And Judy…Judy…in her old drugget dress was sitting beside the stove stirring the contents of a savory pot! Her knitting was on her lap and she looked like anything but a heart-broken woman.

For a moment the girls stared at her unbelievingly. Then with a shriek of “Judy!!!” they hurled themselves upon her. Wet as they were she hugged them with a fierce tenderness.

“Judy…Judy…darling…but why…why…?”

“I just cudn’t be going, that do be all, me jewels. I was knowing it in me heart as soon as I lift. Poor Alec hadn’t a word to throw to a dog. Ye cud have been scraping the blue mold off av him be the time we got to the station. But thinks I to mesilf, ‘I’d look like a nice fool backing out now, after all thim prisents,’ thinks I. So I did be sticking it out till I got into me bed at yer Uncle Brian’s that night…the second bist spare room it was…oh, oh, they trated me fine, I’ll be saying that for thim. But niver the wink wud I be slaping. I kipt thinking av me kitchen here, wid Mrs. Puddleduck reigning in me stid…and of all the things that might be happening to me, roaming abroad. Running inty an iceberg maybe…or maybe dying over there. Not that I’d be minding the dying so much but being buried among strangers. And thin if innything but good shud be happening to some av ye here! Thinks I, ‘Perhaps they’ll be larning to like Mrs. Puddleduck better’n me and her as smooth as crame.’ I cud see ye all, snug and cozy, wid the beaus slipping along in the dim. Thinks I, There do be all the turkeys to be fattened for Christmas and the winter hooking to be done and mebbe Joe coming home to be married…and I cudn’t be standing it. So at breakfast I up and told Brian I’d been after changing me mind and I’d just be going back to Silver Bush instead av to Ireland wid the Pattersons.”

“Judy, you said the other day it would break your heart if anything prevented you from going…”

“Oh, oh, yisterday and today do be two different things,” said Judy complacently. “Whin ye thought I was all ixcited over me trip I was just talking to kape me spirits up. It’s the happy woman I am to think I’ll slape in me own snug bed tonight wid Gintleman Tom curled up at me fate. Brian brought me home this afternoon and whin I stepped over the threshold of me kitchen I wudn’t have called the quane me cousin. Oh, oh, ye shud have been seeing Madam Puddleduck’s face! ‘I thought this was how it wud be,’ sez she, as spiteful as a fairy that had just got a spanking.”