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."