"Hush, Joan!" said Darby, in a frightened undertone; "there's no hyenas here. Aunt Catharine means 'heenyus,' and that's a thing in the Catechism—far on! It's only me that has come to it yet."
"You have both been guilty of the gravest disobedience," continued Miss Turner, "and it is my duty to punish you. I have therefore decided to keep you in bed until you repent of your naughtiness."
Here Darby started up in anger. His gray eyes flashed, his cheeks were scarlet, his small fists clenched under the bedclothes.
"This is Saturday," went on his aunt, in her relentless voice. "You shall stay where you are until to-morrow, Sabbath morning. Then, if you are in a proper frame of mind, you may both get up as usual; but for one week you shall not go beyond the garden.—And you, Guy, because you are older than Doris, and should set your sister a good example instead of leading her at your heels into every mischief you can devise—you are to have an additional punishment. I desire that while you are in bed you shall occupy yourself with your Catechism. And to-morrow, before breakfast, I will hear you repeat the fifth commandment, with the three following questions and the proofs thereto. After that perhaps you shall have a clearer conception of your duty to your parents, which means, in your case, those who are in charge of you." And having delivered herself thus, Aunt Catharine sailed away as majestically as she had come.
Darby flung himself about in his wrath.
"Parents indeed!" he cried, in passionate scorn. "She's not our parents! she's nobody's parent. Why, I heard Postie telling Perry the other day that the Miss Turners were both old maids when he was a kid; and people can't be old maids and parents as well! Oh, if daddy hadn't gone away, or if mother was only here!" he wailed in his dire distress. Then he buried his head in the blankets, for his feelings were too deeply wounded to find relief in words.
For a while Joan howled lustily, but by-and-by, when she had eaten her breakfast of porridge and milk, she tumbled off to sleep again, being still weary after her recent wanderings.
Darby, however, lay wide awake, feeling, now that his burst of anger had passed away, very tired of things in general, and of himself in particular. It was too dreadful, he thought, to be kept in bed on a fine day when he was quite well, only stiff and aching all over. Outside the air was balmy and still. The garden was ablaze with late dahlias, hollyhocks, and asters; and down by the tool-shed Mistress Pussy and her family would be contentedly sunning themselves beside the boxwood border—the close-clipped boxwood border, which always gave out such a strong, queer, haunting smell.
Oh dear, how tiresome it all was, and what a pity a fellow could not sometimes do as he liked without being called naughty and then punished! Should life always be like that, Darby wondered. Surely not, he told himself, or else he felt that already he had had about enough of it. But he did not believe things were quite the same with other children. They were different for him and Joan, because daddy was abroad and mother dead. If they had only not been left at Firgrove with Aunt Catharine! There were plenty of pleasant places in the world besides Firgrove. Could not he and Joan go away somewhere, just themselves together, where they would want only to be good, because there should be no temptation to be naughty; where there should be no Catechism, no Aunt Catharine, and no more punishment, especially putting to bed, which was Darby's detestation? He really wished to be obedient, this little lad of seven years old, and tried very hard to remember everything he was told. But forgetting comes easy; consequently he was frequently in trouble. He was often good for days together—quite good, as Joan said. But the difficulty with Darby, as with older folk, was not the being good, but the keeping good.
For a long time the boy lay pondering some of the problems of life which from the beginning have puzzled many a wiser head than his. But Darby did not know that he was only going over a well-beaten track. He just knew that he was wishful of finding some pleasant spot where, without effort or trouble, he could be happy after his own fashion, untrammelled and untroubled by restrictions or consequences.