‘But we’ll be here so much that you won’t have time to be lonely—truly you won’t,’ pleaded Emmeline, no less surprised than dismayed at the turn things were taking. ‘Do come inside like a dear, good boy, and you’ll see how nice it is.’
‘Yes, do come in, Diamond Jubilee,’ coaxed Kitty; ‘it’s just lovely inside—you can’t think.’
‘And what would you do if you were wrecked on a desert island if you make such a fuss now?’ said Micky, in his most reasonable voice.
As Diamond Jubilee had not the slightest intention of being wrecked on a desert island, this consideration had little weight with him, and it took a good many more persuasions to induce him to cross the threshold of the Feudal Castle. When at last he was inside he was so far from mollified at the look of it, and of the three-legged chair without a seat, and the table-top, that he burst into a dismal wail.
‘I won’t stay here—I won’t!’ he sobbed. ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, that you do, for taking me in so shameful.’
Emmeline had to wink her eyes hard to keep back the tears; it was all turning out so utterly unlike what she had expected. ‘You’re a very foolish, ungrateful boy!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’m sure this must be at least as comfortable as Mother Grimes’s house, and you ought to be only too thankful to be where nobody will beat you, and you’ll have plenty to eat.’
‘There was two beds at Sally Grimes’s,’ said Diamond Jubilee, resentfully, ‘and there was three or four on us slept in each, which was company-like, and kept us warm.’
Poor Emmeline! She had heard of those crowded beds before, always with a shudder of horror, and now here was her thankless protégé actually regretting them! ‘Look here, Diamond Jubilee,’ she said, ‘if you’ll only be patient we’ll buy you bedclothes, and so on, as soon as ever we get any extra money for birthdays or anything; as it is, you have only to get a little bracken from the wood, and you can make yourself quite a nice Feudal Castle bed. We would gather it for you, only we simply must go home now.’
‘Or Aunt Grace will guess there’s something up, and we shall get into a horrid row,’ put in Micky, a remark which Emmeline thought neither elegant nor suitable. There was no need for an adopted child to know that its adopters were in danger of getting into anything so undignified as a ‘row.’