"Well, Daisy," said he, putting his hands on my shoulders - "I have got my Daisy of ten years old back again. What is it now?"
"Oh, papa," I exclaimed, "look at the housetops! I have read of housetops all my life; and now here they are!"
"They have been here all the time, Daisy."
"But - it is so impossible to realise without seeing it, papa. It was on such a housetop that Peter was when he had his vision. You can see, it is the pleasantest part of the house, papa. I should like to sleep on the housetop, as they do in summer; with only the stars over me. How nice!"
"What was Peter's vision, besides the stars?"
"Papa! Not the stars; his vision was at noonday. I have just been reading about it. How delicious the Bible will be here!"
"It is always delicious to you, I think," papa said; I fancied rather sadly. "It is a taste you were born with. Sit down and read me about that vision."
But it was papa that sat down, and I stood by the window, and we read together those chapters of the Acts; and papa grew very much interested, and we had an excellent talk all breakfast time. The strange dishes at breakfast helped the interest too; the boiled rice and meat, and the fish and the pomegranates. I seemed to have my living in Bible times as well as places. The Mediterranean lay sparkling before us; as it was before Peter no doubt when he went up to that housetop to pray. The house is gone; but it is the same sea yet.
"I shall always look upon Jaffa with respect," said papa, at last; "since here it was that the gates of religion were publicly set open for all the world, and the key taken out of the hands of the Jews. It is a little place too, to have anything of so much interest belonging to it."
"That is not all, papa," I said. "Solomon had the cedar for the Temple, and for all his great buildings, floated down here."
"Don't you remember, sir, his great works, and the timber he had to get from Lebanon?"
"The only way it could come, papa; and then it had to go by land up to Jerusalem - the same way that we are going; thirty- three miles."
"That isn't much, papa; all that is in Murray; but now may I read you about Solomon's floats of timber, while you are finishing that pomegranate?"
"Read away," said papa. "Pomegranates are not ripe now, are they?"