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 things and labelled with her name, a cold
hand seemed to close about her heart. Still, she said to herself,
he was doing all this to make it seem more real,

But now it was morning, and she could disbelieve it no longer.
Esther had come to her bedside and kissed her sorrowfully, her
beautiful face troubled and tender. She had begged as she had
never done before for a remission of poor Judy's sentence, but
the Captain was adamant. It was she and she only who was always