"Nurse," she exclaimed, perceiving her at the end of the pa.s.sage, whence she had been watching as anxiously as the children for her mistress's return, "nurse, what is the meaning of it all?"

"Indeed, ma'am," nurse was beginning, but she was interrupted. "Come in here, Lucy," said Captain Desart to his wife, opening the study door, "come in here before you go upstairs."

And Mrs. Desart did as he asked, but Floss again managed to creep in too, almost hidden in the folds of her mother's dress.

"I can't believe that Carrots is greedy, or cunning, or obstinate," said his mother, when she had heard all. "I cannot think that he understood what he was doing when he took the half-sovereign."

"But the hiding it," said Captain Desart, "the hiding it, and yet to my face persisting that he had never touched nurse's half-sovereign. I can't make the child out."

"He says he didn't know nurse had any sovereigns," put in Floss.

"Are you there again, you ubiquitous child?" said her father.

Floss looked rather frightened--such a long word as ubiquitous must surely mean something very naughty; but her father's voice was not angry, so she took courage.

"Does he know what a sovereign means?" said Mrs. Desart. "Perhaps there is some confusion in his mind which makes him seem obstinate when he isn't so really."

"He said he knew _I_ had sovereigns," said Floss, "and I couldn't think what he meant. Oh, mamma," she went on suddenly, "I do believe I know what he was thinking of. It was my kings and queens."

And before her father or mother could stop her, she had darted off to the nursery. In two minutes she was back again, holding out to her mother a round wooden box--the sort of box one often used to see with picture alphabets for little children, but instead of an alphabet, Floss's box contained a set of round cards, each about the size of the top of a wine-gla.s.s, with the heads of all the English kings and queens, from William the Conqueror down to Victoria!

"'Sovereigns of England,' mamma, you see," she exclaimed, pointing to the words on the lid, and quite out of breath with hurry and excitement, "and I very often call them my sovereigns; and of course Carrots didn't understand how there could be a _half_ one of them, nor how nurse could have any."

"It must be so," said Mrs. Desart to her husband; "the poor child really did _not_ understand."

"But still the taking the money at all, and hiding it?" said Captain Desart. "I don't see that it would be right not to punish him."

"He has been punished already--pretty severely for him, I fancy," said Floss's mother, with a rather sad smile. "You will leave him to me now, won't you, Frank?" she asked her husband. "I will go up and see him, and try to make him thoroughly understand. Give me the sovereigns, Floss dear, I'll take them with me."

Somewhat slowly, Carrots' mother made her way upstairs. She was tired and rather troubled. She did not believe that her poor little boy had really done wrong wilfully, but it seemed difficult to manage well among so many children; she was grieved also, at Maurice's hastiness and want of tender feeling, and she saw, too, how little fitted Carrots was to make his way in this rough-and-ready world.

"How would it be without me! My poor children," she thought with a sigh.

But a little hand was slipped into hers.

"Mamma, dear, I'm _so_ glad you thought of the sovereigns. I'm _sure_ Carrots didn't mean to be naughty. Mamma dear, though he _is_ so little, Carrots always means to be good; I don't think he could even be frightened into doing anything that he understood was naughty, though he is so easily frightened other ways."

"My good little Floss, my comforter," said her mother, patting Floss's hand, and then they together made their way to the dressing-room.

It was almost dark. The key was in the lock, and Mrs. Desart felt for it and turned it. But when she opened the door it was too dark in the room to distinguish anything.

"Carrots," she said, but there was no answer. "Where can he be?" she said rather anxiously. "Floss, run and get a light."

Floss ran off: she was back again in a minute, for she had met nurse on the stairs with a candle in her hand. But even with the light they could not all at once find Carrots, and though they called to him there was no answer.

"Can he have got out of the window?" Mrs. Desart was beginning to say, when Floss interrupted her.

"Here he is, mamma," she exclaimed. "Oh, poor little Carrots! mamma, nursie, do look."

There he was indeed--fast, fast asleep! Extra fast sleep, for his troubles and his tears had worn him out. He was lying in a corner of a large closet opening out of the dressing-room. In this closet Captain Desart hung up his coats and dressing-gowns, and doubtless Carrots had crept into it when the room began to get dark, feeling as if in the hanging garments there was some comfort and protection; and there he lay, looking so fair and innocent, prettier than when he was awake, for his cheeks had more colour, and his long eye-lashes, reddy-brown like his hair, showed clearly on his fair skin.

"Poor little fellow, how sweet he looks," said Mrs. Desart. "Nurse, lift him up and try to put him to bed without waking him. We must wait to disentangle the confusion in his mind till to-morrow morning."

And very tenderly nurse lifted him up and carried him off.

"My bonnie wee man," she murmured; for though it was many and many a day since she had seen her native land, and she had journeyed with her master and mistress to strange countries "far over the sea," she was apt when her feelings were stirred to fall back into her own childish tongue.

So no more was said to or about Carrots that evening; but Floss went to bed quite happy and satisfied that "mamma" would put it all right in the morning. I don't think Mott went to bed in so comfortable a mood; yet his mother had said nothing to him!

Cecil and Louise had, though. Cecil told him right out that he was a horrid tell-tale, and Louise said she only wished _he_ had red hair instead of Carrots; which expressions of feeling on the part of such very grown-up young ladies meant a good deal, for it was not often they troubled themselves much about nursery matters. Cecil, that is to say, for Louise, who was fair haired and soft and gentle, and played very nicely on the piano, was just a shadow of Cecil, and if Cecil had proposed that they should stay in bed all day and get up all night, would have thought it a very good idea!

And the next morning Mrs. Desart had a long talk with Carrots. It was all explained and made clear, and the difference between the two kinds of "sovereigns" shown to him. And he told his mother all--all, that is to say, except the "plan" for saving sugar and getting money instead, which had first put it into his head to keep the half-sovereign to get a new doll for Floss. He began to tell about the plan, but stopped when he remembered that it was Floss's secret as well as his own; and when he told his mother this, she said he was quite right not to tell without Floss's leave, and that as nurse knew about it, they might still keep it for their secret, if they liked, which Carrots was very glad to hear.

He told his mother about his thinking perhaps the fairies had brought the "sixpenny," and she explained to him that now-a-days, alas! that was hardly likely to be the case, though she seemed quite to understand his fancying it, and did not laugh at him at all. But she spoke very gravely to him, too, about _never_ taking anything that was not his; and after listening and thinking with all his might, Carrots said he thought he "kite under'tood."

"I am never, never to take nucken that I'm not sure is mine," he said slowly. "And if ever I'm not sure I'm to ask somebody, you, or nursie, or Floss--or _sometimes_, perhaps, Cecil. But I don't think I'd better ask Mott, for perhaps he wouldn't under'tand."

But Mott's mother took care that before the day was over Mott _should_ "under'tand" something of where and how he had been in fault; that there are sometimes ways of doing _right_ which turn it into "wrong;" and that want of pity and tenderness for the wrong _doer_ never, never can be right.

CHAPTER VII.

A LONG AGO STORY.

"You may laugh, my little people, But be sure my story's true; For I vow by yon church steeple, I was once a child like you."

_The Land of Long Ago._

If any of you children have travelled much, have you noticed that on a long journey there seem to come points, turns--I hardly know what to call them--after which the journey seems to go on differently. More quickly, perhaps more cheerfully, or possibly less so, but certainly _differently_. Looking back afterwards you see it was so--"from the time we all looked out of the window at the ruined abbey we seemed to get on so much faster," you would say, or--"after the steamer had pa.s.sed the Spearhead Point, we began to feel dull and tired, and there was no more sunshine."

I think it is so in life. Suddenly, often quite unknowingly, we turn a corner sometimes of our history, sometimes of our characters, and looking back, long afterwards, we make a date of that point. It was so just now with my little Carrots. This trouble of his about the half-sovereign changed him. I do not mean to say that it saddened him and made him less happy than he had been--at his age, thank G.o.d, few, if any children have it in them to be so deeply affected--but it _changed_ him. It was his first peep out into life, and it gave him his first real _thoughts_ about things. It made him see how a little wrong-doing may cause great sorrow; it gave him his first vague, misty glimpse of that, to my thinking, saddest of all sad things--the way in which it is possible for our very nearest and dearest to mistake and misunderstand us.

He had been in some ways a good deal of a baby for his age, there is no doubt. He had a queer, baby-like way of not seeming to take in quickly what was said to him, and staring up in your face with his great oxen-like eyes, that did a little excuse Maurice's way of laughing at him and telling him he was "half-witted." But no one that really looked at those honest, sensible, tender eyes could for an instant have thought there was any "want" in their owner. It was all _there_--the root of all goodness, cleverness, and manliness--just as in the acorn there is the oak; but of course it had a great deal of _growing_ before it, and, more than mere growing, it would need all the care and watchful tenderness and wise directing that could be given it, just as the acorn needs all the rain and sunshine and good nourishing soil it can get, to become a fine oak, straight and strong and beautiful. For what do I mean by "it,"

children? I mean the "own self" of Carrots, the wonderful "something" in the little childish frame which the wisest of all the wise men of either long ago or now-a-days have never yet been able to describe--the "soul," children, which is in you all, which may grow into so beautiful, so lovely and perfect a thing; which may, alas! be twisted and stunted and starved out of all likeness to the "image" in which it was created.

Do you understand a little why it seems sometimes such a very, very solemn thing to have the charge of children? When one thinks what they _should_ be, and again when one thinks what they _may_ be, is it not a solemn, almost too solemn a thought? Only we, who feel this so deeply, take heart when we remember that the Great Gardener who never makes mistakes has promised to help us; even out of _our_ mistakes to bring good.

As I have said, the affair of the lost half-sovereign did not leave any lastingly painful impression on Carrots, but for some days he seemed unusually quiet and pale and a little sad. He had caught cold, too, with falling asleep on the dressing-room floor, nurse said, for the weather was still exceedingly chilly, though the spring was coming on. So altogether he was rather a miserable looking little Carrots.

He kept out of the way and did not complain, but "mamma" and nurse and Floss did not need complaints to make them see that their little man was not quite himself, and they were extra kind to him.

There came just then some very dull rainy days, regular rainy days, not stormy, but to the children much more disagreeable than had they been so. For in _stormy_ weather at the seaside there is too much excitement for anyone to think whether it is disagreeable or not--there is the splendid sight of the angry, troubled sea, there are the wonderful "storm songs" of the wind to listen to. Of course, as Carrots used to say, at such times it is "dedful" to think of the poor sailors; but even in thinking of them there is something that takes one's thoughts quite away from one's self, and one's own worries and troubles--all the marvellous stories of shipwreck and adventure, from Grace Darling to old Sinbad, come rushing into one's mind, and one feels as if the sea were the only part of the world worth living on.

But even at the seaside, regular, steady, "stupid" rainy days are trying. Carrots sat at the nursery window one of these dull afternoons looking out wistfully.