ing, "it's a ranch, and it has
to be big, as I said, for the horses."

"How big?" demanded Judith, still thinking of the farms she had seen in
Ontario and Quebec.

"We had twenty-five thousand acres last year, but Dad has leased another
ten thousand on the other side of the river. Oh, Judy, my dear, if ever
you come to the West I'll show you what real fun is! Sometimes I ride
all day--and such riding! I've a gem of a little mare--Patsy's her
name--she's as good a chum as I ever had until I came here last year.
Aren't mothers bricks?" she added with a little catch in her voice.
"Mother really needs me, but she just insisted on my coming--she taught
me in her spare time until I came here last year, and because spare time
wasn't plentiful there are big gaps in what I know, and as I'm stupid to
begin with, the lessons sometimes seem so hard that I just want to give
up and run home. But of course I'm not going to," she finished, laughing
at Judith's sober face; "that _would_ be a poor way to say 'thank you'
to my blessed little mother. What are you going to be to-night?"

"A Colonial lady from Virginia," answered Judith superbly.

"Good--isn't that funny? I'm going to be be a Virginian Colonel. Let's
be partners. Molly was to be mine, but she certainly can't go with a
sprained ankle. We'd better get busy--there isn't much time left." And
Josephine disappeared into her own cubicle where Judith could hear her
opening and closing drawers and singing in her funny boyish voice their
new nonsense song:

"Of all the ships that sail on land,
There's none like 'Jolly Susan.'
Her crew works well with heart and hand,
And sometimes they're amusin'."

Sally May and Jane whirled into the "Jolly Susan" like small hurricanes
in time to sing the verse over again, and then the snatches of talk she
could hear told Judith that her neighbours were thoroughly enjoying the
fascinating business of dressing up, and had evidently forgotten all
about her.

Perhaps it was a little reaction after several weeks of new and exciting
experiences; perhaps Josephine's reference to mothers being "bricks";
whatever it was Judith felt lonely and homesick. She didn't know how to
make her costume; she didn't think of Sally May, and she hated to
confess to Josephine--to whom, it must be confessed, she had always felt
a little superior--that she hadn't a ghost of a notion how to make, out
of nothing at all, the dress of a