Judy, white-faced and dry-eyed, was sitting at the table, and Nell and Baby were clinging to either arm.  All the three days between that black Thursday and this doleful morning she had been obstinately uncaring.  Her spirits had never seemed higher, her eyes brighter, her tongue sharper, than during that interval of days; and she had pretended to everyone, and her father, that she especially thought boarding school must be great fun, and that she should enjoy it immensely.

But this morning she had collapsed altogether.  All the time before, her hot childish heart had been telling her that her father could not really be so cruel, that he did not really mean to send her away among strangers, away from dear, muddled old Misrule and all her sisters and brothers; he was only saying it to frighten her, she kept saying to herself, and she would show him she was not a chickenhearted baby.

But on Sunday night, when she saw a trunk carried downstairs and filled with her things and labelled with her name, a cold hand seemed to close about her heart.  Still, she said to herself, he was doing all this to make it seem more real,

But now it was morning, and she could disbelieve it no longer.  Esther had come to her bedside and kissed her sorrowfully, her beautiful face troubled and tender.  She had begged as she had never done before for a remission of poor Judy’s sentence, but the Captain was adamant.  It was she and she only who was always ringleader in everything; the others would behave when she was not there to incite them to mischief and go she should.  Besides, he said, it would be the making of her.  It was an excellent school he had chosen for her; the ladies who kept it were kind, but very firm, and Judy was being ruined for want of a firm hand.  Which, indeed, was in a measure true.

Judy sat bolt upright in bed at the sight of Esther’s sorrowful face.

“It’s no good, dear; there’s no way out of it,” she said gently.  “But you’ll go like a brave girl, won’t you, Ju-Ju?  You always were the sort to die game, as Pip says.”

Judy gulped down a great lump in her throat, and her poor little face grew white and drawn.

“It’s all right, Essie.  There, you go on down to breakfast,” she said, in a voice that, only shook a little; “and please leave the General, Esther; I’ll bring him down with me.”

Esther deposited her little fat son on the pillow, and with one loving backward glance went out of the door.

And Judy pulled the little lad down into her arms, and covered the bedclothes right over both their heads, and held him in a fierce, almost desperate clasp for a minute or two, and buried her face in his soft, dimpled neck, and kissed it till her dips ached.

He fought manfully against these troublesome proceedings, and at last objected, with an angry scream, to being suffocated.  So she flung back the clothes and got out of bed, leaving him to burrow about among the pillows, and pull feathers out of a hole in one of them.