self together, brought up the rear.

Afterwards Judy only had a very indistinct remembrance of what
happened during the next half-hour. She knew there was a stormy
scene, in which Esther and the whole family came in for an
immense amount of vituperation.

Then Pip received a thrashing, in spite of Judy's persistent avowal
that it was all her fault, and Pip hadn't done anything. She
remembered wondering whether she would be treated as summarily as
Pip, so angry was her father's face as he pushed the boy aside
and stood looking at her, riding whip in hand. But he flung
it, down and laid a heavy hand on her shrinking shoulder.

"Next Monday," he said slowly--"next Monday morning you will
go to boarding school. Esther, kindly see Helen's clothes are
ready for boarding school--next Monday morning."

CHAPTER V

"Next Monday Morning"

There was a trunk standing in the hall, and a large, much-travelled
portmanteau, and there were labels on them that said: "Miss Helen
Woolcot, The Misses Burton, Mount Victoria."

In the nursery breakfast was proceeding spasmodically. Meg's
blue eyes were all red and swollen with crying, and she was still
sniffing audibly as she poured out the coffee. Pip had his hands
in his pockets and stood on the hearthrug, looking gloomily at a
certain plate, and refusing breakfast altogether; the General was
crashing his own mug and plate joyously together; and Bunty
was eating bread and butter in stolid silence.

Judy, white-faced and dry-eyed, was sitting at the table, and Nell
and Baby were clinging to either arm. All the three days between
that black Thursday and this doleful morning she had been obstinately
uncaring. Her spirits had never seemed higher, her eyes brighter,
her tongue sharper, than during that interval of days; and she had
pretended to everyone, and her father, that she especially thought
boarding school must be great fun, and that she should enjoy it
immensely.

But this morning she had collapsed altogether. All the time before,
her hot childish heart had been telling her that her father could
not really be so cruel, that he did not really mean to send her
away among strangers, away from dear, muddled old Misrule and all
her sisters and brothers; he was only saying it to frighten her,
she kept saying to herself, and she would show him she was not
a chickenhearted baby.

But on Sunday night, when she saw a trunk carried downstairs
and filled with her thing