“Dad and Mother are coming back,” she exclaimed joyfully. “They’re on their way now. And Mother is ever so much better, Dad says. And this day week I shall see them, and go home with them. Isn’t it perfectly lovely?” But there were sudden tears in Diana’s eyes, and, in the midst of her excited talk, Rachel paused. “You’re to come and stay with me, of course,” she declared hastily. “Do you think I should be so glad if I had to say good-bye to you? Mother says she’s writing to your mother to ask her to let you stay for a month. And she will, won’t she?”
This announcement had the effect of making Diana’s face almost as joyful as Rachel’s, and during their walk that afternoon their chattering tongues never ceased. There was so much to talk about.
When Rachel had described all the delights of her country home, the farm, the garden, the river with its punt, the woods in which they could build huts of branches—the conversation turned, as usual, upon the “adventures” in which Mr. Sheston was concerned.
“There’s still another one to come, you know,” Rachel presently declared. “At least I expect so. I’ve been here six weeks now, and every seventh day it’s—happened. And there’ll be another seventh day on Wednesday.”
“I do wonder what it will be this time, don’t you?” said Diana. “It’s so exciting not knowing where it will begin. Perhaps in the British Museum again. I rather hope it will be there. It’s so jolly to go with ‘him’ just as other children go with grown-up people to the Museum, and yet to know all the time that something frightfully interesting is coming.”
“Yes, that’s just what I feel is so jolly about it,” Rachel agreed. “You go through all those rooms and you see statues and tombs and stones and things, and they all look dead, and you can’t believe the people who saw them thousands of years ago were just as much alive as we are now. Every time I go to the Museum I feel like that at first. Don’t you? And then it happens, you know. Quite suddenly. And everything that looked all dull and dead comes to be real. I hope it will begin in the Museum this time.”
It did. But before it happened, and as a last treat for her niece, Aunt Hester took both children to the circus at Olympia.
“What is Olympia?” asked Diana, suddenly, when she and Rachel, full of anticipation, were walking with Aunt Hester to the omnibus.
“It’s where the circus is held,” said Aunt Hester. “It’s a good long ride, so we must make haste.”
“But I mean what is it?” persisted Diana.