“I’s awfu’ hung’y,” she said.  “How does you feel, Orion?”

“My tumtum’s empty,” answered Orion.

“We’ll pick berries in the wood,” said Diana; “that’ll sat’sfy us.  Berries is wight for wunaway sildrens.  Do you ’member what we has come here for, Orion?”

“To amuse ourselves, I suppose,” replied Orion.

Diana gave him an angry flash from her black eyes.

“What a silly little boy you is!” she said.  “We has come for most solemn, ’portant business.  I is Diana—­the gweat Diana what lived years and years ago—­and you is Orion.  I is the gweatest huntwess in all the world, and I’s going to shoot Aunt Jane and Miss Wamsay.  Now, come ’long, Orion, and let’s look for the bow and arrow.”

The children searched and searched, and after a long time did actually discover the crooked and badly made bow and the blunt arrow.

“Here they is, the darlin’s!” cried Diana.  “My own bow, my own arrow—­how I loves ’em!  Now, Orion, I is going to shoot you—­for pwactice, you know, and then you shall shoot me for pwactice too.  You stand up there against the twee, and I’ll make good shots.  You don’t mind if I does hurt you a bit, does you?”

“But I don’t want to be shotted down dead,” replied Orion.

“No, I won’t go as far as that.  It’s only Aunt Jane and Miss Wamsay who is to be shotted dead; but you’ll have to be shotted, ’cos I must pwactice how to do it.”

“But couldn’t you practice against the tree without me standing there?” said Orion, who had no fancy to have even this very blunt arrow directed at his face.

CHAPTER XV.

MOTHER RODESIA.

After some very slight persuasion Diana induced Orion to put his back up against an oak tree and to allow her to shoot at him.  He quickly discovered that he had little or no cause for fear.  Diana’s arrows, wielded with all the cunning she possessed, from the crooked bow, never went anywhere near him.  They fell on the grass and startled the birds, and one little baby rabbit ran quite away, and some squirrels looked down at the children through the thick trees; but Orion had very little chance of getting hurt.

“It’s awfu’ difficult,” said Diana, whose face grew redder and redder with her efforts.  “If it don’t shoot pwoper, Aunt Jane won’t get shotted to-night.  What is to be done?  Suppose you was to twy for a bit, Orion?”

Orion was only too anxious to accede to this proposition.  He took the bow and arrow and made valiant efforts, but in the course of his endeavors to shoot properly, the badly made bow suddenly snapped in two, and Diana, in her discomfiture, and the dashing to the ground of her hopes, burst into tears.

“You is bad boy,” she cried.  “See what you’s done.  Back we goes to slav’ry—­to Aunt Jane and Miss Wamsay.  You is a bad, howid boy.”

“I aren’t,” said Orion, who had a very easily aroused temper.  “It’s you that’s a horrid little girl.”