"I suppose it was where it is now?"
"Geographically, Daisy; but not politically, socially, or commercially. Melbourne House was not thinking of building; and the Indians ferried their canoes over to Silver Lake, where a civilised party are going in a few days to eat chicken salad under very different auspices."
"Were there no white people here?"
"Columbus had not discovered America, even. He did that just about seven years after Henry the Seventh was crowned on Bosworth Field."
"I don't know who Columbus was," Daisy said, with a glance so wistful and profound in its sense of ignorance, that Dr. Sandford smiled.
"You will hear about him soon," he said, turning away to Mrs.
Randolph.
That lady did not look by any means well pleased. The doctor stood before her looking down, with the sort of frank, calm bearing that characterised him.
"Are you not, in part at least, a Southerner?" was the lady's first question.
"I am sorry I must lose so much of your good opinion as to confess myself a Yankee," said the doctor, steadily.
"Are you going to give your sanction to Daisy's plunging herself into study, and books, and all that sort of thing, Dr. Sandford?"