"What was your question, Captain Drummond?"
"Now you are playing hide and seek with me. What have those words you showed me, what have they to do with our yesterday's conversation?"
"I would like to know," said Daisy, slowly, "what it means, to be a good soldier?"
"Why?"
"I think I have told you," she said.
She said it with the most unmoved simplicity. The Captain could not imagine what made him feel uncomfortable. He whistled.
"Daisy, you are incomprehensible!" he exclaimed, and, catching hold of her hand, he began a race down towards the river. Such a race as they had taken the day before. Through shade and through sun, down grassy steeps and up again, flying among the trees as if some one were after them, the Captain ran; and Daisy was pulled along with him. At the edge of the woods which crowned the river bank, he stopped and looked at Daisy who was all flushed and sparkling with exertion and merriment.
"Sit down there!" said he, putting her on the bank and throwing himself beside her. "Now you look as you ought to look!"
"I don't think mamma would think so," said Daisy, panting and laughing.
"Yes, she would. Now tell me do you call yourself a soldier?"