"
"Was she alone?"
"No, ma'am--Mr. Dinwiddie found us in the wood, and he took her home,
and he brought me home first."
Daisy was somewhat of a diplomatist. Perhaps a little natural reserve of
character might have been the beginning of it, but the habit had
certainly grown from Daisy's experience of her mother's somewhat
capricious and erratic views of her movements. She could not but find
out that things which to her father's sense were quite harmless and
unobjectionable, were invested with an unknown and unexpected character
of danger or disagreeableness in the eyes of her mother; neither could
Daisy get hold of any chain of reasoning by which she might know
beforehand what would meet her mother's favour and what would not. The
unconscious conclusion was, that reason had little to do with it; and
the consequence, that without being untrue, Daisy had learned to be very
uncommunicative about her thoughts, plans, or wishes. To her mother,
that is; she was more free with her father, though the habit, once a
habit, asserted itself everywhere. Perhaps, too, among causes, the
example of her mother's own elegant manner of shewing truth only as one
shews a fine picture,--in the best light,--might have had its effect.
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