"I don't know, ma'am; but my poor sister, she has a hard life, and I think her husband would be worse to her if I went away. I couldn't have no comfort in thinking of them if I did." "Do they know of this? Have they been persuading you?" "No, ma'am; I did not say a word. Molly was out, and I wanted to think it out without being worried and terrified." "Quite right, Judith. I am glad they do not know," said Mary, who had learned that "terrified" did not mean frightened, but "tormented." "I can well believe you have decided in true unselfishness, and in the fear of God. But if you see reason to change your mind, let me know in the course of the week." Dora and Sophy were really quite angry at Judith's refusal, especially Dora, who had taken all the trouble of representing her condition to the Barnards. "I should call it ungrateful," she said, "only I believe it is pure weakness and folly. Those people have been bullying her and tormenting her out of consenting." "You are wrong, Dora," said her sister, "they know nothing about it! This is all her own doing." "And," said Edmund, "if you were older, Dora, you would know how to appreciate a very noble act of self-denial." Dora did not at all like Edmund to talk of her being older; but what he had said gave her something to think about, and she began to reverence the feeling that made Judith Grey choose the rough and ungenial life with the Hewletts, to comfort and sympathy with her friends. Mrs Carbonel and Judith were mistaken in thinking the transaction could pass unknown to the rest of the family. Polly was near at hand, but had hidden herself, on the lad's approach, for fear of being called to account for not being at school, and she reported to her mother that "Madam Gobbleall had been ever so long with aunt, a-trying to persuade her to go away, and live with them fine folks as she was in service with." Molly had a certain real affection for her sister; but to both her and Dan, the removal would be like the loss of the goose that laid the golden eggs, and there is no saying what poor Judith had to go through. Molly came and cried torrents of tears, taking it for granted that Judith meant to go, and must be frightened out of it. It was of no use to declare that she had refused the lady. Molly was so much in the habit of semi-deception, that she could not believe the assurance; and to hear her lamentations over her dear sister, for whom no one could do like a blood-relation, and her horror at the idea of strangers being preferred to herself, one would have thought--as indeed she believed herself--that she was Judith's most devoted and indefatigable nurse. And to think of them Gobblealls being so sly, such snakes in the grass, as to try to get her away, unknownst! She would not have them prying about her house again.