A Little Mother to the Others Part 5

CHAPTER IV.

RUB-A-DUB.

"What am I to do, Evangeline?" said Mr. Delaney, a few moments later.

He stood up as he spoke, shook himself, and gazed straight before him.

It was exactly as if he were really speaking to the children's mother.

Then again he buried his face in his big hands, and his strong frame shook. After a moment's pause he took up a photograph which stood near, and looked earnestly at the beautiful pictured face. The eyes, so full of truth and tenderness, seemed to answer him back. He started abruptly to his feet. "You always directed me, Evangeline," he said.

"G.o.d only knows what I am to do now that you have left me. I am in some matters as weak as a reed, great, bl.u.s.tering fellow though I appear. And now that Jane has come--she always did bully me--now that she has come and wants to take matters into her own hands, oh, Evangeline! what is to be done? The fact is, I am not fit to manage this great house, nor the children, without you. The children are not like others; they will not stand the treatment which ordinary children receive. Oh, why has Jane, of all people, come? What am I to do?"

He paced rapidly up and down his big study; clenching his hands at times, at times making use of a strong exclamation.

The butler knocked at the door. "Dinner will be served in half an hour, sir," he said. "Am I to lay for two?"

"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.

"The _darling_!" said the little girl tenderly. "I loved Rub-a-Dub so much; I love him still. I do hope Iris will think him 'portant enough for a public funeral."

"Look here," said Mr. Delaney, interested in spite of himself, and forgetting all about the dinner which would be ready in a few minutes; "I'll come right along with you to the dead-house; but I did not know, Di, that you kept an awful place of that sort in the garden."

"Tisn't awful," said Diana. "We has to keep a dead-house when we find dead things. We keep all the dead 'uns we find there. There aren't as many as usual to-day--only a couple of b.u.t.terflies and two or three beetles, and a poor crushed spider. And oh! I forgot the toad that we found this morning. It was awful hurt and Apollo had to kill it; he had to stamp on it and kill it; and he did not like it a bit. Iris can't kill things, nor can I, nor can Orion, so we always get Apollo to kill the things that are half dead--to put them out of their misery, you know, father."

"You seem to be a very wise little girl; but I am sure this cannot be at all wholesome work," said the father, looking more bewildered and puzzled than ever.

Diana gazed gravely up at him. She did not know anything about the work being wholesome or the reverse. The dead creatures had to be properly treated, and had to be buried either privately or publicly--that was essential--nothing else mattered at all to her.

"As Rub-a-Dub is such a dear darlin', I should not be s'prised if Iris did have a public funeral," she commented.

"But what is the difference, Di? Tell me," said her father.

"Oh, father! you are ig'rant. At a pwivate funeral the poor dead 'un is just sewn up in dock leaves and stuck into a hole in the cemetery."

"The cemetery! Good Heavens, child! do you keep a cemetery in the garden?"

"Indeed we does, father. We have a very large one now, and heaps and heaps of gravestones. Apollo writes the insipcron. He is quite bothered sometimes. He says the horrid work is give to him,--carving the names on the stones and killing the half-dead 'uns,--but course he has to do it 'cos Iris says so. Course we all obey Iris. When it is a pwivate funeral, the dead 'un is put into the ground and covered up, and it don't have a gravestone; then of course, by and by, it is forgot. You underland; don't you, father?"

"Bless me if I do," said Mr. Delaney, in a puzzled tone.

"But if it is a public funeral," continued Diana, strutting boldly forward now, and throwing back her head in quite a martial att.i.tude, "why, then it's grand. There is a box just like a coffin, and cotton wool--we steal the cotton wool most times. We know where Fortune has got a lot of it put away. Iris does not think it quite right to steal, but the rest of us don't mind. And we have banners, and Orion plays the Jew's harp, and I beat the drum, and Iris sings, and Apollo digs the grave, and the dead 'un is put into the ground, and we all cry, or pretend to cry. Sometimes I do squeeze out a tiny tear, but I'm so incited I can't always manage it, although I'm sure I'll cry when Rub-a-Dub is put into the ground. Then afterwards there is a tombstone, and Iris thinks of the insipcron. I spects we'll have a beautiful insipcron for poor Rub-a-Dub, 'cos we all loved him so much."

"Well, all this is very interesting, of course," said Mr. Delaney.

"But now we must be quick, because your Aunt Jane has come."

"Who's her?" asked Diana.

"A very good lady indeed--your aunt."

"What's an aunt?"

"A lady whom you ought to love very much."

"Ought I? I never love people I ought to love," said Diana firmly.

"Please, father, this is the dead-house. You can come right in if you like, father, and see the dead 'uns; they are all lying on this shelf.

Most of them is to be buried pwivate, 'cos they are not our own pets, you know; but Rub-a-Dub is sure to have a public funeral, and an insipcron, and all the rest."

Mr. Delaney followed Diana into the small shed which the children called the dead-house. He gazed solemnly at the shelf which she indicated, and on which lay the several dead 'uns.

"Put your mouse down now," he said, "and come along back with me to the house at once. You ought to have been in bed long ago."

Diana laid the mouse sorrowfully down in the midst of its dead brethren, shut the door of the dead-house, and followed her father up the garden path.