GOOD ENDINGS.
But I lost my happy childhood.
* * *
It slipped from me you shall know,
It was in the dewy alleys
Of the land of long ago.
* * *
Not in sadness,
Nor reproach, these words I say,
God is good, and gives new gladness,
When the old He takes away.
"You never did? oh what a pity!" exclaimed Sybil. "You really never,
never did, mother?"
Auntie looked rather "funny," as the children call it.
"As _trots_ I never saw them again," she said, "and at the time I wrote
out that story I had not seen them again at all."
"But you've seen them since," cried all the three children at once,
"you've seen them since they've grown big. Oh auntie, oh mother, do tell
us."
"I couldn't just now, truly I couldn't," said auntie, "it would lead me
into another story which isn't written yet. All that I know about 'the
two funny little trots' I have told you. Do you like it?"
"Awfully," said Sybil.
"_Very_ much," said Floss.
"It's lovely," said Carrots.
Auntie smiled at the children. They looked so pleased and interested, it
was evident that for the time they had forgotten their sorrow and
anxiety. Suddenly, just as she was thinking sadly how soon it must
return to their minds, there came a loud ring at the bell. They all
started, they had been sitting so quietly.
"It must be the post," said Sybil. Auntie had thought so too, but had
not said it, as it was very unlikely this post would bring any letter
from Captain Desart.
It did however! Fletcher appeared with one in another minute; the thin
large envelope, and the black, rather scrawly writing that Floss and
Carrots knew so well. It would have been no use trying to conceal it
from them, so auntie opened it quietly, though her fingers trembled as
she did so. She read it very quickly, it was not a long letter, and then
she looked up with the tears in her eyes. "Children, dear children," she
said, "it _is_ good news. Your dear mother is a little better, and they
have good hopes of her."
Oh how glad they were! They kissed auntie and Sybil and each other, and
it seemed as if a great heavy stone had been lifted off their hearts.
There was still of course reason for _anxiety_, but there was hope,
"good hope," wrote Captain Desart, and what does not that mean? Auntie
felt so hopeful herself that she could not find it in her heart to
check the children for being so.
"It is because you made the story of the trots end nicely that that nice
letter came," said Sybil, and nothing that her mother could say would
persuade her that _she_ had nothing to do with the ending, that she had
just told it as it really happened!
_I_ am telling you the story of Floss and Carrots as it really happened
too, and I am so glad that it--the story of this part of their young
lives, that is to say--ends happily too. Their mother did get better,
wonderfully better, and was able to come back to England in the spring,
looking stronger than for many years. To England, but not to Sandyshore.
Captain Desart got another appointment much farther south, where the
climate was milder and better and the winters not to be dreaded for a
delicate person. So they all left the Cove House!
Their new home was of course by the sea too, but Carrots never would
allow that it was the same sea. His own old sea stayed behind at
Sandyshore, though if he were to go to look for it there now I doubt if
he would find it. When old friends once get away into the country of
long ago, they are hard to find again--we learn to doubt if they are to
be found anywhere except in their own corners of our memory.
And it is long ago now since the days when Carrots and his dear Floss
ran races on the sands and made "plans" together. Long ago, in so far
that you would not be able _anywhere_ to find these children whom I
loved so much, and whom I have told you a little about. You would, at
least I _hope_ you would, like to know what became of them, how they
grew up, and what Carrots did when he got to be a man. But this I cannot
now tell you, for my little book is long enough--I only hope you are not
tired of it--only I may tell you one thing. If any of you know a very
good, kind, gentle, brave man--so good that he cannot but be kind; so
brave that he cannot but be gentle, I should like you to think that,
perhaps, whatever he is--clergyman, doctor, soldier, sailor, it doesn't
matter in the least--_perhaps_ when that man was a boy, he was my little
Carrots. Especially if he has large "doggy-looking," brown eyes, and
hair that once _might_ have been called "red."
THE END