"And you'll go and beg her pardon now?"
"What's that?"
"You'll say you are sorry that you called her names."
"Would she let me out of this woom, then? and could I do just what I liked my own self?"
"I expect so; I expect she is really sorry that she had to be hard on you to-day; but you see she has got a different way of bringing up children from our own mother."
"Please, Iris, we won't talk much of our own mother—it makes me lumpy in the trof," said Diana, with a little gulp. "I'll beg her pardon, if it pleases her. I don't care—what's words? I'll go at once, and, Iris, mind me that I'm like Diana. She was a bwave lady and she shotted lots of people."
"Well, then, come along, Di; you'll be allowed to come to dinner if you beg Aunt Jane's pardon."
Di gave her hand to Iris, who took her upstairs. Here Iris washed her little sister's face and hands and brushed out her thick black hair, and kissed her on her rosebud lips, and then said:
"There is nothing I would not do, Di, to be a real little mother to you."
"All wight," answered Diana; "you just mind me now and then that I is called after the bwave lady what lived long, long ago. Is that the second gong? I'se desp'ate hungy. Let's wun downstairs, p'ease, Iris."