It was an excellent school he had chosen for her; the ladies who kept it were kind, but very firm, and Judy was being ruined for want of a firm hand.

Which, indeed, was in a measure true.
Judy sat bolt upright in bed at the sight of Esther's sorrowful face.
"It's no good, dear; there's no way out of it," she said gently.
"But you'll go like a brave girl, won't you, Ju-Ju?
You always were the sort to die game, as Pip says." Judy gulped down a great lump in her throat, and her poor little face grew white and drawn.
"It's all right, Essie.

There, you go on down to breakfast," she said, in a voice that, only shook a little; "and please leave the General, Esther; I'll bring him down with me." Esther deposited her little fat son on the pillow, and with one loving backward glance went out of the door.
And Judy pulled the little lad down into her arms, and covered the bedclothes right over both their heads, and held him in a fierce, almost desperate clasp for a minute or two, and buried her face in his soft, dimpled neck, and kissed it till her lips ached.
He fought manfully against these troublesome proceedings, and at last objected, with an angry scream, to being suffocated.

So she flung back the clothes and got out of bed, leaving him to burrow about among the pillows, and pull feathers out of a hole in one of them.
She dressed in a quick nervous fashion, did her hair with more care than usual, and then picked up the General and took him along the passage into the nursery.

All the others were here, and, with Esther, were evidently discussing her.