, taking out his knife as he spoke and beginning to trim the thorns off a bit of sweetbriar he had cut. I stopped to make the reckoning.
"Give me the course of your day, Daisy. And by-the-by when does your day begin?"
"It begins at half past seven, Dr. Sandford."
"With breakfast?"
"No, sir. I have a recitation before breakfast."
"Please of what?"
"Miss Pinshon always begins with mathematics."
"As a bitters. Do you find that it gives you an appetite?"
By this time I was very near bursting into tears. The familiar voice and way, the old time they brought back, the contrasts they forced together, the different days of Melbourne and of my Southern home, the forms and voices of mamma and papa, they all came crowding and flitting before me. I was obliged to delay my answer. I knew that Dr. Sandford looked at me; then he went on in a very gentle way—
"Sweetbriar is sweet, Daisy,"—putting it to my nose. "I should like to know how long does mathematics last, before you are allowed to have coffee?"