“He won’t know,” she answered quickly.  “I’d never forgive whoever told him.  I can only stay a week.  I’ve arranged it all beautifully, and I shall live here in this loft; Father never dreams of coming here, so it will be quite safe, and you can all bring me food.  And then after a week”—­she sighed heavily—­“I must go back again.”

“Did you really walk all those miles just to see us?” Pip said, and again there was the strange note in his voice.

“I got a lift or two on the way,” she said, “but I walked nearly all of it, I’ve been coming for nearly a week:” 

“How could you do it?  Where did you sleep, Judy?  What did you eat?” Meg exclaimed, in deep distress.

“I nearly forget,” Judy said; closing her eyes again.  “I kept asking for food at little cottages, and sometimes they asked me to sleep, and I had three-and-six—­that went a long way.  I only slept outside two nights, and I had my jacket then.”

Meg’s face was pale with horror at her sister’s adventure.  Surely no girl in the wide world but Judy Woolcot would have attempted such a harebrained project as walking all those miles with three-and-six in her pocket.

“How could you?” was all she could find to say.  “I hadn’t meant to walk all the way,” Judy said, with a faint mile.  “I had seven shillings in a bit of paper in my pocket, as well as the three-and-six, and I knew it would take me a long way in the train.  But then I lost it after I had started, and I didn’t believe in going back just for that, so, of course, I had to walk.”

Meg touched her cheek softly.

“It’s no wonder you got so thin,” she said.

“Won’t the Miss Buttons be raising a hue-and-cry after you?” Pip asked.  “It’s a wonder they’ve not written to the pater to say you have skedaddled.”

“Oh!  Marian and I made that all safe,” Judy said, with a smile of recollective pleasure.  “Marian’s my chum, you see, and does anything I tell her.  And she lives at Katoomba.”

“Well?” said Meg, mystified, as her sister paused.  “Well, you see, a lot of the girls had the measles, and so they sent Marian home, for fear she should get them.  And Marian’s mother asked for me to go there, too, for a fortnight; and so Miss Burton wrote and asked Father could I? and I wrote and asked couldn’t I come home instead for the time?”

“He never told us,” Meg said softly.

“No, I s’pose not.  Well, he wrote back and said ‘no’ to me and ‘yes’ to her.  So one day they put us in the train safely, and we were to be met at Katoomba.  And the thought jumped into my head as we went along:  Why ever shouldn’t I come home on the quiet?  So I told Marian she could explain to her people I had gone home instead, and that she was to be sure to make it seem all right, so they wouldn’t write to Miss Button.  And then the train stopped at Blackheath, and I jumped straight out, and she went on to Katoomba, and I came home.  That’s all.  Only, you see, as I’d lost my money there was nothing left for it but to walk.”