The children searched and searched, and after a long time did actually discover the crooked and badly made bow and the blunt arrow.
"Here they is, the darlin's!" cried Diana. "My own bow, my own arrow--how I loves 'em! Now, Orion, I is going to shoot you--for pwactice, you know, and then you shall shoot me for pwactice too. You stand up there against the twee, and I'll make good shots. You don't mind if I does hurt you a bit, does you?"
"But I don't want to be shotted down dead," replied Orion.
"No, I won't go as far as that. It's only Aunt Jane and Miss Wamsay who is to be shotted dead; but you'll have to be shotted, 'cos I must pwactice how to do it."
"But couldn't you practice against the tree without me standing there?" said Orion, who had no fancy to have even this very blunt arrow directed at his face.
After some very slight persuasion Diana induced Orion to put his back up against an oak tree and to allow her to shoot at him. He quickly discovered that he had little or no cause for fear. Diana's arrows, wielded with all the cunning she possessed, from the crooked bow, never went anywhere near him. They fell on the grass and startled the birds, and one little baby rabbit ran quite away, and some squirrels looked down at the children through the thick trees; but Orion had very little chance of getting hurt.
"It's awfu' difficult," said Diana, whose face grew redder and redder with her efforts. "If it don't shoot pwoper, Aunt Jane won't get shotted to-night. What is to be done? Suppose you was to twy for a bit, Orion?"
Orion was only too anxious to accede to this proposition. He took the bow and arrow and made valiant efforts, but in the course of his endeavors to shoot properly, the badly made bow suddenly snapped in two, and Diana, in her discomfiture, and the dashing to the ground of her hopes, burst into tears.
"You is bad boy," she cried. "See what you's done. Back we goes to slav'ry--to Aunt Jane and Miss Wamsay. You is a bad, howid boy."
"I aren't," said Orion, who had a very easily aroused temper. "It's you that's a horrid little girl."
"Come, children; what's all this noise about?" said a voice in their ears.
They turned abruptly, forgetting on the instant their own cause of quarrel, and saw a tall, swarthy-looking woman coming towards them. By this time it was beginning to get dark in the wood, but they could see the figure of the woman quite distinctly. She came close to them, and then, putting her arms akimbo, surveyed them both with a certain queer expression on her face.