not think there is such a personage at all, Daisy. I am sure you
need not trouble your little head with thinking about it."

Daisy made no answer.

"There is a struggle always going on, no doubt, between good and evil;
but we cannot paint good and evil without imagining shapes for them."

"But papa,--" said Daisy, and stopped. It was no place or time for
talking about the matter, though her father spoke low. She did not want
even Dr. Sandford to hear.

"What is it, Daisy?"

"Yes," said the doctor, "I should like to know what the argument is."

"Papa," said Daisy, awesomely,--"there is a _place_ prepared for the
devil and his angels."

Mr. Randolph was silent now. But he felt again that Daisy was nervously
excited, by the quiver that passed over her little frame.

"So you think, Daisy," said the doctor leaning towards her,--"that the
white and the black spirits have a fight over the people of this world?"

Daisy hesitated, struggled, quivered, with the feeling and the
excitement which were upon her, tried for self-command and words to
answer. Mr. Randolph saw it all and did not hurry her, though she
hesitated a good deal.

"You think they have a quarrel for us?" repeated the doctor.

"I don't know, Dr. Sandford--" Daisy answered in a strangely tender and
sober voice. It was strange to her two hearers.

"But you believe in the white spirits, I suppose, as well as in the
other branch of the connection?"

"Papa," said Daisy, her feeling breaking a little through her composure
so much as to bring a sort of cry into her voice--"there is joy among
the angels of heaven whenever anybody grows good!--"

She had turned to her father as she spoke and threw her arms round his
neck, hiding her face, with a clinging action that told somewhat of that
which was at work in her mind. Mr. Randolph perhaps guessed at it. He
said nothing; he held her close to his breast; and the curtain drew at
that moment for the last tableau. Daisy did not see it, and Mr. Randolph
did not think of it; though people said it was very good, it was only
the head and shoulders of Theresa Stanfield as an old country
schoolmistress, seen behind a picture frame, with her uplifted finger
and a bundle of rods. Theresa was so transformed that nobody would have
known her; and while the company laughed and applauded, Daisy came back
to her usual self; and slid out of her father's arms when the show was
over, all ready for supper and Nora Dinwiddie.