A Little Mother to the Others by L. T. Meade (best contemporary novels .TXT) 📕

to know where Diana is?"

"Little Diana with the spirited black eyes?" questioned Mr. Dolman.

"Yes; do you know anything about her?"

He pushed his spectacles halfway up on his broad, bald forehead.

"I am afraid little Diana has been very naughty," he said; "but, pray don't say that I mentioned it. You had better question your aunt, my dear. No, there is no use asking me. I vow, once for all, that I am not going to interfere with you children—particularly with you little Delaneys. I only know that Diana has been naughty. Ask your aunt—ask your aunt, my dear."

"Iris, do pray come upstairs," called out Mary; "we'll get into the most dreadful scrape if we are late. Mamma is so terribly particular."

"Oh, there is Aunt Jane!" said Iris, with a sigh of relief. "Aunt Jane, please," she continued, running up to her aunt as she spoke, "I can't find Diana anywhere. Do you happen to know where she is?"

"I am afraid you won't find Diana, Iris," answered Mrs. Dolman, "for the simple reason that she has been a very impertinent, naughty little girl, and I have been obliged to lock her up."

"You were obliged to lock her up?" said Iris, her face turning pale. She gave Mrs. Dolman a look which reminded that lady of her brother. Now, the little Delaneys' father could give very piercing glances out of his dark eyes when he chose, and Mrs. Dolman had been known, in her early days, to quail before them. For the same inexplicable reason she quailed now before the look in Iris' brown eyes. "Please[103] take me at once to my sister," said the little girl, with dignity.

Mrs. Dolman hesitated for a moment.

"Very well, Iris, on this occasion I will take you," she said. "But please first understand that you four children have got to bend your wills to mine; and when you are naughty,—although I don't expect you will ever be naughty, Iris,—I trust you, at least, will be an example to the others,—but when any of you are naughty you will be most certainly punished. I have brought you here with the intention of disciplining you and making you good children."

"Then," said Iris, very slowly, "do you really think, Aunt Jane, that when mother was alive we were bad children?"

"I have nothing to say on that point," answered Mrs. Dolman. She led Iris across the cool hall, and, taking a key out of her pocket, opened the door of the punishment chamber. She threw it wide open, and there, in the center of the matting, lay Diana, curled up like a little dog, very sound asleep.

"Much she cares," said Mrs. Dolman.

"Oh, Aunt Jane!" said Iris, tears springing to her eyes, "how could you be cruel to her, and she is not long without mother, you know—how could you be cruel to her, Aunt Jane?"

"You are not to dare to speak to me in that tone, Iris," said Aunt Jane.

But at that moment the noise, or perhaps it was the draught of fresh air, caused Diana to stir in her sleep. She raised her head and looked around her. The first person her eyes met was Iris.

"So you has come at last," she said. "I don't think much of you for a mother. You made a lot of[104] pwomises, and that's all you care. Has that ugly old woman been sent to pwison? There's my darlin' pets gone and got deaded, and she deaded 'em. Has she been put in pwison for murder? Oh, there you is, too, old Aunt Jane! Well, I is not going to obey you, so there! Now you know the twuf. I is Diana, the gweat Diana. I isn't going to obey nobody!"

"Iris," said Mrs. Dolman, "will you speak to this extremely naughty little girl? If she will not repent and beg my pardon she shall have no dinner. I will send her in some bread and water; and here she shall stay until her naughty little spirit is broken."

Mrs. Dolman left the room as she spoke, and Iris found herself alone with her sister.

"You isn't much of a mother," repeated Diana. She went over to the window, and stood with her back to Iris. Her little bosom was heaving up and down; she felt very forlorn, but still she hugged her misery to her as a cloak.

Iris gazed at her in perplexity.

"Di," she said, "I never saw you like this before. What are you turning away from me for? Come to me, Di; do come to me."

Diana's little breast heaved more than ever, tears came into her eyes, but she blinked them furiously away.

"You can come to me, if you want; I shan't come to you. You isn't much of a mother," she repeated.

"But I did not know you were in trouble, darling. Do, do come to your own Iris. Do tell me what is the matter."

"Oh, Iris!" sobbed Diana.

The first kind note utterly melted her little heart;[105] she rushed to her sister, flung herself upon her, and sobbed as if she would never stop crying.

"We can't stay in this howid place, Iris," she said; "all my darlin's has gone and got deaded. That howid old woman upstairs said they was wermin. She has killed 'em all. I can't stay here; I won't stay here. Take me back to the beautiful garden. Do, Iris; do. I'se just so mis'ble."

Iris sat down on one of the hard-backed chairs.

"Look here, Di," she said, "I have no time now to talk things over with you. Of course, everything is altered, and our lives are completely changed. When mother was dying, when I last saw her, she told me that I must expect this. She said she knew that, when she went away to the angels, we four children would have to go out into the world and fight our battles. She said that everybody in the world has got a battle to fight, and even little children have to fight theirs. She said, too, that if we were brave and the kind of children she wants us to be, we would follow the names she gave us and conquer our enemies. Now, Di, you are called after Diana, the great Diana, who was supposed to be a sort of goddess. Do you think she would have given in? Don't you think she would have been brave?"

"Yes, course," said the little nineteenth-century Diana. "She would have shotted people down dead with her bow and arrows—I know kite well she was a bwave sort of a lady. All wight, Iris, I'll copy her if you wishes."

"Indeed I do wish, darling. I think it would be splendid of you."

"She was a very bwave lady," repeated Diana. "She had her bow and her arrows; she was a gweat[106] huntwess, and she shotted people. I don't mind copying her one little bit."

Diana dried away her tears and looked fixedly at her sister.

"Then you really mean to be good and brave, Di?"

"Certain sure, Iris."

"And you won't call Aunt Jane any more names?"

"I won't call her names—names don't si'nify, names don't kill people."

"And you'll go and beg her pardon now?"

"What's that?"

"You'll say you are sorry that you called her names."

"Would she let me out of this woom, then? and could I do just what I liked my own self?"

"I expect so; I expect she is really sorry that she had to be hard on you to-day; but you see she has got a different way of bringing up children from our own mother."

"Please, Iris, we won't talk much of our own mother—it makes me lumpy in the trof," said Diana, with a little gulp. "I'll beg her pardon, if it pleases her. I don't care—what's words? I'll go at once, and, Iris, mind me that I'm like Diana. She was a bwave lady and she shotted lots of people."

"Well, then, come along, Di; you'll be allowed to come to dinner if you beg Aunt Jane's pardon."

Di gave her hand to Iris, who took her upstairs. Here Iris washed her little sister's face and hands and brushed out her thick black hair, and kissed her on her rosebud lips, and then said:

"There is nothing I would not do, Di, to be a real little mother to you."[107]

"All wight," answered Diana; "you just mind me now and then that I is called after the bwave lady what lived long, long ago. Is that the second gong? I'se desp'ate hungy. Let's wun downstairs, p'ease, Iris."

Diana entered the dining room with her face all aglow with smiles, the rich color back again in her cheeks, and her black eyes dancing. Even Mr. Dolman gave a gasp of relief when he saw her.

Even Mrs. Dolman felt a slight degree of satisfaction. She did not intend to be hard on the children—in her heart of hearts she was quite resolved to make them not only good, but also happy.

"Well, my dear little girl," she said, drawing Diana to her side, "and so you are sorry for what you said?"

"Awfu' sossy," answered Diana, in a cheerful voice.

"Then you beg my pardon, and you won't be naughty again?"

"I begs yous pardon, Aunt Jane," said Diana. She looked very attentively up and down her relation's figure as she spoke.

"Poor Aunt Jane, she's awfu' stout," murmured Diana, under her breath. "I must get a good sharp arrow—oh, yes! words is nothing."

Mrs. Dolman drew out a chair near herself.

"You shall sit near me, Diana, and I will help you to your dinner," she said. "I hope in future you will really try to be a very good little girl."

Diana made no reply to this, but when her aunt piled her plate with nourishing and wholesome food, she began to eat with appetite. Towards the end of the meal she bent over towards Mrs. Dolman, and said in a confiding voice:[108]

"Has you got woods wound here?"

"Yes, my dear; there are some nice woods about a mile away."

"I'd like to go there this afternoon, please, Aunt Jane. I has 'portant business to do in those woods." Diana looked round the table very solemnly as she said these last words. Philip could not help laughing.

"Hush, Philip! I won't have Diana laughed at," said Mrs. Dolman, who for some reason was now inclined to be specially kind to the little girl. "If you would really like to spend the afternoon in the woods, Diana, I see nothing against it," she remarked. "You are all having a holiday, and as to-morrow lessons will of course be resumed, I do not see why your wish should not be gratified. Miss Ramsay, you will of course accompany the children, and, Lucy, my dear, you can have the pony chaise, if you promise to be very careful. You can take turns to sit in it, children. And what do you say to asking cook to put up a few bottles of milk and some cake and bread and butter—then you need not return home to tea?"

"That would be delightful, mamma," said Lucy, in her prim voice.

"Thank you, mamma," said Mary.

"French, my dears; French!" said Miss Ramsay.

"As it is a holiday, Miss Ramsay, the children are allowed to tender their thanks to me in the English tongue," said Mrs. Dolman.

Miss Ramsay bowed and slightly colored.

"Is you going with us?" asked Diana, fixing her dark eyes full upon the governess' face.

"Yes, Diana; your aunt wishes it."

"We don't want no g'own-ups."

"Hush, Diana! you must not begin to be rude[109] again," said Mrs. Dolman. "Miss Ramsay certainly goes with you, please understand."

"I underland—thank you, Aunt Jane," said Diana.

She looked solemnly down at her empty plate. Her whole little mind was full of her namesake—the great Diana of long ago. She wondered if in the deep shade of the woods she might find a bow strong enough to injure her enemies.

[110]

CHAPTER X. BOW AND ARROW.

Nothing interfered with the excursion to the pleasant woods near Super-Ashton Rectory. The children all found themselves there soon after four o'clock on this lovely summer afternoon. They could sit under the shade of the beautiful trees, or run about and play to their hearts' content.

Miss Ramsay was a very severe governess during school hours, but when there was a holiday she was as lax as she was particular on other occasions. This afternoon she took a novel out of her pocket, seated herself with her back to a great overspreading elm tree, and prepared to enjoy herself.

Lucy, Mary, and Ann surrounded Iris; Apollo marched away by himself, and Philip and Conrad mysteriously disappeared with little Orion. Diana thus found herself alone. For a time she was contented to lie stretched out flat on the