t's no wonder you got so thin," she said.

"Won't the Miss Buttons be raising a hue-and-cry after you?" Pip asked.
"It's a wonder they've not written to the pater to say you have
skedaddled."

"Oh! Marian and I made that all safe," Judy said, with a smile of
recollective pleasure. "Marian's my chum, you see, and does anything
I tell her. And she lives at Katoomba."

"Well?" said Meg, mystified, as her sister paused. "Well, you see,
a lot of the girls had the measles, and so they sent Marian home, for
fear she should get them. And Marian's mother asked for me to go there,
too, for a fortnight; and so Miss Burton wrote and asked Father could I?
and I wrote and asked couldn't I come home instead for the time?"

"He never told us," Meg said softly.

"No, I s'pose not. Well, he wrote back and said 'no' to me and
'yes' to her. So one day they put us in the train safely, and
we were to be met at Katoomba. And the thought jumped into my head
as we went along: Why ever shouldn't I come home on the quiet? So
I told Marian she could explain to her people I had gone home instead,
and that she was to be sure to make it seem all right, so they wouldn't
write to Miss Button. And then the train stopped at Blackheath, and
I jumped straight out, and she went on to Katoomba, and I came home.
That's all. Only, you see, as I'd lost my money there was nothing left
for it but to walk."

Meg smoothed the dusty, tangled confusion of her hair.

"But you can't live out here for the week," she said, in a troubled
voice. "You've got a horrid cough with sleeping outside, and I'm
sure you're ill. We shall have to tell Father about it. I'll beg him
not to send you back, though."

Judy started up, her eyes aflame.

"If you do," she said--"if you do, I will run away this very night,
and walk to Melbourne, or Jerusalem, and never see any of you again!
How can you, Meg! After I've done all this just so he wouldn't know!
Oh, how CAN you?"

She was working herself up into a strong state of excitement.

"Why, I should be simply packed back again tomorrow--you know I
would, Meg. Shouldn't I now, Pip? And get into a fearful row at
school into the bargain. My plan is beautifully simple. After
I've had a week's fun here with you I shall just go back--you can
all lend me some money for the train. I shall just meet Marian at
Katoomba on the 25th; we shall both go back to school together, and
no one will be a bit the wiser. My co