At midnight Miss Judy arose, and creeping cautiously from her sister's side, noiselessly crossed the big, dark room, a ghostly little white figure. It was not hard to find her thimble, needles and thread, and her father's near-by spectacles, even in the darkness, since everything in that orderly old house was always in the same place; and when she had found them, she softly took up the candle and matches from the chair beside the pillow, and with her trembling hands thus filled, she stole across the passage toward the parlor. She opened the door as stealthily as any expert burglar, and closed it behind her without the faintest creak. Then, softly putting down the other things, she lighted the candle, and shading it with a shaking hand, looked around for the basket of rough-dry clothes, which, for privacy more than for any other reason, was always put in the parlor over night between washing and ironing. The stiffness with which some of the well-starched garments asserted themselves rather daunted Miss Judy when she first caught sight of them. Nevertheless, she went resolutely on, and soon found what she sought. She blushed as she gingerly drew it from among the rest, the delicate color tinting her whole sweet face, from its pretty chin to its silver frame of flossy curls. Turning the shirt over, she gave an unconscious sigh of relief to find how small the burned place really was. Burned it was, however, and she threaded her smallest needle with her finest thread and set about darning it then and there, with infinite patience and exquisite skill. As she worked, sitting on a low footstool beside the great basket, with the candle flickering upon a chair (such a pretty, pathetic little figure!) her thread involuntarily wrought delicate embroidery. While she thus wrought, she wished that she knew where gentlemen usually had their monograms embroidered on garments of this description. She could not remember ever having seen any on her father's--and she had never seen anybody else's, she remembered, suddenly blushing again. Yet she could not help feeling a little bashful pride in her handiwork. She even held it up and looked at it critically, with her curly head in its quaint little nightcap on one side,--like a bird listening to its own song,--before putting the garment back in the basket exactly where she had found it, as a measure of precaution against Merica's observing any change and gossiping about it. Every care must be taken on Doris's account. And then this being secure, Miss Judy blew out the candle and stole like a shadow back to her place by her sleeping sister, and lay down with a last sigh of relief; feeling to have done the best she could for her, for Doris, and for Lynn. She did not think of herself.