Chapter XVI: Isaac's Loss

DAISY came to her father again and yet again, day after day, as she had said; and as she grew better able to bear the fatigue, she stayed longer and longer with her father.

The old man's recovery was very tardy. After a while he was able to totter into the parlour, and to spend some hours in his easy-chair every afternoon; but there improvement stood still. He was by no means the man he had been before his illness.

There seemed to be failure of mind, as well as failure of body. Often his brain appeared to be surrounded by such a mist, that he could hardly grasp the sense of what was said to him. One day he would cry and sob like a child over his lost gold; and another day he would seem almost happy, in a sort of childish forgetfulness of his trouble.

As weeks went on, one change became visible, which cheered Daisy's heart greatly, and that was that he no longer showed indifference to his little daughter—Daisy was always called "little" despite her seventeen years—but clung to her and leant upon her in a way he never had done before.

Was it that the loss of his gold had left his poor old heart free to love?

Daisy thought so, and the thought made her very joyous. She was feeble still, and could do little except sit for hours together by his side; but often, in her new happiness, she broke into soft scraps of singing, and Isaac's face showed that he liked to listen.

Yet this was a time of grave anxiety to Daisy; she could not at all tell how she and her father were to live thenceforward. His money was gone. It seemed quite a necessity that his house should be sold.

John Davis was now nearly well, and was expected to be out of the hospital in a week or ten days. Mary would have to join her husband then, and everything would rest upon Daisy. She looked too small and frail for the coming burden.

"But it will be all right," Daisy said often to Mary. "It will be all right, Nursie. God will take care of us. If only father loved God, I should not mind about anything else."

Friends had been very kind in helping Daisy and her father through their time of trouble. Gifts of food and of money also had come in repeatedly, some known to Daisy, some known only to her faithful nurse. This, of course, could not be expected to continue always. She had some anxious conversations with Mr. and Mrs. Roper, about her own and her father's future.

One day she was sitting with old Isaac in the parlour, Mary Davis having gone out from Old Meadow for half a day's charing, as she had frequently done of late. Isaac seemed unusually awake and clearheaded this afternoon, and in consequence unusually disposed to lament over his lost gold. Daisy bore for some time with his sorrowful murmurs, and then she drew her chair closer to him, and took one of his aged hands between her own, and said,—

"Father, do you mean to go on always being so unhappy about the money?"

Isaac repeated the word "always," as he was given to doing. "It's gone, Daisy—gone!" he added.

"Yes, it has quite gone, father—every bit of it," said Daisy firmly. "I think God has taken it from you, because you loved it too much."

"Too much?" echoed Isaac plaintively.

"Yes,—oh, a great deal too much," said Daisy, earnest in voice and look. "You loved that bag of gold more than me, father—more than everything—more than God."

Isaac's attention seemed arrested. He repeated "More than God!" not in his usual dreamy manner, but as if awe-struck.

"Yes, more than you loved God," said Daisy, calmly and clearly. "And, father, that means that you did not love God at all, for if you had you must have loved Him best. And it means that you didn't think about the Lord Jesus, or have Him for your Saviour. And that means that if you had died, you would have had no Heaven to go to. For the gold was your god and your heaven and your everything—and, father, if you had died, you must have left that behind, and then you would have had nothing left—nothing at all."

Isaac gazed steadfastly at Daisy's flushed and eager face.

"Nothing left?" he said.

"No, nothing—nothing!" said Daisy, almost passionately, yet she spoke slowly still that he might understand. "O father, it is like the verse that I read to you yesterday out of Proverbs—'THERE IS THAT MAKETH HIMSELF RICH, YET HATH NOTHING; THERE IS THAT MAKETH HIMSELF POOR, YET HATH GREAT RICHES.' Say the words after me, father dear."

Isaac obeyed in his half-childish way, but before finishing he stopped. "Yes, I made myself rich, sure enough," he said, with a momentary gleam of satisfaction. "I toiled, and I saved, and I did it all. But I didn't make myself poor. It was that wretched thief, Daisy—as deserves to be hung too."

"We needn't think about him," said Daisy. "He will be punished some day, one way or another. People always are, if they go on in wrong-doing. I like better to think of it the other way—that God took away your money, so that you might be free to think about Him. O father, I do so want you to learn to serve God."

Isaac was silent for some seconds, and when he spoke it was with a recurrence to Daisy's text. "Makes himself rich—yet has nothing," he muttered. "That wasn't me, Daisy. I'd got lots,—only it's all gone now—all gone."

"You had lots of gold, father, but that was nothing. It couldn't make you happy. It couldn't keep you from dying. It couldn't take you to Heaven. You had the gold and you were poor; and now the gold is gone, I want you to be rich—really rich. I want you to be rich in the love of the Lord Jesus. Father dear, won't you try to come to Him, and tell Him you are sorry you haven't thought more about Him, and ask Him to forgive you everything and to make you His very own for ever?"

"I don't know that I durst," said Isaac tremblingly. "I don't know that I durst, Daisy. And I don't know how."

But when Daisy knelt beside him, and prayed aloud for him, in pleading words which presently ended in a burst of weeping, Isaac was strangely moved. He bent his head low, and tried to join in, murmuring the words after her; and when she broke down he said hurriedly, "Don't you—now don't you, Daisy. I'll never speak about the gold any more, Daisy."