Melbourne House Part 83

"Pray, what are you doing with it?"

"Making it, sir, and studying English history."

"What are these pins? armies? or warriors? they are in confusion enough."

"Oh, there is no confusion," said Daisy. "They are castles and towns."

"For instance? ?"

"This is Dover Castle," said Daisy, touching a redheaded pin; "and this is Caernarvon, and Conway; and these black ones are towns. There is London ? and Liverpool ? and York ? and Oxford ? don't you see?"

"I see, but it would take a witch to remember. What are you doing?"

"Studying English history, sir; and as fast as we come to a great town or castle we mark it. These bits of paper show where the great battle-fields are."

"Original!" said the doctor.

"No sir, it is not," said Daisy. "Captain Drummond taught it to me."

"What, the history?"

"No; but this way of playing."

Preston was laughing and trying to keep quiet. Nothing could be graver than the doctor.

"Is it interesting, this way of playing."

"Very!" said Daisy, with a good deal of eagerness, more than she wished to show.

"I wish you would forbid it, Dr. Sandford," said Daisy's mother. "I do not believe in such a method of study, nor wish Daisy to be engrossed with any study at all. She is not fit for it."

"Whereabouts are you?" said the doctor to Daisy.

"We are just getting through the wars of the Roses."

"Ah! I never can remember how those wars began ? can you?"

"They began when the Duke of York tried to get the crown of Henry the Sixth. But I think he was wrong ? don't you?"

"Somebody is always wrong in those affairs," said the doctor.

"You are getting through the wars of the Roses. What do you find was the end of them?"

"When the Earl of Richmond came. We have just finished the battle of Bosworth Field. Then he married Elizabeth of York, and so they wore the two roses together."

"Harmoniously?" said the doctor.

"I don't know, sir. I do not know anything about Henry the Seventh yet."

"What was going on in the rest of the world while the Roses were at war in England?"

"Oh, I don't know, sir!" said Daisy, looking up with a sudden expression of humbleness. "I do not know anything about anywhere else."

"You do not know where the Hudson River was then."

"I suppose it was where it is now?"

"Geographically, Daisy; but not politically, socially, or commercially. Melbourne House was not thinking of building; and the Indians ferried their canoes over to Silver Lake, where a civilised party are going in a few days to eat chicken salad under very different auspices."

"Were there no white people here?"

"Columbus had not discovered America, even. He did that just about seven years after Henry the Seventh was crowned on Bosworth Field."

"I don't know who Columbus was," Daisy said, with a glance so wistful and profound in its sense of ignorance, that Dr.

Sandford smiled.

"You will hear about him soon," he said, turning away to Mrs.

Randolph.

That lady did not look by any means well pleased. The doctor stood before her looking down, with the sort of frank, calm bearing that characterised him.

"Are you not, in part at least, a Southerner?" was the lady's first question.

"I am sorry I must lose so much of your good opinion as to confess myself a Yankee," said the doctor, steadily.

"Are you going to give your sanction to Daisy's plunging herself into study, and books, and all that sort of thing, Dr.

Sandford?"

"Not beyond _my_ depth to reach her."

"I do not think it is good for her. She is very fond of it, and she does a great deal too much of it when she begins; and she wants strengthening first, in my opinion. You have said enough now to make her crazy after the history of the whole world."

"Mrs. Randolph, I must remind you that though you can hinder a tree from growing, in a particular place, you cannot a fungus; if the conditions be favourable."

"What do you mean?"

"I think this may be a good alternative."

The lady looked a little hard at the doctor. "There is one book I wish you could hinder her from reading," she said, lowering her tone.

"What is that, madam?"

"She is just the child not to bear it; and she is injured by poring over the Bible."

"Put the Bibles out of her way," suggested the doctor.

"I have, as much as I can; but it is not possible to do it perfectly."

"Then I counsel you to allow her the use of this medicine,"