“Don’t touch me, my dear,” said the lady.  “You are much too hot, and your hand is very dirty.”

“I’s sossy for that,” said Diana.  “I had to touch you ’cos you wouldn’t look up.  I has something most ’portant to talk over.”

“Have you indeed?” replied Miss Ramsay.  She closed her book.  The part she was reading was not specially interesting, and she could not help being amused with such a very curious specimen of the genus child as Diana Delaney.

“Well, little girl, and what is it?” she asked.

“I ’spects,” said Diana, looking very solemnly into her face, “that you and me, we has both got the same enemies.”

“The same enemies!  My dear child, what do you mean?” asked Miss Ramsay.

“I ’spects I’s wight,” said Diana, tossing her black head.  “I’s not often wrong.  I wead your thoughts—­I think that you has a desp’ate hate, down deep in your heart, to Aunt Jane.”

“Good gracious!” cried the governess, “what does the child mean?  Why should I hate Mrs. Dolman?”

“But why should not you?—­that’s the point,” said Diana.

“Well, I don’t,” said Miss Ramsay.

Diana looked intently at her.  Slowly, but surely, her big black eyes filled with tears; the tears rolled down her cheeks; she did not attempt to wipe them away.

“What is the matter with you, you queer little creature?” said Miss Ramsay.  “What in the world are you crying about?”

“I is so bitter dis’pointed,” repeated Diana.

“What, because I don’t hate your Aunt Jane?”

“I is bitter dis-pointed,” repeated Diana.  “I thought, course, you hated her, ’cos I saw her look at you so smart like, and order you to be k’ick this morning, and I thought, ’Miss Wamsay don’t like that, and course Miss Wamsay hates her, and if Miss Wamsay hates her, well, she’ll help me, ‘cos I hates her awful.’”

“But do you know that all this is very wrong?” said Miss Ramsay.

“W’ong don’t matter,” answered Diana, sweeping her hand in a certain direction, as if she were pushing wrong quite out of sight.  “I hate her, and I want to punish her.  You ought to hate her, ’cos she told you to be k’ick, and she looked at you with a kind of a fwown.  Won’t you twy and begin?  Do, p’ease.”

“I really never heard anything like this before in the whole course of my life,” said Miss Ramsay.  “Mrs. Dolman did warn me to be prepared for much, but I never heard a Christian child speak in the way you are doing.”

“I isn’t a Chwistian child,” said Diana.  “I is a heathen.  Did you never hear of Diana what lived long, long ago?—­the beautiful, bwave lady that shotted peoples whenever she p’eased with her bow and arrows?”

“Do you mean the heathen goddess?” said Miss Ramsay.