It was as bad as a sentence of death.  The room swam before the girl’s eyes, there was a singing and rushing in her ears.

“Come at once,” the Captain said.  Judy gave a little caught breath; it tickled her throat and she began to cough.

Such terrible coughing, a paroxysm that shook her thin frame and made her gasp for breath.  It lasted two or three minutes, though she put her handkerchief to her mouth to try to stop it.

She was very pale when it ceased, and he noticed the hollows in her cheeks for the first time.

“You had better come to the house first,” he said, less harshly, “and see if Esther has any cough stuff.”

Then in his turn he caught his breath and grew pale under his bronze.

For the handkerchief that the child had taken from her lips had scarlet, horrible spots staining its whiteness.

CHAPTER XIV The Squatter’s Invitation So

After all there was no dogcart for Judy, no mountain train, no ignominious return to the midst of her schoolfellows, no vista of weary months unmarked by holidays.

But instead, a warm, soft bed, and delicate food, and loving voices and ceaseless attention.  For the violent exertion, the scanty food, and the two nights in the open air had brought the girl to indeed a perilous pass.  One lung was badly inflamed, the doctor said; it was a mystery to him, he kept telling them, how she had kept up so long; an ordinary girl would have given in and taken to her bed long ago.  But then he was not acquainted with the indomitable spirit and pluck that were Judy’s characteristics.

“Didn’t you have any pain?” he asked, quite taken aback to find such spirits and so serious a condition together.

“H’m, in my side sometimes,” she answered carelessly.  “How long will it be before I can get up, Doctor?” She used to ask the latter question of him every morning, though, if the truth were known, she felt secretly more than a little diffident at the idea of standing up again.

There was a languor and weariness in her limbs that made her doubtful if she could run about very much, and slower modes of progressing she despised.  Besides this, there was a gnawing pain, under her arms, and the cough was agony while it lasted.

Still, she was not ill enough to lose interest in all that was going on, and used to insist upon the others telling her everything that happened outside—­who made the biggest score at cricket, what flowers were out in her own straggling patch of garden, how many eggs the fowls laid a day, how the guinea-pigs and canaries were progressing, and what was the very latest thing in clothes or boots the new retriever puppy had devoured.

And Bunty used to bring in the white mice and the blind French guinea-pig, and let them run loose over the counterpane, and Pip did most of his carpentering on a little table near, so she could see each fresh stage and suggest improvements as he went along.