Daisy: or, The Fairy Spectacles. Guild Caroline Snowden

VII.

      THE WOODMAN'S FUNERAL

      Daisy did not see the lightning, nor hear the snakes, nor feel the drops of rain that began to patter down; she only felt the cold hand that would never lead her through the wood again; for when she lifted it, it fell back on the ground, dead – dead!

      She asked her mother if they were not going home; but Susan said her home was with Peter; and if he staid out in the dark wood, she must stay there, too. She was frightened, and wild with sorrow, and did not know what she was saying, and began, at last, to blame the old woman, who had brought her there, she said, to be so happy for a little while, and always afterwards lonely and wretched – the old hag!

      "What old hag!" said a voice close to Susan's ear, that brought her senses back quickly. "Is this all your gratitude, Susan? And are you going to kill your child, out here, with the cold and damp, because your husband's gone? Come! we must bury him; and then away to your home, and don't sit here, abusing your best friend."

      Daisy, you know, had never seen the woman, and she had never looked so dreadfully as now; she was pale and starved, and her great eyes glittered like the eyes of the snakes, and her voice was sharp and shrill enough to have frightened one on a pleasanter night than that.

      With Peter's axe the fairy sharpened two stout sticks; one of these she made Susan take, and there, by the light of the quick flashes of lightning, and a little lantern that the woman wore like a brooch on her bosom, Daisy watched them dig her father's grave.

      The fallen tree was one of the largest in the wood, and the two women could not lift it; so they dug the earth away at the side and underneath the trunk; and when the place was deep enough, poor Peter's body dropped into its grave. While her mother and the fairy were filling it over with earth, Daisy went for the moss which she had gathered to show her father, and, by the light of the fairy's lamp, picked the sweetest flowers, and fragrant grasses, and broad leaves that glistened with the rain, and scattered them on the spot.

      Then, with one of Susan's and one of Daisy's hands in hers, the old dame hurried them out of the wood. They stumbled often over the broken boughs, and stepped, before they knew it, on the snakes, that only hissed and slid away among the grass. Susan was crying bitterly, and their guide kept scolding her, and Daisy heard the wolves growl in their dens.

      She had heard of great funerals, where there were carriages and nodding plumes, and heavy velvet palls, and bells tolling mournfully; but Daisy thought it was because her father had been such a good man, that his funeral was so much grander.

      She knew that all about his grave, and on, on, farther than eye could see, the great forest trees were bending and nodding like black plumes, and sounds like groans and sighs came from them as they dashed together in the wind; the lightning was his funeral torch; and the thunder tolled, instead of bells, at Peter's grave; and the black clouds swept on like a train of mourners; and the great, quick drops of rain made it seem as if all the sky were weeping tears of pity for the little girl.

      Ah, and Daisy could not see how the dreadful old woman only seemed such, and was, in truth, a good and gentle fairy, who meant still to watch over the little orphan with tender care, as she had always done; whose soft, white wings, even now, were spread above, to shelter her from the cold rain and wind, and whose kind heart was full of pity for that little aching heart of hers.

      You and I, and all the people we know, walk through the world with this same strange fairy; who seems to frown, and scold, and force us on through cruel storms, and yet who is really smiling upon us, and shielding our shrinking forms with tender care, and leading us gently home.

      Have you thought yet what can be the fairy's name?

      CHAPTER VIII.

      DAISY'S MISSION

      No sooner had Daisy stepped inside of her mother's door, than there came such a crash of thunder as she had never heard; and the little house shook as if it must surely fall.

      The old trees ground their boughs together, and, blown by the wind, the night birds dashed with their wet wings against the door; the screech owl hooted, for the young were washed out of her nest; and the rain leaked under Susan's door sill, ran across the floor, and put out the little fire of brushwood which was burning on the hearth.

      And Daisy thought of her father, out alone in this fearful night, and how the cold rain must be dripping into his grave.

      She peeped through the window. The sharp, jagged lightning made the sky look as if it were shattering like a dome of glass. She wondered if that lightning might not be the light of heaven she had heard about, and whether, if the sky should really fall, heaven and earth would be one place, and by taking a long, long journey, she could find her father, and live with him. And she thought that, for the sake of having him to take her by the hand again, she would walk to the end of a hundred worlds.

      Then the sky seemed to Daisy like a great black bell; and the thunder was the tongue of it that tolled so dismally over her father's grave.

      She was startled by a bony hand laid upon her shoulder, and looking up, heard the old woman say in her sharp, shrill voice, "Come, little girl! don't you know I am hungry after all this work? Fly round, and get me something to eat."

      And when Daisy noticed her poor, starved face, she wondered that she had not thought to offer her some food.

      So she went to the closet, – the same one which poor Peter had shown to his wife with so much pride, – and pointed to bread and a dish of milk, – for the shelves were so high that Daisy could not reach them, – and drew her mother's easy chair into the dryest place she could find, and begged the dame to seat herself.

      She did not wait to be asked twice, but hobbled into the chair, and, to Daisy's wonder, ate all the bread at a mouthful, and drank the milk at a swallow, and then, looking as hungry as ever, asked for more.

      So the little girl brought meat, and then some meal, and some dried fruit, and even cracked nuts; but the more she brought, the more the fairy wanted.

      If Daisy had feared any thing, she would have trembled when, at last, the old dame fixed her glittering eyes upon her, and began to talk.