"Rub-a-Dub?"
"Yes; it is quite true. I found him stark dead and stiff. I has put him in the dead-house."
Iris said nothing.
"And he is to have a public funeral, isn't he?" said Diana, "and a beautiful insipcron. Do say he is, and let us have the funeral to-morrow."
"I am awfully sorry," said Iris, then; "I did love Rub-a-Dub. Yes, Di; I'll think it over. We can meet after breakfast in the dead-house and settle what to do."
"There are to be a lot of funerals to-morrow—I'm so glad," said Diana, with a chuckle.
She followed Orion into the night-nursery. He was still walking with his eyes tightly shut and went bang up against his bath, a good portion of which he spilt on the floor. This put both Fortune and the under-nurse, Susan, into a temper, and they shook him and made him cry, whereupon Diana cried in concert, and poor Iris felt a great weight resting on her heart.
"It is awfully difficult to be a mother to them all," she thought. "The usual kind of things don't seem to please them. Apollo, what is the matter? What are you thinking of?"
"I'm only wishing that I might be the real Apollo," said the boy, "and that I might get quite far away from here. Things are different here now that mother has gone, Iris. I don't like Aunt Jane Dolman a bit."
"Oh, well, she is our aunt, so I suppose it is wrong not to like her," answered Iris.