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.