ich is the way to
Greenmays?"

The farmer's boy turned his thumb in the direction of the country road.
"Yonder," he shouted, without stopping in his jog, "straight on past the
church, and down lane to left."

"Is it far?" asked Floss, but the boy did not seem to hear.

There was nothing for it but to go on with their trudge. The rain was
not heavy but very piercingly cold, and the daylight was beginning to
fade. Two or three hot tears at last forced their way down Floss's
cheeks, but she wiped them quickly away, before Carrots could see them.
Carrots said nothing, but Floss knew he was getting tired by the way he
kept lagging behind, every now and then giving a little run to get up to
Floss again.

"I shouldn't mind so much, Floss," he said at last, "if it would be home
when we get there, and if we were to find mamma and nurse and tea in our
own nursery waiting for us."

This was altogether too much for Floss. For a moment or two she could
not speak, she was choked with sobs. "Oh, how I do wish poor mamma
hadn't got ill," she said at last.

"Poor Flossie, dear Flossie," said Carrots, pulling down her face to
kiss in spite of the rain and the dark and the cold and everything. "I
didn't mean to make you cry. And auntie will be very kind when we get
there, won't she, Floss?"

"Oh yes," said Floss, trying to speak cheerfully, though in her secret
heart there was a little misgiving. It did not look very kind not to
have sent to meet them at the station, and even without this, Floss,
though she had not said so, had felt a little shy and frightened at the
thought of meeting auntie and the strange uncle, and even Sybil again.
It was nearly two years since the visit to Sandyshore, and two years is
a lifetime to a child--it seemed to Floss like going altogether among
strangers. She clasped her little brother's hand tighter as these
feelings passed through her mind. "It won't be so bad for Carrots," she
reflected; "any way he will have me."

They seemed to have walked a very weary way when at last the church, of
which the farmer's boy had spoken, came in sight--very dimly in sight,
for the daylight was fast dying away. Floss would have passed the church
without noticing it, but the road divided in two just at this place,
and she was obliged to think which way to go. Then the boy's directions
came into her mind.

"To the left past the church, didn't he say, Carrots?" she said.

"'Down lane to left,' he said," replied C