It was quite time, for little Daisy was tired. She was not accustomed to making fires and boiling kettles, neither to setting tables and washing dishes. Yet it was not merely, nor so much, the bodily exertion she had made, as the mind work. The excitement both of pleasure and responsibility and eager desire. Altogether, Daisy was tired; and sat back in her chaise letting the reins hang languidly in her hands and Loupe go how he would. But Loupe judged it was best to get home and have some refreshment, so he bestirred himself. Daisy had time to lie down a little while before her dinner; nevertheless she was languid and pale, and disposed to take all the rest of the day very quietly.
The rest of the day was of course devoted to the tableaux. The little company had got warmed to the subject pretty well at the first meeting; they all came together this fine afternoon with spirits in tone for business. And Daisy, though she was tired, presently found her own interest drawn in. She was not called upon immediately to take any active part; she perched herself in the corner of a couch and looked on and listened. Thither came Nora Dinwiddie, too much excited to sit down, and stood by Daisy's elbow. They had been practising "Alfred in the neat-herd's cottage;" Nora had been called upon to be the girl blowing the burnt cakes; she had done it, and everybody had laughed, but the little lady was not pleased.
"I know I look horrid!" she said to Daisy,--"puffing out my cheeks till they are like a pair of soapbubbles!"
"But soapbubbles are not that colour," said Daisy. "Your cheeks didn't look like soapbubbles."
"Yes, they did. They looked horrid, I know."
"But the picture is so," urged Daisy quietly. "You want to be like the picture."
"No I don't. Not that picture. I would like to be something handsome. I don't like that picture."
"What are you going to be, Daisy?" said Ella Stanfield.
"I am going to be Priscilla. No, I don't know whether I am or not; but I am going to be Fortitude, I believe."
"That's pretty," said Ella. "What else? O, you are going to be the angel, aren't you? I wonder if that will be pretty. It will be queer. Nora, shall you like to be one of the little princes in the Tower? with that featherbed coming over us? But we shall not see it, I suppose, because our eyes have got to be shut; but I shall be afraid every minute they will let it fall on us."