hing 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?"

"I don't know whether there can be such little soldiers," said Daisy.
"If there can be, I am."

"And what fighting do you expect to do, little one?"

"I don't know," said Daisy. "Not very well."

"What enemies are you going to face?"

But Daisy only looked rather hard at the Captain and made him no answer.

"Do you expect to emulate the charge of the Light Brigade, in some tilt
against fancied wrong?"

Daisy looked at her friend; she did not quite understand him, but his
last words were intelligible.

"I don't know," she said meekly. "But if I do it will not be because the
order is a _mistake_, Capt. Drummond."

The Captain bit his lip. "Daisy," said he, "are you the only soldier in
the family?"

Daisy sat still, looking up over the sunny slopes of ground towards the
house.

The sunbeams shewed it bright and stately on the higher ground; they
poured over a rich luxuriant spread of greensward and trees, highly
kept; stately and fair; and Daisy could not help remembering that in all
that domain, so far as she knew, there was not a thought in any heart of
being the sort of soldier she wished to be. She got up from the ground
and smoothed her dress down.

"Capt. Drummond," she said with a grave dignity that was at the same
time perfectly childish too,--"I have told you about myself--I can't
tell you about other people."

"Daisy, you are not angry with me!"

"No sir."

"Don't you sometimes permit other people to ask your pardon in Preston
Gary's way?"

Daisy was about to give a quiet negative to this proposal, when
perceiving more mischief in the Captain's face than might be manageable,
she pulled away her hand from him, and dashed off like a deer. The
Captain was wiser than to follow.

[Illustration: MELBOURNE HOUSE.]