An arrow struck the bench beside Dolores, who, more angry than she had ever been in her life, snatched it up, unheeding that it had no point to speak of, rushed headlong in pursuit, while, with a tremendous shout, Valetta and Wilfred flew before her to a waste overgrown place at the end of the kitchen garden.
‘We’ve shot a Croat!’
‘No, a Black Brunswicker.’
‘Oh ah! They are coming—the enemy! Into the fortress! Bar the wolf’s passage!’
And as Dolores struggled through the bushes, she saw the whole family dashing into an outhouse, and the door slammed. She pushed against it, but an unearthly compound of howls, yells, shouts and bangs replied.
‘Gillian! Harry, I say,’ she cried in great anger; ‘come out, I want to speak to you.’
But her voice was lost in the war-whoops within, and the louder she knocked, the louder grew the din, till she walked off, swelling with grief and indignation. Mysie, after all her professions of friendship, to use her in this way! And Harry and Gillian, who should have kept the others within bounds!
Slowly she crossed the lawn, just as Lady Merrifield, the other two aunts, and Fergus, all came out from the glass door of the drawing-room. Aunt Jane, a trim little dark-eyed woman, looking at two and forty much the same as she might have done at five and twenty; and Aunt Adeline, pretty and delicately fair, with somewhat of the same grace as Lady Merrifield, but more languor, and an air as if everything about her were for effect. Though not specially fond of theses aunts, Dolores was glad to have them as witnesses of her ill-usage.
‘There stands Dolly, like a statue of Diana, dart in hand,’ exclaimed Aunt Adeline.
‘Yes,’ said Dolores; ‘I wish to know, Aunt Lilias, if Wilfred and Valetta are to call me names, and shoot arrows at me?’