“Where is she?” asked Iris.
“Oh, that’s the worst of it!” cried Miss Munnion. “It’s all the way to Sunderland, right up in the north. Oh, what shall I do?”
“Of course you must go to her,” said Iris, with the confidence of youth.
“But,” said poor Miss Munnion, looking at the child without a spark of hope in her eyes, but a great longing for help and advice, “there’s Mrs Fotheringham. She’ll disapprove, she so dislikes being worried. When I came she told me she hoped I had no relations to unsettle me. And I haven’t. I haven’t a soul in the world that cares for me except Diana. And she was always so strong. How could I tell she would fall ill?”
“Perhaps you wouldn’t be gone long,” suggested Iris, “and I could read to godmother.”
“I’m so afraid,” said Miss Munnion, wiping her eyes meekly, “that Mrs Fotheringham will dismiss me if I go, and I can’t afford to lose the situation—I really can’t. And it’s such an expensive journey to Sunderland. And yet, there’s Diana; she comes before everything, and it cuts me to the heart to think of her asking for me.”
Iris stood looking at her gravely. She felt very sorry, but also a little contemptuous. Of course Diana ought to come before everything, and yet Miss Munnion did not seem able to make up her mind to go to her.
“Well,” she said, “you can’t go to Sunderland and stay here too.”
“Very true,” murmured Miss Munnion. She did not mean anything by these words, but they were so habitual that she could not help using them.
“Then you’d better come straight to my godmother and tell her,” said Iris, “if you mean to go.”