ire that while you are in bed you
shall occupy yourself with your Catechism. And to-morrow, before
breakfast, I will hear you repeat the fifth commandment, with the three
following questions and the proofs thereto. After that perhaps you shall
have a clearer conception of your duty to your parents, which means, in
your case, those who are in charge of you." And having delivered herself
thus, Aunt Catharine sailed away as majestically as she had come.

Darby flung himself about in his wrath.

"Parents indeed!" he cried, in passionate scorn. "_She's_ not our
parents! she's nobody's parent. Why, I heard Postie telling Perry the
other day that the Miss Turners were both old maids when he was a kid;
and people can't be old maids and parents as well! Oh, if daddy hadn't
gone away, or if mother was only here!" he wailed in his dire distress.
Then he buried his head in the blankets, for his feelings were too
deeply wounded to find relief in words.

For a while Joan howled lustily, but by-and-by, when she had eaten her
breakfast of porridge and milk, she tumbled off to sleep again, being
still weary after her recent wanderings.

Darby, however, lay wide awake, feeling, now that his burst of anger had
passed away, very tired of things in general, and of himself in
particular. It was too dreadful, he thought, to be kept in bed on a fine
day when he was quite well, only stiff and aching all over. Outside the
air was balmy and still. The garden was ablaze with late dahlias,
hollyhocks, and asters; and down by the tool-shed Mistress Pussy and her
family would be contentedly sunning themselves beside the boxwood
border--the close-clipped boxwood border, which always gave out such a
strong, queer, haunting smell.

Oh dear, how tiresome it all was, and what a pity a fellow could not
_sometimes_ do as he liked without being called naughty and then
punished! Should life always be like that, Darby wondered. Surely not,
he told himself, or else he felt that already he had had about enough of
it. But he did not believe things were quite the same with other
children. They were different for him and Joan, because daddy was abroad
and mother dead. If they had only not been left at Firgrove with Aunt
Catharine! There were plenty of pleasant places in the world besides
Firgrove. Could not he and Joan go away somewhere, just themselves
together, where they would want only to be good, because there should be
no temptation to be naughty; where