CHAPTER IV The General Sees Active Service

"My brain it teems
With endless schemes,
Both good and new."


It was a day after "the events narrated in the last chapter,"
as story-book parlance has it. And Judy, with a wrathful look in
her eyes, was sitting on the nursery table, her knees touching her
chin and her thin brown hands clasped round them.

"It's a shame," she said, "it's a burning, wicked shame!
What's the use of fathers in the world, I'd like to know!"

"Oh, Judy!" said Meg, who was curled up in an armchair, deep in
a book. But she said it mechanically, and only as a matter of
duty, being three years older than Judy.

"Think of the times we could have if he didn't live with us,"
Judy continued, calmly disregardful. "Why, we'd have fowl
three times a day, and the pantomime seven nights a week."

Nell suggested that it was not quite usual to have pantomimic
performances on the seventh day, but Judy was not daunted.

"I'd have a kind of church pantomime," she said thoughtfully--
"beautiful pictures and things about the Holy Land, and the