"Harry? Oh, never mind him. He has seen more ledgers than corn. Corn? Ha! that's good. You can go cart that load of gravel up the hill. What a fortunate thing for Harry, that I am here to oversee things. This amateur farming is pretty play enough; but the way it sinks the money is more curious than profitable. I wonder, now, if that tree is grafted right. I'll take off the ligatures and see. That hedge won't grow, I'm certain; the down-east cedars thrive the best for hedges. I may as well pull these up, and tell Harry to get some of the other kind;" and the doctor pulled them up by the roots, and threw them over the fence. CHAPTER XVI. "Time for papa to come," said little Daisy, seating herself on the low door-step; "the sun has crept way round to the big apple-tree;" and Daisy shook back her hair, and settling her little elbows on her knees, sat with her chin in her palms, dreamily watching the shifting clouds. A butterfly alights on a blade of grass near her: Daisy springs up, her long hair floating like a veil about her shoulders, and her tiny feet scarce bending the clover blossoms, and tiptoes carefully along in pursuit. He's gone, Daisy, but never mind; like many other coveted treasures, he would lose his brilliancy if caught. Daisy has found something else; she closes her hand over it, and returns to her old watch-post on the door-step. She seats herself again, and loosing her tiny hold, out creeps a great, bushy, yellow caterpillar. Daisy places him carefully on the back of her little, blue-veined hand, and he commences his travels up the polished arm, to the little round shoulder. When he reaches the lace sleeve, Daisy's laugh rings out like a robin's carol; then she puts him back, to retravel the same smooth road again. "Oh, Daisy! Daisy!" said Ruth, stepping up behind her, "what an _ugly_ playfellow; put him down, do darling; I cannot bear to see him on your arm." "Why--_God_ made him," said little Daisy, with sweet, upturned eyes of wonder. "True, darling," said Ruth, in a hushed whisper, kissing the child's brow, with a strange feeling of awe. "Keep him, Daisy, dear, if you like." CHAPTER XVII. "Please, sir, I'll be afther leaving the night," said John, scraping out his hind foot, as Harry drew rein on Romeo, and halted under a large apple-tree. "Leave?" exclaimed Harry, patting Romeo's neck; "you seemed a contented fellow enough when I left for the city this morning. Don't your wages suit? What's in the wind now? out with it, man." John scratched his head, kicked away a pebble with the toe of his brogan, looked up, and looked down, and finally said, (lowering his voice to a confidential whisper, as he glanced in the direction of the doctor's cottage;) "It's the ould gintleman, sir, savin' yer presence. It is not _two_ masthers Pat would be afther having;" and Pat narrated the affair of the plough.