backward, lugging a great, strange thing.

It seemed to be five or six heavy pieces of board nailed together
haphazard.

"It's a chair," he explained, wiping the perspiration from his
forehead. "Oh! I'm going to put some canvas across it, of course,
so you won't fall through; but I thought I'd show it you first."

Judy's eyes smiled, but she thanked him warmly. "I wasn't goin'
to make any stupid thing, like Pip did," the small youth continued,
looking deprecatingly at the little drawers. "This is really
useful, you see; when you get up you can sit on it, Judy, by the
fire and read or sew or something. You like it better 'n Pip's, don't
you?"

Judy temporized skilfully, and averted offence to either by asking
them to put the presents with all the others near the head of the bed.

"What a lot of things you'll have to take back to school, Ju," Nell
said, as she added her contribution in the shape of a pair of crochet
cuffs and a doll's wool jacket.

But Judy only flashed her a reproachful glance, and turned her face
to the wall for the rest of the evening.

That was what had been hanging over her so heavily all this long
fortnight in bed--the thought of school in the future.

"What's going to happen to me when I get better, Esther?" she
asked next morning, in a depressed way, when her stepmother came to
see her. "Is he saving up a lot of beatings for me? And shall I
have to go back the first week?"

Esther reassured her.

"You won't go back this quarter at all, very likely not next either,
Judy dear. He says you shall go away with some of the others for
a change till you get strong; and, between you and me, I think
its very unlikely you, will go back ever again."

With this dread removed, Judy mended more rapidly, surprising even
the doctor with her powers of recuperation.

In three weeks she was about the house again, thin and great-eyed,
but full of nonsense and even mischief once more. The doctor's visits
ceased; he said she had made a good recovery so far, but should
have change of surroundings, and be taken a long way from sea air.

"Let her run wild for some months, Woolcot," he said at his last
visit; "it will take time to quite shake off all this and get her
strength and flesh back again."

"Certainly, certainly; she shall go at once," the Captain said.

He could not forget the shock he had received in the old loft five
or six weeks ago, and would have agreed if he had been bidden to tak