aunt Gary than for you. It was something beyond your appreciation. Do
not oblige me to remind you that your things are mine."

Mrs. Randolph spoke as if half displeased already, and left the room.
Daisy lay with a great flush upon her face, and in a state of
perturbation.

Her spoon was gone; that was beyond question, and Daisy's little spirit
was in tumultuous disturbance--very uncommon indeed with her. Grief, and
the sense of wrong, and the feeling of anger strove together. Did she
not appreciate her old spoon? when every leaf of the lotus carving and
every marking of the duck's bill had been noted and studied over and
over, with a wondering regard to the dark hands that so many, many years
and ages ago had fashioned it. Would Mrs. Gary love it as well? Daisy
did not believe any such thing. And then it was the gift of Nora and Mr.
Dinwiddie, and precious by association; and it was _gone_. Daisy lay
still on her pillow, with a slow tear now and then gathering in her
eyes, but also with an ominous line on her brow. There was a great sense
of injustice at work--the feeling that she had been robbed; and that she
was powerless to right herself. Her mother had done it; in her secret
thought Daisy knew that, and that she would not have done it to Ransom.
Yet in the deep fixed habit of obedience and awe of her mother, Daisy
sheered off from directly blaming her as much as possible, and let the
burden of her displeasure fall on Mrs. Gary. She was bitterly hurt at
her mother's action, however; doubly hurt, at the loss and at the manner
of it; and the slow tears kept coming and rolling down to wet her
pillow. For a while Daisy pondered the means of getting her treasure
back; by a word to her father, or a representation to Preston, or by
boldly demanding the spoon of Mrs. Gary herself. Daisy felt as if she
must have it back somehow. But any of these ways, even if successful,