ad
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