 Why did Judy start crying in the attic of her grandparents home?
I met you when the whole valley below the big Roulsville dam was threatened by flood and you solved that—” “That,” declared Judy, “was my brother Horace, not me. Maybe you were mistaken about a thing or two before the flood, but what about the haunted house you moved into? You were the one who tracked down the ghosts in the attic and the cellar and goodness knows where all. It all began, she finally told them, the summer before they met. And so it was that he spent the summer Judy was remembering in Farringdon where the Farringdon-Petts had their turreted mansion, while she had to suffer the heat and loneliness of Dry Brook Hollow. Her thoughts were what had made it so hard, she confessed now as she reviewed everything that had happened. He and Judy’s mother usually went to the beach hotel where they had honeymooned. Every summer Dr. Bolton and his wife relived it. And every summer Judy went to stay with her grandmother Smeed, who scolded and fussed and tried to pretend she wasn’t glad to have her. Judy went, not to look over the old magazines so much as to escape to a place where she could have a good cry. In another year she would have outgrown her childish resentment of her parents’ vacation or be grown up enough to ask them to let her have a vacation of her own. In another year she would be summering among the beautiful Thousand Islands and solving a mystery to be known as the Ghost Parade . As Judy wiped it away she noticed that it had fallen on a picture of a fountain. The thrill of walking up to the door of the palatial Farringdon-Pett mansion was still ahead of her. On the lawn a fountain still caught and held rainbows like those she was to see on her honeymoon at Niagara Falls. If anyone had told the freckled-faced, pigtailed girl that she would one day marry Peter Dobbs, she would have laughed in their faces. But the summer Judy found the picture of a fountain and spilled tears on it she had no kitten. It had helped to pretend the fountain in the picture was filled with all the tears lonely girls like herself had ever cried. She and Lorraine had listened to this much of what Judy was telling them without interruption. Judy had stared at them a moment and then climbed the steps to the pool. I wasn’t thinking of anybody but me, Judy Bolton, and what I wanted.
 She was lonely with no friends.
 She was trying to cry to get tears for the fountain of wishes.  She was lonely with no friends.  She was sad that her parents wouldn't let her come on their vacation.  She was afraid of the attic.