Читать книгу Daisy: or, The Fairy Spectacles - Guild Caroline Snowden - Страница 5

It was fortunate that Susan was so happy while she could be; for the poor woman little dreamed how soon her sunny home was to become a sad, dark place for her.

Peter used to go forth in the morning, whistling as gayly as any of the birds; and Daisy following him, proud enough that she could carry his little dinner basket for the short way she went.

She did not know that what was such a heavy load to her was only a feather for the strong man to lift, and so delighted in thinking she had grown old enough to help her dear father.

Still Peter had to watch his dinner closely; for Daisy would espy some beautiful flower or vine looking at her from away off in the shade; and down the basket would go, and the little girl was off to take a nearer look, and see if she could not break off a branch to carry home to her mother.

Sometimes Peter walked so fast, or Daisy staid so long, that they lost each other; and then the father made a call that could be heard for miles, which frightened all the birds home to their nests, and must have startled the old dame herself, wherever she might be lurking in the wood.

But the call was music to Daisy; and before many minutes, she would come bounding into her father's arms, almost hidden in the waving white blossoms with which she had loaded herself.

And all this while, unless Peter himself took care of it, what would become of his dinner!

When Susan went to meet her husband at evening, now, Daisy was sure to be with her – one moment holding her hand, the next skipping away alone, or kneeling to gather bright pebbles and sheets of green moss, to make banks and paths in her garden. She fluttered about in the sunshine like the butterflies she loved, and was as harmless and gentle.

But, alas! one night, no Peter came to meet them; and though Daisy kept thinking she heard his step or his voice, it could only be the fall of some dead limb or the hooting of an owl.

The night grew darker, and it lightened so sharply that Daisy clung to her mother's skirts, and begged her to hide somewhere under a rock until the storm should be past, as the little girl felt almost sure her father had done.

But Susan groped her way on, with the wind blowing the branches into their faces, and the dead boughs snapping and falling about them, and the snakes, that they had never seen before, gliding across the path, hissing, and running their forked tongues out with fear.

And at length they found poor Peter, dead, on the ground. The tree which he had been cutting down had fallen suddenly, and crushed his head so under its great trunk that they only knew him by his clothes.