loveliest music, and beautiful children in white, singing hymns,
and bright colours all about, and no collection plates to take
your only threepenny bit-oh! and no sermons or litanies, of course."

"Oh, Judy!" murmured Meg, turning a leaf. Judy unclasped her
hands, and then clasped them again more tightly than before.
"Six whole tickets wasted--thirty beautiful shillings--just
because we have a father!"

"He sent them to the Digby-Smiths," Bunty volunteered, "and wrote
on the envelope, 'With compts. J. C. Woolcot.'"

Judy moaned. "Six horrid little Digby-Smiths sitting in the
theatre watching our fun with their six horrid little eyes," she
said bitterly.

Bunty, who was mathematically inclined, wanted to know why they
wouldn't look at it through their twelve horrid little eyes, and
Judy laughed and came down from the table, after expressing a
wicked wish that the little Digby-Smiths might all tumble over the
dress-circle rail before the curtain rose. Meg shut her book with
a hurried bang.

"Has Pip gone yet? Father'll be awfully cross. Oh dear, what a
head I've got!" she said. "Where's Esther? Has anyone seen Esther?"

"My DEAR Meg!" Judy said; "why, it's at least two hours since
Esther went up the drive before your very nose. She's gone to
Waverly--why, she came in and told you, and said she trusted you
to see about the coat, and you said, 'M--'m! all right.'"