d Judy superintended, giving
sharp criticisms and ordering the arrangements of the chamber with much
peremptoriness.

"Now we must have flowers," she exclaimed. "You must go out to the
garden, and pick all the violets you can get."

"But it's very late to go out," said Babs, "and Miss Mills will be
angry."

"As if that mattered! Who cares who is angry when Hilda is coming? The
worst Miss Mills can do is to punish you, and you won't mind that when
you think about Hilda. I know where there are violets, white and blue,
on that south bank after you pass the shrubbery; you know the bank where
the bees burrow, and where we catch ladybirds in the summer; run, Babs,
do run at once and pick all you can find."

Judy's room was decorated to perfection. Judy herself lay in her white
bed, with pink roses on her cheeks, and eyes like two faintly shining
stars, and smiles coming and going on her lips, and eager words dropping
now and then from her impatient little tongue.

"What is the hour now, Aunt Marjorie? Is it really only half-past nine?"

"It is five-and-twenty to ten, Judy, and Miss Mills has gone in the fly
to the station, and your Hilda will be back, if the train is punctual,
by ten o'clock. How wonderfully well you look, my darling. I did right
after all to let you sit up in bed to wait for your dear sister."

"Yes, I am quite well, only--I hope Jasper won't come too."

"Oh, fie! my pet. You know you ought not to say that treasonable sort of
thing--Jasper is Jasper, one of the family, and we must welcome him as
such--but between ourselves, just for no one else to hear in all the
wide world, I do hope also that our dear little Hilda will come here by
herself."

Judy threw her thin arms round Aunt Marjorie's neck and gave her a
silent hug.

"I'll never breathe what you said," she whispered back in her emphatic
voice.

Babs slept peacefully in her cot at the other end of the room. The white
and blue violets lay in a tiny bowl on the little table by Judy's bed.
The rumble of wheels was heard in the avenue. Aunt Marjorie started to
her feet, and the color flew from Judy's face.

"It cannot be Hilda yet," exclaimed the aunt. "No, of course, it is the
doctor. He will say that you are better to-night, Judy."

The medical man entered the room, felt the pulse of his little patient,
looked into her eyes, and gave utterance to a few cheerful words.

"The child is much better, isn't she?" asked Aunt Marjorie, following