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Updated: June 28, 2025
Iris felt that there was not a gleam of hope for Miss Munnion and Diana; but when at last the words came she found she was mistaken, for they were as follows: "You may go and tell Miss Munnion," said the old lady, "that the sooner she starts on this wild-goose chase the better, and that I will spare her for one week, but if she wants to stop away longer she needn't come back at all.
At any rate, though few other things changed much at Paradise Court, the companions were always coming and going, and shortly before Iris's visit a new one had arrived. Her name was Miss Munnion. Iris reached Paradise Court at five o'clock in the afternoon, after a long and dusty journey.
"Something tiresome and fantastical, I know. Ah! Iris. Well, Iris, when you want to know anything, or do anything, or go anywhere, you are to ask Miss Munnion. Never come to me with questions, or ask me `why. Miss Munnion doesn't mind being asked `why. You are here, you know, with a distinct understanding that you are not to be troublesome, and that you are to amuse yourself.
Miss Munnion looked up; she was completely altered in voice and manner; her hands trembled, her little lace head-dress was crooked; she was evidently deeply troubled. "It's my sister Diana," she said "my only sister. She is dangerously ill. She's been asking for me." "Where is she?" asked Iris. "Oh, that's the worst of it!" cried Miss Munnion.
"Now," she said, "you'd better take the letters in to my godmother and tell her all about it at once. I'll wait here till you come back." She had not to wait long, for Miss Munnion reappeared in less than five minutes shaking her head mournfully. "It's just as I thought it would be," she said. "Mrs Fotheringham thinks it's very unreasonable of me to want to go to Diana."
"It's all the way to Sunderland, right up in the north. Oh, what shall I do?" "Of course you must go to her," said Iris, with the confidence of youth. "But," said poor Miss Munnion, looking at the child without a spark of hope in her eyes, but a great longing for help and advice, "there's Mrs Fotheringham. She'll disapprove, she so dislikes being worried.
But this did not discourage her, and she became so used to her godmother's manner that it ceased to alarm her, and once she even contradicted her as bluntly as though she had been Max or Clement. Even this had no bad effect, however, for shortly afterwards Mrs Fotheringham remarked: "It's a positive relief not to have Miss Munnion here agreeing with everything I say.
She smiled contemptuously. "It's that idiotic Moore," she said. "He irritates the bees, and I don't wonder. I'm sure he irritates me." "He'll be stung," exclaimed Iris, getting up from her chair eagerly; "he'll certainly be stung!" "Yes," said Miss Munnion, laying down her knife and fork, and looking mildly round at Moore's struggles, "I'm really afraid he will."
The old lady, drowsy with the unusual heat, was just on the edge of slumber, but still partly conscious; sometimes she lost a whole page of the book at a time, then she heard a little of it, and then Miss Munnion turned into a bee and buzzed in the window. Just at this critical moment Iris banged open the door and burst into the silent room.
The old lady, with her high-bridged nose, was certainly a little like the parrot in the face, and though her eye had not the changing brilliancy of the bird's, it was quite its equal in the unblinking fixity of its gaze. "Well, child," she said, when Iris was close to her, "you must have your frocks lengthened. You look positively gawky. Shake hands with Miss Munnion. Ah, mind the parrot!
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