last objected, with an angry scream, to being suffocated. So she
flung back the clothes and got out of bed, leaving him to burrow
about among the pillows, and pull feathers out of a hole in one
of them.

She dressed in a quick nervous fashion, did her hair with more
care than usual, and then picked up the General and took him along
the passage into the nursery. All the others were here, and, with
Esther, were evidently discussing her. The three girls looked
tearful and protesting; Pip had just been brought to book for
speaking disrespectfully of his father, and was looking sullen;
and Bunty, not knowing what else to do at such a crisis, had fallen
to catching flies, and was viciously taking off their wings.

It was a wretched meal: The bell sounded for the downstairs
breakfast, and Esther had to go. Everyone offered Judy everything
on the table, and spoke gently and politely to her. She seemed
to be apart from them, a person not to be lightly treated in the
dignity of this great trouble. Her dress, too, was quite new--
a neat blue serge fresh from the dressmaker's hands; her boots
were blacked and bright, her stockings guiltless of ventilatory
chasms. All this helped to make her a Judy quite different from
the harum-scarum one of a few days back, who used to come to
breakfast looking as if her clothes had been pitchforked upon her.

Baby addressed herself to her porridge for one minute, but the
next her feelings overcame her, and, with a little wail, she rushed
round the table to Judy, and hung on her arm sobbing. This
destroyed the balance of the whole company. Nell got the other arm
and swayed to and fro in an excess of misery. Meg's tears rained