"Oh, how funny! Is that right?"
"No, it's awfully crooked."
For the next half-hour Babs labored hard, and Judy superintended, giving sharp criticisms and ordering the arrangements of the chamber with much peremptoriness.
"Now we must have flowers," she exclaimed. "You must go out to the garden, and pick all the violets you can get."
"But it's very late to go out," said Babs, "and Miss Mills will be angry."
"As if that mattered! Who cares who is angry when Hilda is coming? The worst Miss Mills can do is to punish you, and you won't mind that when you think about Hilda. I know where there are violets, white and blue, on that south bank after you pass the shrubbery; you know the bank where the bees burrow, and where we catch ladybirds in the summer; run, Babs, do run at once and pick all you can find."
Judy's room was decorated to perfection. Judy herself lay in her white bed, with pink roses on her cheeks, and eyes like two faintly shining stars, and smiles coming and going on her lips, and eager words dropping now and then from her impatient little tongue.
"What is the hour now, Aunt Marjorie? Is it really only half-past nine?"
"It is five-and-twenty to ten, Judy, and Miss Mills has gone in the fly to the station, and your Hilda will be back, if the train is punctual, by ten o'clock. How wonderfully well you look, my darling. I did right after all to let you sit up in bed to wait for your dear sister."
"Yes, I am quite well, only—I hope Jasper won't come too."