Mr. Randolph had felt the lingering touch of Daisy's lips, and the
thought of it came to him more than once in the course of the
evening--"like the wind that breathes upon a bank of violets"--with a
breath of sweetness in the remembrance. Nevertheless he had pretty well
forgotten it, when he pulled off the cover of his box of shaving soap
the next morning. He was belated and in something of a hurry. If ever a
man suddenly forgot his hurry, Mr. Randolph did, that morning. He knew
the unformed, rather irregular and stiff handwriting in a moment; and
concluded that Daisy had some request to make on her own account which
she was too timid to speak out in words. That was what he expected when
he opened the paper; but Eve could not have been much more surprised
when the serpent spoke to her in the garden of Eden, than was Mr.
Randolph at finding that his little lamb of a child had dared to open
her mouth to him in this fashion.

"Mr. Randolph, you will be late," said the lady who owned that name,
coming to his door. And seeing her husband standing still with his elbow
leaning on his dressing-table, she walked in.

"You will assuredly be late! what have you got there?"

The little sheet of English note-paper lay spread out on the
dressing-table. Mr. Randolph was looking at it. He did not answer, and
the lady bent nearer for a moment and then stood upright.

"Daisy!" exclaimed Mrs. Randolph.

Her husband made an inarticulate sort of a noise, as he turned away and
took up his neglected shaving soap.