Daisies and Buttercups Author:J. H. Riddell Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: had to put on myself, when, with her red lips, she innocently kissed her " dear, dear friend," and bade him good-bye, the while tears filled her lovely eyes. She... more » did not succeed all at once. She had sharp and weary work to make her genius recognised. She laboured incessantly, with a steady persistency, an untiring energy which only the young ever display. She lived hard, how hard I know now; for in those days I fared so meagrely myself that I could scarcely realise the deprivation of proper food as a serious calamity. It is after people have once been among the flesh-pots that they hanker for them; after they have revelled amongst leeks and cucumbers that they loathe the monotony of the wholesome manna. But working or fasting or buffeted by Dame Fortune, she had ever a smile for me. Never, even when it was quivering with disappointment, did her face fail to light up in welcome when I entered. Almost every evening either she partook of tea with me or I of supper with her, while on Sundays we invariably dined together. Mrs. Haymes did not quite like the arrangement, for reasons which must be obvious to those who have ever resided in lodgings; but Adelaide had a fine disregard, or rather want of perception, of the opinions of that portion ot the world which could influence neither her pleasure nor her profit (this, I fancy, is an idiosyncrasy of foreigners that probably accounts for their greater lightness of heart), and made our mutual purchases, and superintended the preparation of our mutual repasts with a calm indifference to the opinion of Pentonville in general and our Row in particular, which engendered a fine feeling of Christian and suburban hatred in the bosom of Mrs. Haymes. CHAPTER VI. "SAD MEMORY." One afternoon, 'twas in April, I remember, having come ove...« less