s while to take it off the boards than that one of you
should catch a glimpse of it--and it serves you very well right!
Meg, for goodness' sake give Baby some dry clothes--just look
at her; and, Judy, if you have any feeling for me, take off
that frock. Bunty, you wicked boy, I'll call your father if
you don't stop that noise. Nell, take the scissors from the
General, he'll poke his eyes out, bless him."

The young stepmother leaned back in her chair and looked round
her tragically. She had never seen her husband so thoroughly
angered, and her beautiful lips quivered when she remembered how
he had seemed to blame her for it all.

Meg hadn't moved; the water was trickling slowly off Baby's
clothes and making a pool on the floor, Bunty was still giving
vent to spasmodic boos and hoos, Judy was whistling stormily,
and the General, mulcted of the scissors, was licking his own
muddy shoe all over with his dear little red tongue.

A sob rose in her throat, two tears welled up in her eyes and
fell down her smooth, lovely cheeks. "Seven of you, and I'm only
twenty!" she said pitifully. "Oh! it's too bad--oh dear! it
is too bad."

CHAPTER IV

The General Sees Active Service

"My brain it teems
With endless schemes,
Both good and new."

It was a day after "the events narrated in the last chapter,"
as story-book parlance has it. And Judy, with a wrathful look in
her eyes, was sitting on the nursery table, her knees touching her
chin and her thin brown hands clasped round them.

"It's a shame," she said, "it's a burning, wicked shame!
What's the use of fathers in the world, I'd like to know!"

"Oh, Judy!" said Meg, who was curled up in an armchair, deep in
a book. But she said it mechanically, and only as a matter of
duty, being three years older than Judy.

"Think of the times we could have if he didn't live with us,"
Judy continued, calmly disregardful. "Why, we'd have fowl
three times a day, and the pantomime seven nights a week."

Nell suggested that it was not quite usual to have pantomimic
performances on the seventh day, but Judy was not daunted.

"I'd have a kind of church pantomime," she said thoughtfully--"beautiful
pictures and things about the Holy Land, and the 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!" murm