So John Sinclair, with one arm round the child as she stands close beside him, begins briefly narrating the old fairy tale in a low voice, hurrying over it until he comes to the part in which he has made the required alterations.
"Wait a minute!" cries Daisy excitedly; "you must speak out loud now, because I don't believe any of the others know the new ending. Now then."
"So," resumes John, "the woodcutter asked the princess to marry him--"
"He was a prince really, you know," puts in Daisy parenthetically, for the benefit of the company generally.
"And," continues John, "as all her sisters were married excepting one--"
"She said she would!" cries the child, clapping her hands and beaming round upon everybody. Then there is a short pause, during which John glances at Honor.
"And--" at length queries Daisy, looking up into her favourite's face.
"And--er--" says John. "Let me see. O yes, the princess took the wood-cutter by the hand and led him up to her little sister, saying:
"'Buttercup, I have brought you a new brother. Will you come and live with him and me far away in the wood, in a little hut which is covered with roses?'"
"And what did Buttercup say?" inquires Daisy, who is listening with breathless interest to this entirely new part of the story.
"I don't know," says John rather lamely; "what would _you_ have said?"
"O, _I_ would have said 'yes,'" she replies promptly.
"Well, I think you had better finish the story, Daisy. You know it quite as well as I do, if not better."
"Well," says Daisy gravely, "Buttercup said she _would_ like to live with them in the hut covered with roses. And then the wood-cutter and the princess were married very soon, and they all lived happily ever after."
End of Project Gutenberg's Three Bright Girls, by Annie E. Armstrong