“We’s going to the dead-house,” she said.  “Rub-a-Dub’s dead.”

    “You’ll never know fear any more,
               Little dear;
    Good-by, Rub-a-Dub.”

“Oh, don’t Di!  You make me feel so frightened,” said Orion.  “Why do you talk like that?  Can’t you ’member nothing?”

“Course I ’member,” said Diana.  “Rub-a-Dub’s dead.”

    “Never know fear,
      Little dear;
    Rub-a-Dub’s dead.”

“Come this way,” said Orion, taking her hand.

She was quite willing to follow him, although she did not in the least know where she was going.

“S’pect I aren’t well,” she said at last.  “Don’t be fwightened, poor little boy.  S’pect I aren’t k’ite well.”

“I’s so hungry,” moaned Orion.

“Well, let’s go into the house; let’s have bekfus.  Where’s Fortune?  Come ’long, Orion; come ’long.”

They had reached the highroad now, and were walking on, Orion’s arm flung round Diana’s waist.  Suddenly, rattling round a corner of the country road, came a man with a milk cart.  He was a very cheery-looking man with a fat face.  He had bright blue eyes and a kindly mouth.

“Hullo!” he said, when he saw the two little children coming to meet him.  “Well, I never!  And what may you two be doing out at this hour?”

Diana gazed up at him.

“I’s going to the garding,” she said.  “I’s to meet Iris in garding.  We is to ’cide whether it’s to be a pwivate or a public funeral.”

“Bless us and save us!” said the man.

“Don’t mind her,” said Orion; “she’s not well.  She fell off a horse last night, and there’s something gone wrong inside her head.  I s’pect something’s cracked there.  She’s talking a lot of nonsense.  We has runned away, and we is desperate hungry.  Can you give us a drink of milk?”

“Well, to be sure,” said the man, smacking his lips as he spoke.  “I never saw anything like this afore, and never heard anything like it, neither.  Why, it’s like a page out of a printed book.  And so you has run away, and you belong to the circus, I guess.  Why, you are in your circus dresses.”

“See my bow and arrow,” said Diana.  “I is the gweat Diana; I is the gweatest huntwess in all the world.”

“To be sure; to be sure!” said the man.

“And I am Orion,” said the boy, seeing that Diana’s words were having a good effect.  “You can watch me up in the sky on starful nights.  I am a great giant, and this is my girdle, and this is my sword.”

“I never heard anything so like a fairy tale afore,” said the man.  “Are you sure you are human, you two little mites?”

Diana took no notice of this.

“I want to get into the garding,” she said.  “I want to lie down in the garding; I want Iris; I want mother.  Man, do you know that my mother has gone away to the angels?  She is playing a gold harp and singing ever so loud; and once we had a little mouse, and it was called Rub-a-Dub, and it’s deaded.  We gived it a public funeral.”