Daisy In The Field

"Look here, Daisy!" said Ransom, suddenly bringing down his

chair on four feet and sitting upright, - "I wish you would

put an end to this indulgence of sight-seeing and your

society, and send these gentlemen home with me. I must go, and

they ought to go too and do their duty. A word from you would

send either of them straight to Beauregard's headquarters.

Talk of indulgences!"

"I do not wish to send either of them there," was my

incautious answer.

"Do you think it is always wrong to fight?" De Saussure asked.

I said no, with an internal shiver running through me from

head to foot. They went into a mutual gratulation on the

causes for fighting that existed on the part of the Southern

States, and the certainty that the warlike spirit of the North

would "die off like a big fungus," as one of them phrased it.

I could not discuss the point with them, and I got away as

soon as it could gracefully be done.

But something in this little talk, or in what went before it,

had unsettled me; and I slept little that night. Anxieties

which had lain pretty still, and pain which had been rather

quiet, rose up together and shook me. My Bible reading had

given me a word which for a time helped the confusion. "No man

that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life,

that he may please Him who hath chosen him to be a soldier."

Not to be entangled with the affairs of this life! - and my

heart and soul were in a whirl of them; I might say, in a

snarl. And true the words were. How could I please Him who had

chosen me to be a soldier, with my heart set on my own

pleasure, and busy with my own fears? I knew I could not. The

quiet subjection of spirit with which I left Washington, I had

in a measure lost at Lucerne. Somehow, opposition had roused

me; and the great distance and the impossibility of hearing

had made my imagination restless; and the near probability

that mamma would not favour our wishes had caused me to take a

sort of life and death grasp of them. The management of

myself, that I had resigned, I found I had not resigned it;

but my heart was stretching out yearning hands to Thorold and

crying for a sight of him. Meanwhile, the particular work that

I had to do in Switzerland had been little thought of. What

was it?

I spent that night waking. My room looked not to the lake, but

over an extent of greensward and orchards, lit up now by a

bright moon. I knelt at my window, with a strong recollection

of former times, and a vain look back at my little old self,

the childish Daisy, whose window at Melbourne, over the

honeysuckles, had been so well used and had entertained such a

quiet little heart. Then there had been Miss Pinshon's Daisy;

but all the Daisies that I could remember had been quiet

compared to this one. Must joy take such close hold on sorrow?

Must hopes always be twin with such fears? - I asked amid

bitter tears. But tears do one good; and after a little

indulgence of them, I brought myself up to look at my duty.

What was it?