"Well, that's a pretty piece of work, if there ever was one!" said Mrs. Simmons, contemplating the old man's crouching form. "Now then,—will you go, Mr. Meads?" Mrs. Simmons was a large woman, and Isaac Meads was not a large man. He gave her a glance, and moved. "Come, be quick!" said Betsy Simmons. "And mind, if ever you dare to come inside this door again, without the doctor's leave—" The rest of the sentence was left to Isaac's imagination. He beat a hasty retreat. CHAPTER X. DAISY'S WISH. DURING many hours after Isaac's visit to the sick room, Daisy was more or less unconscious. She moaned often, and sometimes she started and cried out in fear, and now and then she would grasp at Mary Davis as if for protection. Occasionally she seemed to know her nurse, and then again the blank would come back, blotting out all sense. This state passed slowly away, and Daisy regained gradually her lost ground. But Mary made up her mind that Isaac Meads should not be again admitted into his child's presence. She kept the door bolted thenceforward, and never left Daisy alone for even a few seconds without locking it behind her. Isaac made one or two more attempts to enter, and found himself foiled. "Father hasn't been to see me again," Daisy remarked unexpectedly one evening, several days later. "He's been wanting to, but I didn't think it was good for you," Mary answered. "But perhaps it isn't right to keep him away," said Daisy. "Poor father has nobody else, you know." "It's his own fault if he hasn't," said Mary. "I'm not going to have him frighten you, and make you ill again, Daisy." She not seldom addressed the sick girl thus, as she had been wont in past years to address the little child, dropping half-unconsciously the "Miss," which had at first come naturally. Daisy looked so small and young, lying in her narrow bed, that Mary Davis began to think of her again as quite a child. "I should not be so frightened, perhaps, a second time," said Daisy calmly. "I have been thinking about it, Nursie. Father wouldn't really want to hurt me, I am sure,—and you know it wouldn't do to keep him always from me." "Not always. Only till you are better, dear," Mary said. "But perhaps I never shall be better," said Daisy slowly. "I can't sit up yet, or move my legs. You can't think how heavy they seem. What does the doctor say is the reason, Nursie?" "He don't say very clear, Miss, but he seems to think it is a sort of paralysis-like, from the lightning stroke,—not as he's used that word neither." Mary forgot at the moment that the real cause of Daisy's illness had never yet been recalled to her. Daisy had hitherto asked few questions, and her doing so now took Mary by surprise. "Seems as if the power was all gone out of you; and he don't say just how long it'll last." Daisy repeated the word "lightning," as if in surprise, and then she lay thinking.