CHAPTER V.
"Next Monday Morning" There was a trunk standing in the hall, and a large, much-travelled portmanteau, and there were labels on them that said: "Miss Helen Woolcot, The Misses Burton, Mount Victoria." In the nursery breakfast was proceeding spasmodically.

Meg's blue eyes were all red and swollen with crying, and she was still sniffing audibly as she poured out the coffee.

Pip had his hands in his pockets and stood on the hearthrug, looking gloomily at a certain plate, and refusing breakfast altogether; the General was crashing his own mug and plate joyously together; and Bunty was eating bread and butter in stolid silence.
Judy, white-faced and dry-eyed, was sitting at the table, and Nell and Baby were clinging to either arm.

All the three days between that black Thursday and this doleful morning she had been obstinately uncaring.

Her spirits had never seemed higher, her eyes brighter, her tongue sharper, than during that interval of days; and she had pretended to everyone, and her father, that she especially thought boarding school must be great fun, and that she should enjoy it immensely.
But this morning she had collapsed altogether.