I was very busy, very
popular, kindly treated by my teachers, and happy in a smooth course
of life. Faustina St. Clair had been removed from the school; to some
other I believe; and with her went all my causes of annoyance. The
year rolled round, my father and mother in China or on the high seas;
and my sixteenth summer opened upon me.

A day or two before the close of school, I was called to the parlour
to see a lady. Not my aunt; it was Mrs. Sandford; and the doctor was
with her.

I had not seen Mrs. Sandford, I must explain, for nearly a year; she
had been away in another part of the country, far from New York.

"Why, Daisy!--is this Daisy?" she exclaimed.

"Is it not?" I asked.

"Not the old Daisy. You are so grown, my dear!--so--That's right,
Grant; let us have a little light to see each other by."

"It is Miss Randolph--" said the doctor, after he had drawn up the
window shade.

"Like her mother! isn't she? and yet, not like--"

"Not at all like."

"She is, though, Grant; you are mistaken; she _is_ like her mother;
though as I said, she isn't. I never saw anybody so improved. My dear,
I shall tell all my friends to send their daughters to Mme. Ricard."

"Dr. Sandford," said I, "Mme. Ricard does not like to have the sun
shine into this room."

"It's Daisy, too," said the doctor, smiling, as he drew down the shade
again. "Don't _you_ like it, Miss Daisy?"

"Yes, of course," I said; "but she does not."

"It is not at all a matter of course," said he; "except as you are
Daisy. Some people, as you have just told me, are afraid of the sun."

"Oh, that is only for the carpets," I said.

Dr. Sandford gave me a good look, like one of his looks of old times,
that carried me right back somehow to Juanita's cottage.

"How do you do, Daisy?"

"A little pale," said Mrs. Sandford.

"Let her speak for herself."

I said I did not know I was pale.

"Did you know you had head-ache a good deal of the time?"

"Yes, Dr. Sandford, I knew that. It is not very bad."

"Does not hinder you from going on with study?"

"Oh no, never."

"You have a good deal of time for study at night, too, do you
not?--after the lights are out."

"At night? how did you know that? But it is not always _study_."

"No. You consume also a good deal of beef and mutton, nowadays? You
prefer substantials in food as in everything else?"

I looked at my guardian, very much surprised that he should see all
this in my face, and with a