ear 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