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 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; 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?”