"Ould divil," said Mick sympathetically. "One a' the girls tould me what she done. All I got was a slap with the cane."
Jane was laughing and crying by turns. "Her two feet was up in the air, but I'm feared thon crack must 'a' split her skull."
When she was calmer Mick broke the news that Toby was not a red setter at all. "It's a wonder the polis wasn't after yez," said Andy from the other side of the car, "stealin' dogs out a' people's back yards." Jane did not mind about Toby. She said it did not matter now, for she was never going back to Miss Courtney's again. She told Lull everything that evening. Lull thought Miss Courtney would forgive her, but Jane refused to go near the hated place again. So Patsy was sent to school with Mick, and Jane went back to do lessons with Mr Rannigan.
CHAPTER XV
AN ENGLISH AUNT
No one had invited the English aunt to come over, so when a letter arrived one morning saying she would be with them that same day, and would they send the carriage to the station to meet her, everyone was surprised. The children were delighted at the thought of a visit from an unknown aunt: they had thought Aunt Mary was the only aunt they had. This strange Aunt Charlotte was their mother's sister, and, Patsy said, she was sure to bring them a present in her trunk. But Lull went about the house, getting ready a room in the nursery passage, dusting the drawing-room, and opening the windows, with a look in her eyes that was not of pleasure.
"Don't ye want Aunt Charlotte to come?" Jane asked her.
"Want her?" Lull snapped. "Why couldn't she come when she was wanted sore? What kep' her then, an' me prayin' night an' day for her?"
Jane stopped in the middle of the drawing-room floor with a soup tureen full of dog-daisies in her hands.