Mrs. Bunting, looking at the young man satirically.

Chandler hesitated. His mother had not mentioned any special day
--in fact, his mother had shown a surprising lack of anxiety to
see Daisy at all. But he had talked her round.

"How about Saturday?" suggested Bunting. "That's Daisy's birthday.
'Twould be a birthday treat for her to go to Richmond, and she's
going back to Old Aunt on Monday."

"I can't go Saturday," said Chandler disconsolately. "I'm on duty
Saturday."

"Well, then, let it be Sunday," said Bunting firmly. And his wife
looked at him surprised; he seldom asserted himself so much in her
presence.

"What do you say, Miss Daisy?" said Chandler.

"Sunday would be very nice," said Daisy demurely. And then, as the
young man took up his hat, and as her stepmother did not stir, Daisy
ventured to go out into the hall with him for a minute.

Chandler shut the door behind them, and so was spared the hearing
of Mrs. Bunting's whispered remark: "When I was a young woman folk
didn't gallivant about on Sunday; those who was courting used to
go to church together, decent-like--"

CHAPTER XXV

Daisy's eighteenth birthday dawned uneventfully. Her father gave
her what he had always promised she should have on her eighteenth
birthday--a watch. It was a pretty little silver watch, which
Bunting had bought secondhand on the last day he had been happy--
it seemed a long, long time ago now.

Mrs. Bunting thought a silver watch a very extravagant present but
she was far too wretched, far too absorbed in her own thoughts, to
trouble much about it. Besides, in such matters she had generally
had the good sense not to interfere between her husband and his
child.

In the middle of the birthday morning Bunting went out to buy
himself some more tobacco. He had never smoked so much as in the
last four days, excepting, perhaps, the week that had followed on
his leaving service. Smoking a pipe had then held all the exquisite
pleasure which we are told attaches itself to the eating of forbidden
fruit.

His tobacco had now become his only relaxation; it acted on his
nerves as an opiate, soothing his fears and helping him to think.
But he had been overdoing it, and it was that which now made him
feel so "jumpy," so he assured himself, when he found himself
starting at any casual sound outside, or even when his wife spoke
to him suddenly.

Just now Ellen and Daisy were down in the kitchen, and Bunting
didn't quite lik