The evening seemed excessively long to Daisy, lying there on her bed awake, and listening with strained ears for any sound near her room. She heard none; the hours passed, though so very slowly, as they do when all the minutes are watched; and Daisy heard nothing but dim distant noises, and grew pretty quiet. She had heard nothing else, when, turning her head from the moonlight window, she caught the sight of a white figure at her bedside; and by the noble form and stately proportions Daisy knew instantly whose figure it was. Those soft flowing draperies had been before her eyes all day. A pang shot through the child, that seemed to go from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet.
"Are you awake, Daisy?"
"Yes, mamma," she said, feebly.
"Get up. I want to speak to you."
Daisy got off the bed, and the white figure, in the little night dress, stood opposite the other white figure, robed in muslin and laces that fell around it like a cloud.
"Why did you come to bed?"
"Papa papa ordered me."
"It's all the same. If you had not come to bed, Daisy if you had been well, would you have sung when I ordered you to- night?"
Daisy hesitated, and then said in a whisper
"No, mamma not that."