CHAPTER XIV.
The Squatter's Invitation After all there was no dogcart for Judy, no mountain train, no ignominious return to the midst of her schoolfellows, no vista of weary months unmarked by holidays.
But instead, a warm, soft bed, and delicate food, and loving voices and ceaseless attention.

For the violent exertion, the scanty food, and the two nights in the open air had brought the girl to indeed a perilous pass.

One lung was badly inflamed, the doctor said; it was a mystery to him, he kept telling them, how she had kept up so long; an ordinary girl would have given in and taken to her bed long ago.
But then he was not acquainted with the indomitable spirit and pluck that were Judy's characteristics.
"Didn't you have any pain ?" he asked, quite taken aback to find such spirits and so serious a condition together.
"H'm, in my side sometimes," she answered carelessly.

"How long will it be before I can get up, Doctor ?" She used to ask the latter question of him every morning, though, if the truth were known, she felt secretly more than a little diffident at the idea of standing up again.
There was a languor and weariness in her limbs that made her doubtful if she could run about very much, and slower modes of progressing she despised.

Besides this, there was a gnawing pain, under her arms, and the cough was agony while it lasted.
Still, she was not ill enough to lose interest in all that was going on, and used to insist upon the others telling her everything that happened outside--who made the biggest score at cricket, what flowers were out in her own straggling patch of garden, how many eggs the fowls laid a day, how the guinea-pigs and canaries were progressing, and what was the very latest thing in clothes or boots the new retriever puppy had devoured.
And Bunty used to bring in the white mice and the blind French guinea-pig, and let them run loose over the counterpane, and Pip did most of his carpentering on a little table near, so she could see each fresh stage and suggest improvements as he went along.
Meg, who had almost severed her connection with Aldith, devoted herself to her sister, and waited on her hand and foot; she made her all kinds of little presents--a boot-bag, with compartments; a brush-and-comb bag, with the monogram "J.W.," worked in pink silk; a little work-basket, with needle-book, pin-cushion, and all complete.
Judy feared she should be compelled to betake herself to tidy habits on her recovery.
Her pleasure in the little gifts started a spirit of competition among the others.
For one whole day Pip was invisible, but in the evening he turned up, and walked to the bedside with a proud face.