"Very well, Logan thank you. Now please put it in a basket for me, with a trowel, and let me take a watering pot of water too; or Lewis can carry that, can't he?"
"He can take whatever ye have a mind," said Logan; "but where is it going?"
"I'll take the basket with the rose," said Daisy "it's going a little way you can set it just here, in my chaise, Logan."
The gardener deposited the basket safely in the chaise, and Daisy got in and shook the reins. Lewis, much wondering and a little disgustful, was accommodated with a watering pot full of water, by the grinning Logan.
"See ye ride steady now, boy," he said. "Ye won't want to show any graces of horsemanship, the day!"
Whatever Lewis might have wanted, the necessity upon him was pretty stringent. A watering pot full of water he found a very uncomfortable bundle to carry on horseback; he was bound to ride at the gentlest of paces, or inflict an involuntary cold bath upon himself every other step. Much marvelling at the arrangement which made a carriage and horses needful to move a rose-bush, Lewis followed, as gently as he could, the progress of his little mistress's pony-chaise; which was much swifter than he liked it; until his marvelling was increased by its turning out of Melbourne grounds and taking a course up the road again. Towards the same place! On went Daisy, much too fast for the watering pot; till the cripple's cottage came in sight a second time. There, just at the foot of the little rise in the road which led up to the cottage gate, Loupe suddenly fell to very slow going. The watering pot went easily enough for several yards; and then Loupe stopped. What was the matter?
Something was the matter, yet Daisy did not summon Lewis. She sat quite still, looking before her up to the cottage, with a thoughtful, puzzled, troubled face. The matter was, that just there, and not before, the remembrance of her mother's command had flashed on her that she should have nothing to do with any stranger out of the house unless she had first got leave. Daisy was stopped short. Get leave? She would never get leave to speak again to that poor crabbed, crippled, forlorn creature; and who else would take up the endeavour to be kind to her? Who else would even try to win her to a knowledge of the Bible and Bible joys? and how would that poor ignorant mortal ever get out of the darkness into the light? Daisy did not know how to give her up; yet she could not go on. The sweet rose on the top of her little rose-tree mocked her, with kindness undone and good not attempted. Daisy sat still, confounded at this new barrier her mother's will had put in her way.
Wheels came rapidly coursing along the road in front of her, and in a moment Dr. Sandford's gig had whirled past the cottage and bore down the hill. But recognizing the pony chaise in the road, he too came to a stop as sudden as Daisy's had been. The two were close beside each other.
"Where away, Daisy?"
"I do not understand, Dr. Sandford."