He burst into Meg's bedroom like a whirlwind. "She's in the old shed, Meg, and I'm not sure, but I think she's gone mad; and I've had the awfullest beating, and got nearly killed with the cactus for her, and never told anything. She can't eat the corned beef, either, after all. She's run away—and oh, I'm sure she's mad!"
Meg lifted a pale, startled face from the pillows. "Who on earth—what—"
"Judy," he said, and burst into excited sobs. "She's in the shed, and I think she's mad!"
Meg got slowly out of bed, huddled on some clothes, and even then utterly disbelieving the wild story, went downstairs with him.
In the hall they met their father, who was just going out.
"Are you better?" he said to Meg. "You should have stayed in bed all day; however, perhaps the air will do you more good."
"Yes," she said mechanically.
"I'm going out for the rest of the day; indeed, I don't expect either Esther or myself will be back till to-morrow morning."
"Yes," repeated Meg.
"Don't let the children blow the house up, and take care of yourself—oh! and send Bunty to bed without any tea—he's had enough for one day, I'm sure."
"Yes," said the girl again, only taking in the import of what the last pledged her to when Bunty whispered a fierce "Sneak!" at her elbow.
Then the dogcart rattled up; and the Captain went away, to their unspeakable relief.
"Now what is this mad story?" Meg said, turning to her small brother. "I suppose it's one of your untruths, you bad little boy."
"Come and see,"' Bunty returned, and he led the way through the paddocks. Half-way down they met Pip and Nell, returning earlier than expected from the fishing expedition. Nellie looked sad, and was walking at a respectful distance behind her brother.
"You might as well take a phonograph with you as Nellie," he said, casting a look of withering scorn on that delinquent. "She talked the whole time, and didn't give me a chance of a bite."
"Judy's home," said Bunty, almost bursting with the importance of his knowledge. "No one's seen her but me; I've nearly got killed with climbing up cactuses and into windows and things, and I've had thrashings from Father and everything, but I never told a word, did I, Meg? I've got her up in the shed here, and I went and got corned beef and everything just you look at my legs:"
He displayed his scars proudly, but Meg hurried on, and Pip and Nell followed in blank amazement. At the shed they stopped.
"It's a yarn of Bunty's," Pip said contemptuously. "'Tisn't April the first yet, my son."
"Come and see," Bunty returned, swarming up. Pip followed, and gave a low cry; then Meg and Nell, with rather more difficulty, scrambled up, and the scene was complete.
The delirium had passed, and Judy was lying with wide-open eyes gazing in a tired way at the rafters.
She smiled up at them as they gathered round her. "If Mahomet won't come to the mountain," she said, and then coughed for two or three minutes.
"What have you been doing, Ju, old girl?" Pip said, with an odd tremble in his voice. The sight of his favourite sister, thin, hollow-checked, exhausted, was too much for his boyish manliness. A moisture came to his eyes.
"How d'you come, Ju?" he said, blinking it away.
And the girl gave her old bright look up at him. "Sure and they keep no pony but shank's at school," she said; "were you afther thinkin' I should charter a balloon?"
She coughed again.
Meg dropped down on her knees and put her arms round her little thin sister.
"Judy," she cried, "oh, Judy, Judy! my dear, my dear!"
Judy laughed for a little time, and called her an old silly, but she soon broke down and sobbed convulsively. "I'm so hungry," she said, at last pitifully.
They all four, started up as though they would fetch the stores of Sydney to satisfy her. Then Meg sat down again and lifted the rough, curly head on her lap.
"You go, Pip," she said, "and bring wine and a glass, and in the meat-safe there's some roast chicken; I had it for my lunch, and Martha said she would put the rest there till tea; and be quick, Pip."
"My word!" said Pip to himself, and he slipped down and flew across to the house.
"Uponmy word!" said Martha, meeting him in the hall five minutes later, a cut-glass decanter under his arm, a wineglass held in his teeth by the stem, a dish of cold chicken in his hand, and bread and butter in a little stack beside the chicken. "Upon my word! And what next, might I ask?"
"Oh, shut up, and hang your grandmother!" said Pip, brushing past her, and going a circuitous voyage to the shed lest she should be watching.
He knelt down beside his little sister and fed her with morsels of chicken and sips of wine, and stroked her wild hair, and called her old girl fifty times, and besought her to eat just a little more and a little more.
And Judy, catching the look in the brown, wet eyes above her, ate all he offered, though the first mouthful nearly choked her; she would have eaten it had it been elephant's hide, seeing she loved this boy better than anything else in the world, and he was in such distress. She was the better for it, too, and sat up and talked quite naturally after a little time.
"You shouldn't have done t you shouldn't really, you know, old girl, and what the governor will say to you beats me."
"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."
Meg smoothed the dusty, tangled confusion of her hair.
"But you can't live out here for the week," she said, in a troubled voice. "You've got a horrid cough with sleeping outside, and I'm sure you're ill. We shall have to tell Father about it. I'll beg him not to send you back, though."
Judy started up, her eyes aflame.
"If you do," she said—"if you do, I will run away this very night, and walk to Melbourne, or Jerusalem, and never see any of you again! How can you, Meg! After I've done all this just so he wouldn't know! Oh, how CAN you?"
She was working herself up into a strong state of excitement.
"Why, I should be simply packed back again tomorrow—you know I would, Meg. Shouldn't I now, Pip? And get into a fearful row at school into the bargain. My plan is beautifully simple. After I've had a week's fun here with you I shall just go back—you can all lend me some money for the train. I shall just meet Marian at Katoomba on the 25th; we shall both go back to school together, and no one will be a bit the wiser. My cough's nothing; you know I often do get coughs at home, and they never hurt me. As long as you bring me plenty to eat, and stay with me, I'll be all right."
The rest and food and home faces had done much already for her; her face looked less pinched, and a little more wholesome colour was creeping slowly into her cheeks.
Meg had an uncomfortable sense of responsibility, and the feeling that she ought to tell someone was strong upon her; but she was overruled by the others in the end.
"You couldn't be so mean, Meg," Judy had said warmly, when she had implored to be allowed to tell Esther.
"Such a blab!" Bunty had added. "Such an awful sneak!" Pip had said.
So Meg held her tongue, but was exceedingly unhappy.
On the fourth day of Judy's residence in the loft, Martha Tomlinson remarked to her fellow-servant and sufferer, Bridget, that she believed them blessed children were in a conspiracy to put her "over the river."
Bridget's digestion was impaired that morning, and she merely remarked that she supposed the dear little things only felt a desire to see her in her proper place.
I should explain to you, perhaps, that "over the river" meant Gladesville, which is Sydney's Colney Hatch.
Many things had led the unhappy Martha to a belief in this conspiracy. For instance, when she went to make Pip's bed as usual one morning all the bedclothes had gone. The white counterpane was spread smoothly over the mattress, but there was absolutely no trace of the blankets, sheets, and pillows. She hunted in every possible and impossible place, questioned the children, and even applied to Esther, but the missing things could not be found.
"There's a man in corduroy trousers hanging round here every night," Pip said, gloomily regarding his stripped bed. "I shouldn't wonder if he had something to do with it."
Which suggestion was distinctly unkind, seeing the man in corduroy trousers was Martha's most ardent and favoured admirer.
The next day the washing basin in Meg's room went, and after that a chair from the nursery, and a strip of carpet from the top landing, not to mention such small things as a teapot, a spirit-lamp, cups and plates, half a horn, and a whole baking of gingerbread nuts.
The losses preyed upon Martha, for the things seemed to disappear while the children were in bed; and though she suspected them, and watched them continually, she could get no clear proof of their guilt, nor even find any motive for them abstracting such things.
And after the disappearance of each fresh article, Pip used to ask whether the corduroy-trousered gentleman had been to the house the night before. And as it always happened, that he had, Martha could do nothing but cast a wrathful glance at the boy and flounce from the room.
One night the little chess-table from the nursery was spirited away.
Pip fell upon Martha's neck the next morning early, as she was sweeping the carpet, and affected to be dissolved in tears.
"'We never prize the violet,'" he said, in broken tones. "Ah! Martha, Martha! we never felt what a treasure we had in you till now, when your days with us are numbered."
"Get along with you," she said, hitting out at him with the broom handle. "And I ain't a-goin' to leave, so don't you think it. You'd have it your own way then too much. No; you don't get shut of Martha Tomlinson just yet, young man."
"But won't he be wanting you, Martha?" he said gently. "His furnishing must be nearly finished now. He's not taken a saucepan yet, nor a flat-iron, I know; but there's everything else, Martha; and I don't mind telling you in confidence I'm thinking of giving you a flat-iron myself as a wedding present, so you needn't wait till he comes for that."
"Get out with you!" said Martha again, thrusting the broom-head right into his face, and nearly choking him with dust. "It's a limb of the old gentleman himself you are."
Away in the loft things were getting very comfortable.
A couple of rugs hung on the walls kept out the draught. Judy's bed, soft and warm, was in a corner; she had a chair to sit in, a table to eat at, even a basin in which to perform her ablutions. And she had company all day; and nearly always all night. Once Meg had stolen away, after fastening her bedroom door, and had shared the bed in the loft; once Nellie had gone, and the other night Pip had taken a couple of blankets and made himself a shakedown among the straw. They used to pay her visits at all hours of the day, creeping up the creaking ladder one after the other, whenever they could get away unnoticed.
The governess had, as it happened, a fortnight's holiday, to nurse a sick mother, so the girls and Bunty had no demands on their time. Pip used to go to school late and come back early, cajoling notes of excuse, whenever, possible, out of Esther. He even played the truant once, and took a caning for it afterwards quite good-humouredly.
Judy still looked pale and tired, and her cough was rather troublesome; but she was fast getting her high spirits back, and was enjoying her adventure immensely.
The only drawback was the cribbed, cabined, and confined space of the loft.
"You will HAVE to arrange things so that I can go for a run," she said one morning, in a determined manner. "My legs are growing shorter, I am sure, with not exercising them. I shall have forgotten how to walk by the end of the week."
Pip didn't think it could be done; Meg besought her to run no risks; but Bunty and Nell were eager for it.
"Meg could talk to Father," Bunty said, "and Pip could keep teasing General till Esther would be frightened to leave the room, and then me and Judy would nick down and have a run, and get back before you let them go."
Judy shook her head.
"That would be awfully stale," she said. "If I go, I shall stay down some time. Why shouldn't we have a picnic down at the river?"
"Oh, yes, let's!" Bunty cried, with sparkling eyes.
"I'm sure we could manage it especially as it's Saturday, and Pip hasn't to go to school," Judy continued, thinking it rapidly out. "Two of you could go and get some food. Tell Martha you are all going for a picnic—she'll be glad enough not to have dinner to set—then you go on. Two others can watch if the coast's clear while I get down and across the paddocks, and once we're at the corner of the road we're safe."
It seemed feasible enough, and in a very short time the preparations were all made. Pip was mounting guard at the shed, and had undertaken to get Judy safely away, and Bunty had been stationed on the back veranda to keep cave and whistle three times if there was any danger.
He was to wait for a quarter of an hour by the kitchen clock, and then, if all was well, to bring the big billy and a bread loaf, and catch the others up on the road.
It was slow work waiting there, and he stood on one leg, like a meditative fowl, and reviewed the events of the last few exciting days.
He had a depressed feeling at his heart, but why he could hardly tell. Perhaps it was the lie he had told his father, and which was still unconfessed, because the horse was seriously lame, and his courage oozed away every time he thought of that riding-whip.
Perhaps it was the reaction after the great excitement. Or it may have been a rankling sense of injustice at the small glory his brave deeds on Judy's behalf evoked from the others. They did not seem to attach any importance to them, and, indeed, laughed every time he alluded to them or drew public attention to his scars. Two or three of the scratches on his legs were really bad ones, and while he was standing waiting he turned down his stockings and gazed at these with pitying eyes and something like a sob in his throat.
"Nobody cares!" he muttered, and one of his ever-ready tears fell splashing down on one extended bare leg. "Judy likes Pip best, and he never climbed the cactus; Meg thinks I tell stories; and Nellie says I'm a greedy pig—nobody cares!"
Another great fat tear gathered and fell. "Have you taken root there?" a voice asked.
His father, smoking at the open french window, had been watching him, and marvelling at his rare and exceeding quietness.
Bunty started, guiltily, and pulled up his stockings.
"I'm not doin' nothin'," he said aggrievedly, after a minute's pause. Bunty always lapsed into evil grammar when agitated. "Nothing at all. I'm goin' to a picnic."
"Ah, indeed!" said the Captain. "You looked as if you were meditating on some fresh mischief, or sorrowing over some old—which was it?"
Bunty turned a little pale, but remarked again he "wasn't doin' nothin'."
The Captain felt in a lazy, teasing mood, and his little fat, dirty son, was the only subject near.
"Suppose you come here and confess every bit of mischief you've done this week," he said gravely. "I've the whole morning to spare, and it's time I saw to your morals a little."
Bunty approached the arm of the chair indicated, but went whiter than ever.
"Ah, now we're comfortable. Well, there was stealing from the pantry on Tuesday—that's one," he said, encouragingly. "Now then."
"I n—n—never did n—nothin' else," Bunty gasped. He felt certain it was all over with him, and the cricket ball episode was discovered. He even looked nervously round to see if the riding-whip was near. Yes, there was Esther's silver-topped one flung carelessly on a chair. He found time to wish fervently Esther was a tidy woman.
"Nothing at all, Bunty? On your word?" said his father, in an impressive tone.
"I was p—playin' marbles," he said, in a shaking voice. "How c—c—could I have sh—shot anything at y—y—your old horse?"
"Horse—ah!" said his father. A light broke upon him, and his face grew stern. "What did you throw at Mazeppa to lame him? Answer me at once."
Bunty gave a shuddering glance at the whip.
"N-n-nothin'," he answered—"n—nothin' at all. My c—c—cricket b—ball was up in the st—st—stables. I was only p—p—playin' marbles." The Captain gave him a little shake.
"Did you lame Mazeppa with the cricket ball?" he said sternly.
"N—n—no I n—never," Bunty whispered, white to the lips. Then semi-repentance came to him, and he added: "It just rolled out of my p—p—pocket, and M—Mazeppa was passing and h—h—hit his l-leg on it."
"Speak the truth, or I'll thrash you within an inch of your life," the Captain said, standing up, and seizing Esther's whip: "Now then, sir—was it you lamed Mazeppa?"
"Yes," said Bunty, bursting into a roar of crying, and madly dodging the whip.
Then, as the strokes descended on his unhappy shoulders, he filled the air with his familiar wail of "'Twasn't me, 'twasn't my fault!"
"You contemptible young cur!" said his father, pausing a moment when his arm ached with wielding the whip. "I'll thrash this mean spirit of lying and cowardice out of you, or kill you in the attempt." Swish, swish. "What sort of a man do you think you'll make?" Swish, swish. "Telling lies just to save your miserable skin!" Swish, swish, swish, swish.
"You've killed me—oh, you've killed me! I know you have!" yelled the wretched child, squirming all over the floor. "'Twasn't me, 'twasn't my fault—hit the others some."
Swish, swish, swish. "Do you think the others would lie so contemptibly? Philip never lied to me. Judy would cut her tongue out first." Swish, swish, swish. "Going to a picnic, are you? You can picnic in your room till to-morrow's breakfast." Swish, swish, swish. "Pah—get away with you!"
Human endurance could go no further. The final swish had been actual agony to his smarting, quivering shoulders and back. He thought of the others, happy and heedless, out in the sunshine, trudging merrily off to the river, without a thought of what he was bearing, and his very heart seethed to burst in the hugeness of its bitterness and despair. "Judy's home!" he said, in a choking, passionate voice. "She lives in the old shed in the cow, paddock. Boo, hoo, hoo! They're keepin' it secret from you. Boo, hoo. She's gone to the picnic, and she's run away from school."
The captain was walking slowly across the paddocks with the cabbage-tree hat he kept for the garden pushed back from his brow. He was rather heated after his tussle with his second son, and there was a thoughtful light in his eyes. He did not believe the truth of Bunty's final remark, but still he considered there was sufficient probability in it to make a visit to the shed not altogether superfluous.
Not that he expected, in any case, to find his errant daughter there, for had not Bunty said there was a picnic down at the river? But he thought, there might be some trace or other.
The door of the shed swung back on its crazy hinges, and the sunlight streamed in and made a bar of glorified dust across the place.
There was no sign of habitation here, unless a hair ribbon of Meg's and some orange peel, might be considered as such.
He saw the shaky, home-made ladder, resting against the hole in the ceiling, and though he had generally more respect for his neck than his children had for theirs, he ventured his safety upon it. It creaked ominously as he reached the top step and crawled through into the loft.
There were a ham-bone, a box of dominoes, and a burst pillow this side of the partition, nothing else, so he walked across and looked over.
"Very cosy," he murmured, "I shouldn't mind camping here myself for a little time," and it even came into his head to do so, and be there as a "surprise party" when Judy returned. But he dismissed the idea as hardly compatible with dignity. He remembered hearing rumours of missing furniture in the house, and almost a smile came into his eyes as he saw the little old table with the spirit-lamp and teapot thereon, the bed-clothing and washing-basin. But a stern look succeeded it. Were seventy-seven miles not sufficient obstacle to Judy's mischievous plans? How did she dare thus to defy him, a child of thirteen: and he her father? His lips compressed ominously, and he went down again and strode heavily back to the house.
"Esther!" he called, in a vibrating voice at the foot of the stairs.
And "Coming, dear—half a minute," floated down in response.
Half a minute passed ten times, and then she came, the beautiful young mother with her laughing-faced wee son in her arms. Her eyes looked so tender; and soft, and loving that he turned away impatiently; he knew quite well how it would be; she would beg and entreat him to forgive his little daughter when she heard, and when she looked as bright and beautiful as she did just now he could refuse her nothing.
He stood in profound meditation for a minute or two.
"What is it you want, John?" she said. "Oh! and what do you think? I have just found another tooth, a double one—come and look."
He came, half unwillingly, and stuck his little finger into his infant son's mouth.
Esther guided it till it felt a tiny, hard substance. "The third," she said proudly; "aren't you pleased?"
"Hum!" he said. Then he meditated a little longer, and after a minute or two rubbed his hands as if he was quite pleased with himself.
"Put on your hat, Esther, and the General's," he said, patting that young gentleman's head affectionately. "Let us go down to the river for a stroll; the children are down there picnicking, so we can be sure of some tea."
"Why, yes, that will be very nice," she said, "won't it Bababsie, won't it, sweet son?"
She called to Martha, who was dusting the drawing-room in a cheerfully blind way peculiarly hers.
"The General's hat, please, Martha, the white sun-hat with strings; it's on my bed, I think, or a chair or somewhere—oh! and bring down my large one with the poppies in, as well, please."
Martha departed, and, after a little search, returned with the headgear.
And Esther tied the white sun-hat over her own curly, crinkly hair, and made the General crow with laughing from his seat on the hall table. And then she popped it on the Captain's head, and put the cabbage-tree on her son's, and occupied several minutes thus in pretty play.
Finally they were ready, and moved down the hall.
"Master Bunty is locked in his room; on no account open the door, Martha," was the Captain's last command.
"Oh, Jack!" Esther said reproachfully.
"Oblige me by not interfering," he said; "allow me a little liberty with my own children, Esther. He is an untruthful little vagabond; I am ashamed to own him for my son."
And Esther, reflecting on the many shiftinesses of her stepson, was able to console herself with the hope that it would do him good.
They went a shortcut through the bush to avoid the public road, and the blue, sun-kissed, laughing river stretched before them.
"There they are," Esther cried, "in the old place, as usual, look at the fire, little sweet son; see the smoke, boy bonny—four—five of them. Why, who have they got with them?" she said in surprise, as they drew nearer the group on the grass.
Before they were close enough to recognize faces the circle suddenly seemed to break up and fall apart.
One of its members turned sharply round and fled away across the grass, plunging into the thick bracken and bush, and disappearing from sight in less time than it takes to tell.
"Whoever had you with you?" Esther said when they reached the children.
There was a half-second's silence, then Pip threw some sticks on the fire and said coolly:
"Only a friend of Meg's, a frightened kind of kid who has quite a dread of the pater. I believe she imagines soldiers go round with their swords sharpened, ready for use."
He laughed lightly. Nell joined in in a little hysterical way, and Baby began to cry.
Meg, white as death, picked her up and hurriedly began telling her the story of the three bears for comfort.
Esther looked a little puzzled, but, of course, never dreamt of connecting the flying figure with Judy.
And the Captain seemed delightfully blind and unsuspicious. He lay down on the grass and let the General swarm all over him; he made jokes with Esther; he told several stories of his young days, and never even seemed to remark that his audience seemed inattentive and constrained.
"Haven't you made some tea?" Esther said at last. "We love billy tea, and thought you would be sure to have some?"
"Bunty hasn't come, he was to have brought the billy," Pip said, half sulkily. He had suspicions that there was something behind this great affability of his father, and he objected to being played with.
"Ah," the Captain said gravely, "that is unfortunate. When I came away Bunty did not seem very well, and was thinking of spending the rest of the day in his bedroom."
Pip made up the fire in a dogged way, and Meg flashed a frightened glance at her father, who smiled affectionately back at her.
After an hour of this strained intercourse the Captain proposed a return home.
"It is growing chill," he said. "I should be grieved for the General's new-born tooth to start its life by aching—let's go home and make shift with teapot tea."
So they gathered up the untouched baskets and made themselves into a procession.
The Captain insisted on Pip and Meg walking with him, and he sent Baby and Nell on in front, one on either side of Esther, who was alternately leading and carrying the General.
This arrangement being, as indeed Pip shrewdly suspected; to prevent the possibility of any intercourse or formation of new plans.
And when they got home he invited them all to come into his smoking-room, a little slit of a place off the dining-room.
Esther took the General upstairs, but the others followed him in silence.
"Sit down, Pip, my boy," he said genially. "Come, Meg, make yourself at home, take a seat in that armchair. Nell and Baby can occupy the lounge."
They all sat down helplessly where he told them, and watched his face anxiously.
He selected a pipe from the row over the mantelpiece, fitted a new mouthpiece to it, and carefully filled it.
"As you are all in possession of my room," he said in an urbane voice, "I can hardly smoke with any comfort here, I am afraid. I will come and talk to you again later on. I am going to have a pipe first in the old loft in the cow paddock. Keep out of mischief till I come back."
He struck a match, lighted his tobacco, and, without a glance at the silent children, left the room, locking the door behind him.
Once more he crossed the paddocks, and once more pushed open the creaking door. The orange peel lay just where he had seen it before, only it was a little drier and more dead-looking. The hair ribbon was in exactly the same knot. The ladder creaked in just the same place, and again threatened to break his neck when he reached the top. The dominoes were there still, the ham-bone and the pillow occupied the same places; the only difference being the former had a black covering of ants now, and a wind had been playing with the pillow, and had carried the feathers in all directions.
He crossed the floor, not softly, but just with his usual measured military-step. Nothing moved. He reached the partition and looked over.
Judy lay across the improvised bed, sleeping a sleep of utter exhaustion after her rapid flight from the river. She had a frock of Meg's on, that made her look surprisingly long and thin; he was astonished to think she had grown so much.
"There will be no end to my trouble with her as she grows older," he said, half aloud, feeling extremely sorry for himself for being her father. Then a great anger and irritation rose within him as he watched her sleeping so quietly there. Was she always to be a disturber of his peace? Was she always to thwart him like this?
"Judy," he said in a loud voice.
The closed eyelids sprang open, the mist of sleep and forgetfulness cleared from the dark eyes, and she sprang up, a look of absolute horror on her face.
"What are you doing here, may I ask?" he said, very coldly.
The scarlet colour flooded her cheeks, her very brow, and then dropped down again, leaving her white to the lips, but she made no answer.
"You have run away from school, I suppose?" he continued, in the same unemotional voice. "Have you anything to say?"
Judy did not speak or move, she only watched his face with parted lips.
"Have you anything to say for yourself, Helen?" he repeated.
"No, Father," she said.
Her face had a worn, strained look that might have touched him at another time, but he was too angry to notice.
"No excuse or reason at all?"
"No, Father."
He moved toward the opening. "A train goes in an hour and a half, you will come straight back with me this moment," he said, in an even voice. "I shall take precautions to have you watched at school since you cannot be trusted. You will not return home for the Christmas holidays, and probably not for those of the following June."
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.
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.
Meg, who had almost severed her connection with Aldith, devoted herself to her sister, and waited on her hand and foot; she made her all kinds of little presents—a boot-bag, with compartments; a brush-and-comb bag, with the monogram "J.W.," worked in pink silk; a little work-basket, with needle-book, pin-cushion, and all complete. Judy feared she should be compelled to betake herself to tidy habits on her recovery.
Her pleasure in the little gifts started a spirit of competition among the others.
For one whole day Pip was invisible, but in the evening he turned up, and walked to the bedside with a proud face. He had constructed a little set of drawers, three of which actually opened under skilful coaxing.
"It's not for doll-clothes," he said, after she had exhausted all the expressions of gratitude in common use, "because I know you hate them, but you can keep all your little things in them, you see—hair strings, and thimbles, and things."
There was a sound of dragging outside the door and presently Bunty came in backward, lugging a great, strange thing.
It seemed to be five or six heavy pieces of board nailed together haphazard.
"It's a chair," he explained, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. "Oh! I'm going to put some canvas across it, of course, so you won't fall through; but I thought I'd show it you first."
Judy's eyes smiled, but she thanked him warmly. "I wasn't goin' to make any stupid thing, like Pip did," the small youth continued, looking deprecatingly at the little drawers. "This is really useful, you see; when you get up you can sit on it, Judy, by the fire and read or sew or something. You like it better 'n Pip's, don't you?"
Judy temporized skilfully, and averted offence to either by asking them to put the presents with all the others near the head of the bed.
"What a lot of things you'll have to take back to school, Ju," Nell said, as she added her contribution in the shape of a pair of crochet cuffs and a doll's wool jacket.
But Judy only flashed her a reproachful glance, and turned her face to the wall for the rest of the evening.
That was what had been hanging over her so heavily all this long fortnight in bed—the thought of school in the future.
"What's going to happen to me when I get better, Esther?" she asked next morning, in a depressed way, when her stepmother came to see her. "Is he saving up a lot of beatings for me? And shall I have to go back the first week?"
Esther reassured her.
"You won't go back this quarter at all, very likely not next either, Judy dear. He says you shall go away with some of the others for a change till you get strong; and, between you and me, I think its very unlikely you, will go back ever again."
With this dread removed, Judy mended more rapidly, surprising even the doctor with her powers of recuperation.
In three weeks she was about the house again, thin and great-eyed, but full of nonsense and even mischief once more. The doctor's visits ceased; he said she had made a good recovery so far, but should have change of surroundings, and be taken a long way from sea air.
"Let her run wild for some months, Woolcot," he said at his last visit; "it will take time to quite shake off all this and get her strength and flesh back again."
"Certainly, certainly; she shall go at once," the Captain said.
He could not forget the shock he had received in the old loft five or six weeks ago, and would have agreed if he had been bidden to take her for a sojourn in the Sahara.
The doctor had told him the mischief done to her lungs was serious.
"I won't say she will ultimately die of consumption," he had said, "but there is always a danger of that vile disease in these nasty cases. And little Miss Judy is such a wild, unquiet subject; she seems to be always in a perfect fever of living, and to possess a capacity for joy and unhappiness quite unknown to slower natures. Take care of her, Woolcot, and she'll make a fine woman some day—ay, a grand woman."
The Captain smoked four big cigars in the solitude of his study before he could decide how he could best "take care of her."
At first he thought he would send her with Meg and the governess to the mountains for a time, but then there was the difficulty about lessons for the other three. He might send them to school, or engage a governess certainly, but then again there was expense to be considered.
It was out of the question for the girls to go alone, for Meg had shown herself nothing but a silly little goose, in spite of her sixteen years; and Judy needed attention. Then he remembered Esther, too, was, looking unwell; the nursing and the General together had been too much for her, and she looked quite a shadow of her bright self. He knew he really ought to send her, too, and the child, of course.
And again the expense.
He remembered the Christmas holidays were not very far away; what would become of the house with Pip and Bunty and the two youngest girls running wild, and no one in authority? He sighed heavily, and knocked the ash from his fourth cigar upon the carpet.
Then the postman came along the drive and past the window. He poked up with a broad smile, and touched his helmet in a pleased kind of way. If almost seemed as if he knew that in one of the letters he held the solution of the problem that was making the Captain's brow all criss-crossed with frowning lines.
A fifth cigar was being extracted from the case, a wrinkle was deepening just over the left eyebrow, a twinge of something very like gout was calling forth a word or two of "foreign language," when Esther came in with a smile on her lips and an open letter in her hands.
"From Mother," she said. "Yarrahappini's a wilderness, it seems, and she wants me to go up, and take the General with me, for a few weeks."
"Ah!" he said.
It would certainly solve one of the difficulties. The place was very far away certainly, but then it was Esther's old home, and she had not seen it since her marriage. She would grow strong again there very quickly.
"Oh, and Judy, too."
"Ah-h-h!" he said.
Two of the lines smoothed themselves carefully from his brow.
"And Meg, because I mentioned she was looking pale."
The Captain placed the cigar back in the case. He forgot there was such a thing as gout.
"The invitation could not have been more opportune," he said. "Accept by all means; nothing could have been better; and it is an exceedingly healthy climate. The other children can—"
"Oh, Father expressly stipulates for Pip as well, because he is a scamp."
"Upon my word, Esther, your parents have a large enough fund of philanthropy. Anyone else included in the invitation?"
"Only Nell and Bunty and Baby. Oh, and Mother says if you can run up at any time for a few days shooting you know without her telling you how pleased she will be to see you."
"The hospitality of squatters is world-famed, but this breaks all previous records, Esther." The Captain got up and stretched himself with the air of a man released from a nightmare. "Accept by all means—every one of you. On their own heads be the results; but I'm afraid Yarrahappini will be a sadder and wiser place before the month is over."
But just how much sadder or how much wiser he never dreamed.