McFarlane."
"By your orders! What have you got there, Daisy? Let's see! As
sure as I'm alive! — a spelling book. Keeping school, Daisy?
Don't say no!"
Daisy did not say no, nor anything. She had taken care not to
let Gary get hold of her Bible; the rest she must manage as
she could.
"This is benevolence!" went on the young man. "Teaching a
spelling lesson in a Belvedere with the thermometer at ninety
degrees in the shade? What sinners all the rest of us are! I
declare, Daisy, you make me feel bad."
"I should not think it, Mr. McFarlane."
"Daisy, you have _? plomb_ enough for a princess, and gravity
enough for a Puritan! I should like to see you when you are
grown up, — only then I shall be an old man, and it will be of
no consequence. What _do_ you expect to do with that little red
head? — now do tell me."
"She don't know anything, Mr. McFarlane."
"No more don't I! Come Daisy — have pity on me. You never saw
anybody more ignorant than I am. There are half a dozen things
at this moment which I don't know — and which you can tell me.
Come, will you?"
"I must go in, Mr. McFarlane."
"But tell me first. Come, Daisy! I want to know why is it so
much more wicked to sing a song than to make somebody else
sing-song? — for that's the way they all do the spelling-book,
I know.
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