“Yes, Johnson.  Mrs. Dolman, my sister, has arrived, and will dine with me.  Have places laid for two.”

The man withdrew, and Mr. Delaney, stepping out through the open window, looked across the lawns which his sister had so strongly disapproved of.

“Jane was always the one to poke her finger into every pie,” he said half aloud.  “Certainly this place is distasteful to me now, and there is—­upon my word, there is something in her suggestion.  But to deliver over those four children to her, and to take them away from the garden, and the house, and the memory of their mother—­oh! it cannot be thought of for a moment; and yet, to shift the responsibility while my heart is so sore would be an untold relief.”

A little voice in the distance was heard shouting eagerly, and a small child, very dirty about the hands and face, came trotting up to Mr. Delaney.  It was Diana.  She was sobbing as well as shouting, and was holding something tenderly wrapped up in her pocket handkerchief.

“What is the matter with you, Di?” said her father.  He lifted her into his arms.  “Why, little woman, what can be the matter? and what have you got in your handkerchief?”

“It’s Rub-a-Dub, and he is deaded,” answered Diana.  She unfolded the handkerchief carefully and slowly, and showed her father a small piebald mouse, quite dead, and with a shriveled appearance.  “He is as dead as he can be,” repeated Diana.  “Look at him.  His little claws are blue, and oh! his little nose, and he cannot see; he is stone dead, father.”

“Well, you shall go into Beaminster to-morrow and buy another mouse,” said Mr. Delaney.

Diana gazed at him with grave, wondering black eyes.

“That would not be Rub-a-Dub,” she said; then she buried her little, fat face on his shoulder and sobs shook her frame.

“Evangeline would have known exactly what to say to the child,” muttered the father, in a fit of despair.  “Come along, little one,” he said.  “What can’t be cured must be endured, you know.  Now, take my hand and I’ll race you into the house.”

The child gave a wan little smile; but the thought of the mouse lay heavy against her heart.

“May I go back to the garden first?” she said.  “I want to put Rub-a-Dub into the dead-house.”

“The dead-house, Diana?  What do you mean?”

“It is the house where we keep the poor innocents, and all the other creatures what get deaded,” said Diana.  “We keep them there until Iris has settled whether they are to have a pwivate or a public funeral.  Iris does not know yet about Rub-a-Dub.  He was quite well this morning.  I don’t know what he could have died of.  Perhaps, father, if you look at him you will be able to tell me.”

“Well, let me have a peep,” said the man, his mustache twitching as he spoke.

Diana once again unfolded her small handkerchief, in the center of which lay the much shriveled-up mouse.