think of to comfort us with. And then we all grew
silent, and after a while it began to get dark, for the days were short
now, and Tom and Racey fell asleep, just sobbing quietly now and then in
their breathing--the way little children do, you know, after they have
been crying a good deal; and I sat quite still, staring out at the
gloomy-looking country that we were whizzing through, the bare trees and
dull fields, so different from the brightness and prettiness of even a
flat unpicturesque landscape on a _summer_ day, when the sun lights up
everything, and makes the fresh green look still fresher and more
tempting. And it seemed to me that the sky and the sun and all the
outside things were looking dull because of our trouble, and that they
were all sorry for us, and there seemed a queer nice feeling in thinking
so.

And after a while I began making pictures to myself of what I would do
to please mother while she was away; how I would be so good to Tom and
Racey, and teach them to be so good too; how I would learn to be always
neat, and how I would try to get on with music, which I didn't much
like, but which mother was so fond of that she thought I would get to
like it when I was bigger and had got over the worst part. And then I
began thinking of the letters I would write to mother, and all I would
say in them; and I wondered too to myself very much what Uncle Geoff
would be like, for I had not seen him for some time, and I couldn't
remember him properly at all; and I wondered what his house would be
like, and what sort of a nursery we should have, and what our new
governess would be like, and how everything in our new home would be. I
went on wondering till I suppose my brain got tired of asking questions
it couldn't answer, and without knowing that I was the least sleepy, I
too fell fast asleep!

I was busy dreaming--dreaming that I was on board the ship with papa and
mother, and that Uncle Geoff was a lady come to see the house; in my
dream the ship seemed a house, only it went whizzing along like a
railway, and that he had a face like Pierson's, and he would say "poor
dear Miss Audrey," when another voice seemed to mix in with my
dreaming. A voice that said--

"Poor little souls--asleep are they--all three? Which of them shall I
look after? Here nurse, you take the boys, and I'll lift out Miss
Audrey."

And "Wake up, Miss Audrey, my dear. Wake up. Here's your uncle come
himself to meet you at the station. I