u and fishing, too."

"I'll sit still as _two_ mice. Needn't think o' me!" answered the
little one proudly. Did Judy think she was little like that? Just
because she hadn't legs that would go! They didn't need to go, did
they, out here in the middle of the sea!

"What makes it look so ripply an' bubbly out there?" she questioned
with grown-up dignity. Judy should see she could sit still and talk
like anybody.

"Where?" asked Judith absently. She did not take the trouble to
follow the little pointing finger with her eyes.

"_There_--why don't you look? It's all pretty an' ripply an' kind of
queer. Doesn't look like plain water 'xactly. Look, Judy--why don't
you?"

"I am looking now--Oh, Oh, wait! It looks like--Blossom, I believe it's
a school! That's the way the water always loo--Blossom, Blossom, do
you hear me, it's a school! A school of mackerel--a _school_, I tell
you!"

"Well, you needn't keep on a-telling me." Blossom, anyway, was calm.
"I'm not deaf o' hearing, am I? If it's a school, le's us go right
straight out there an' fish it up, Judy."

Judy was going right straight out there with all the strength of her
powerful young arms. She was not calm; her face was quivering with
excitement and joy. A school! A school! Oh, but that meant so much
for the Blossom-fund, to put away in the stocking in the bureau
drawer! If it should prove a big school--but she and Blossom could not
manage a big one, never in the world. If Jemmy Thr--no, no, not Jemmy
Three! This was not Jemmy Three's school--what had he to do with it?

In all the stress and excitement of sending the old dory out there
where the water was rippling its news to her, Judy had time to think
of several things. She had time to remember how she and Jem Three had
used, from the time they were little brown things in pinafores, to
plan about their first school o' mackerel--what they would do with all
the wealth it should bring them, how they would share it together,
how they would pull in the silvery, glistening fellows, side by side.
What plans--what plans they had made! They had practiced a shrill,
piercing call that was to summon the one of them who should happen to
be absent when the "school" was descried out there in the bay. Even
lately, big and old as they had grown, they had laughingly reviewed
that call. Now--this minute--if Judith were to utter it, piercing and
far-carrying and jubilant, perhaps Jemmy Three might hear and come
plowing through