At present she was only a sharp, clever, and frequently impertinent child; but he felt she was utterly different from the other six, and it gave him an aggrieved kind of feeling when he thought about it, which was not very often.
He remembered her own mother had often said she trembled for Judy's future.

That restless fire of hers that shone out of her dancing eyes, and glowed scarlet on her cheeks in excitement, and lent amazing energy and activity to her young, lithe body, would either make a noble, daring, brilliant woman of her, or else she would be shipwrecked on rocks the others would never come to, and it would flame up higher and higher and consume her.
"Be careful of Judy" had been almost the last words of the anxious mother when, in the light that comes when the world's is going out, she had seen with terrible clearness the stones and briars in the way of that particular pair of small, eager feet.
And she had died, and Judy was stumbling right amongst them now, and her father could not "be careful" of her because he absolutely did not know how.
As he went up the veranda steps again and through the hall, he was wishing almost prayerfully she had not been cast in so different a mould from the others, wishing he could stamp out that strange flame in her that made him so uneasy at times.

He gave a great puff at his cigar, and sighed profoundly; then he turned on his heel and went off toward the stables to forget it all.
The man was away, exercising one of the horses in the long paddock; but there was something stirring in the harness-room, so he went in.
There was a little, dripping wet figure standing over a great bucket, and dipping something in and out with charming vigour.
At the sound of his footsteps, Baby turned round and lifted a perspiring little face to his.
"I'se washing the kitsies for you, and Flibberty-Gibbet," she said beamingly.
He took a horrified step forward.
There were two favourite kittens of his, shivering, miserable, up to their necks in a lather of soapy water; and Flibberty-Gibbet, the beautiful little fox terrier he had just bought for his wife, chained to a post, also wet, miserable, and woebegone, also undergoing the cleansing process, and being scrubbed and swilled till his very reason was tottering.
"They'se SO clean and nicey--no horrid ole fleas 'n them now.
AREN't you glad?
You can let Flibberty go on your bed now, and Kitsy Blackeye is--" Poor Baby never finished her speech.

She had a confused idea of hearing a little "swear-word" from her father, of being shaken in a most ungentle fashion and put outside the stable, while the unfortunate animals were dried and treated with great consideration.
But the worst was yet to come, and the results were so exceedingly bad that the young Woolcots determined never again to assume virtues that they had not.
Bunty, of course, desired to help the cause as strongly as the others, and to that end his first action was to go into his bedroom and perform startling ablutions with his face, neck, and hands.

Then he took his soap-shiny countenance and red, much bescrubbed hands downstairs, and sunned himself under his father's very nose, hoping to attract favourable comment.
But he was bidden irritably "go and play," and saw he would have to find fresh means of appeasement.
He wandered into the study, with vague thoughts of tidying the tidy bookshelves; but Pip was there, surrounded with books and whittling a stick for a catapult, so he went out again.
Then he climbed the stairs and explored his father's bedroom and dressing-room.