RUB-A-DUB.
"What am I to do, Evangeline?" said Mr. Delaney, a few moments later. He stood up as he spoke, shook himself, and gazed straight before him. It was exactly as if he were really speaking to the children's mother. Then again he buried his face in his big hands, and his strong frame shook. After a moment's pause he took up a photograph which stood near, and looked earnestly at the beautiful pictured face. The eyes, so full of truth and tenderness, seemed to answer him back. He started abruptly to his feet. "You always directed me, Evangeline," he said. "God only knows what I am to do now that you have left me. I am in some matters as weak as a reed, great, blustering fellow though I appear. And now that Jane has come—she always did bully me—now that she has come and wants to take matters into her own hands, oh, Evangeline! what is to be done? The fact is, I am not fit to manage this great house, nor the children, without you. The children are not like others; they will not stand the treatment which ordinary children receive. Oh, why has Jane, of all people, come? What am I to do?"
He paced rapidly up and down his big study; clenching his hands at times, at times making use of a strong exclamation.
The butler knocked at the door. "Dinner will be served in half an hour, sir," he said. "Am I to lay for two?"
"Yes, Johnson. Mrs. Dolman, my sister, has arrived, and will dine with me. Have places laid for two."
The man withdrew, and Mr. Delaney, stepping out through the open window, looked across the lawns which his sister had so strongly disapproved of.
"Jane was always the one to poke her finger into every pie," he said half aloud. "Certainly this place is distasteful to me now, and there is—upon my word, there is something in her suggestion. But to deliver over those four children to her, and to take them away from the garden, and the house, and the memory of their mother—oh! it cannot be thought of for a moment; and yet, to shift the responsibility while my heart is so sore would be an untold relief."
A little voice in the distance was heard shouting eagerly, and a small child, very dirty about the hands and face, came trotting up to Mr. Delaney. It was Diana. She was sobbing as well as shouting, and was holding something tenderly wrapped up in her pocket handkerchief.
"What is the matter with you, Di?" said her father. He lifted her into his arms. "Why, little woman, what can be the matter? and what have you got in your handkerchief?"
"It's Rub-a-Dub, and he is deaded," answered Diana. She unfolded the handkerchief carefully and slowly, and showed her father a small piebald mouse, quite dead, and with a shriveled appearance. "He is as dead as he can be," repeated Diana. "Look at him. His little claws are blue, and oh! his little nose, and he cannot see; he is stone dead, father."