e
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 certa