When Mr. Delaney said this he shook himself slightly and upset Diana’s balance, and made Orion choke with silent laughter.  Iris and Apollo gazed at him gravely.

“We all made up our minds to do it,” said Iris.  “We have come to ask you to make a promise, father.”

“A promise, my dear children!  But you might have waited until the usual hour for getting up.  What are you going to wring from me at this inclement moment?”

“I don’t exactly know what inclement moment means,” said Iris, “but I do know, and so does Apollo—­”

“And so do I know all about it,” shouted Diana.  “You see, father,” continued the little girl, who spoke rather more than any of the other children, “we has to think of the poor innocents, and the birds and the mice, and the green frogs, and our puppy, and our pug dog, and our—­and our—­” Here she fairly stammered in her excitement.

“Has a sudden illness attacked that large family?” said Mr. Delaney.  “Please, children, explain yourselves, for if you are not sleepy, I am.”

“Yes, father,” said Iris, “we can explain ourselves quite easily.  The thing is this—­we don’t want to go away.”

“To go away?  My dear children, what do you mean?” But as Mr. Delaney spoke he had a very uncomfortable memory of a letter which he had posted with his own hands on the previous evening.

“Yes,” said Apollo; “we don’t want to go away with her.”

“And we don’t wish for no aunts about the place,” said Diana, clenching her little fist, and letting her big, black eyes flash.

“Now I begin to see daylight,” said Mr. Delaney.  “So you don’t like poor Aunt Jane?”

“Guess we don’t,” said Orion.  “She comed in last night and she made an awful fuss, and she didn’t like me ’cos I’m Orion, and ’cos I’m a giant, and ’cos sometimes I has got no eyes.  Guess she’s afraid of me.  I thought her a silly sort of a body.”

“She’s an aunt, and that’s enough,” said Diana.  “I don’t like no aunts; they are silly people.  I want her to go.”

“Apollo and I brought the two younger children,” continued Iris, “because we thought it best for us all to come.  It is not Aunt Jane being here that is so dreadful to me, and so very, very terrible to Apollo,” she continued.  “It’s what she said, father, that we—­we were to go away, away from the house and the garden—­the garden where mother used to be, and the house where the angel came to fetch mother away—­and we are to live with her.  She spoke, father, as if it was settled; but it is not true, is it?  Tell us, father, that it is not true.”

“My poor little children!” said the father.  His own ruddy and sunburnt face turned absolutely pale; there was a look in his eyes which Diana could not in the least understand, nor could Orion, and which even Apollo only slightly fathomed; but one glance told Iris the truth.

“When I am away you are to be a mother to the others,” seemed at that moment to echo her mother’s own voice in her ear.  She gulped down a great sob in her throat, and stretching herself by her father’s side she put one soft arm round his neck.