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"CARROTS:"

JUST A LITTLE BOY




        "Is it then a great mistake
    That Boys were ever made at all?"




[Illustration: There she sat, as still as a mouse, holding her precious
burden. (_See page_ 9.) _Frontispiece_]




    "CARROTS:"

    JUST A LITTLE BOY

    BY

    MRS. MOLESWORTH

    (ENNIS GRAHAM)

    AUTHOR OF "TELL ME A STORY" "CUCKOO CLOCK"
    "GRANDMOTHER DEAR" ETC.

    [Illustration: p. 210.]

    ILLUSTRATED BY WALTER CRANE

    LONDON
    MACMILLAN & CO.
    1876




            TO

    SIX LITTLE COUSINS

    MORIER,      BEVIL,
    NOEL,        LIONEL,
          EDWARD,
      AND BABY BRIAN.

EDINBURGH, 1870




CONTENTS


    CHAP.                                               PAGE

       I.  FLOSS'S BABY                                    1

      II.  SIX YEARS OLD                                  12

     III.  PLANS                                          26

      IV.  THE LOST HALF-SOVEREIGN                        44

       V.  CARROTS IN TROUBLE                             60

      VI.  CARROTS "ALL ZIGHT" AGAIN                      78

     VII.  A LONG AGO STORY                               91

    VIII.  "THE BEWITCHED TONGUE"                        111

      IX.  SYBIL                                         130

       X.  A JOURNEY AND ITS ENDING                      152

      XI.  HAPPY AND SAD                                 180

     XII.  "THE TWO FUNNY LITTLE TROTS"                  206

    XIII.  GOOD ENDINGS                                  236




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


                                                        PAGE

    THERE SHE SAT, AS STILL AS A MOUSE, HOLDING HER
      PRECIOUS BURDEN               _Frontispiece._

    "A YELLOW SIXPENNY, OH, HOW NICE!"                    36

    FLOSS TAPPED AT THE DOOR. "CARROTS," SHE SAID,
      "ARE YOU THERE?"                                    78

    "NOW, BE QUIET ALL OF YOU, I'M GOING TO BEGIN"       114

    "WHAT ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT, MY POOR OLD
      MAN?" SAID AUNTIE, FONDLY                          148

    "IT IS FLOSSIE AND ME, SYBIL--DON'T YOU REMEMBER
      US?"                                               184

    "SUDDENLY A BRIGHT THOUGHT STRUCK ME, I SEIZED
      GIP, MY LITTLE DOG, WHO WAS ASLEEP ON THE
      HEARTHRUG, AND HELD HIM UP AT THE WINDOW"          212




"CARROTS:" JUST A LITTLE BOY




CHAPTER I.

FLOSS'S BABY.

    "Where did you come from, Baby dear?
       Out of the everywhere into here?

           *       *       *

    "But how did you come to us, you dear?
       God thought about you, and so I am here!"

                                        _G. Macdonald._


His real name was Fabian. But he was never called anything but Carrots.
There were six of them. Jack, Cecil, Louise, Maurice, commonly called
Mott, Floss, dear, dear Floss, whom he loved best of all, a long way the
best of all, and lastly Carrots.

Why Carrots should have come to have his history written I really cannot
say. I must leave you, who understand such things a good deal better
than I, you, children, for whom the history is written, to find out. I
can give you a few reasons why Carrots' history should _not_ have been
written, but that is about all I can do. There was nothing very
remarkable about him; there was nothing very remarkable about the place
where he lived, or the things that he did, and on the whole he was very
much like other little boys. There are my _no_ reasons for you. But
still he was Carrots, and after all, perhaps, that was _the_ reason! I
shouldn't wonder.

He was the baby of the family; he had every right to be considered the
baby, for he was not only the youngest, but very much the youngest; for
Floss, who came next to him, was nearly four years older than Carrots.
Yet he was never treated as the baby. I doubt if even at the very outset
of his little life, when he was just a wee pink ball of a creature,
rolled up in flannel, and with his funny curls of red hair standing
crisp up all over his head, I doubt, if even then, he was ever called
"baby." I feel almost sure it was always "Carrots." He was too
independent and sensible to be counted a baby, and he was never fond of
being petted--and then, too, "Carrots" came so naturally!

I have said that Carrots loved his sister Floss better than anybody or
anything else in the world. I think one reason of this was that she was
the very first person he could remember in his life, and a happy thing
for him that it was so, for all about her that there was to remember was
nice and good and kind. She was four years older than he, four years
old, that is to say, when he first came into the world and looked about
him with grave inquiry as to what sort of a place this could be that he
had got to. And the first object that his baby-wise eyes settled upon
with content, as if in it there might be a possible answer to the
riddle, was Floss!

These children's father and mother were not very rich, and having six
boys and girls you can quite easily imagine they had plenty to do with
their money. Jack was a great boy at school when Carrots first joined
the family party, and Cecil and Louise had a governess. Mott learnt with
the governess too, but was always talking of the time when he should go
to school with Jack, for he was a very boy-ey boy, very much inclined to
look down upon girls in general, and his sisters in particular, and his
little sister Floss in _particularest_. So, till Carrots appeared on the
scene, Floss had had rather a lonely time of it, for, "of course," Cecil
and Louise, who had pockets in all their frocks, and could play the
'March of the Men of Harlech' as a duet on the piano, were _far_ too big
to be "friends to Floss," as she called it. They were friendly and kind
in an elder sisterly way, but that was quite a different sort of thing
from being "friends to her," though it never occurred to Floss to
grumble or to think, as so many little people think now-a-days, how
much better things would have been arranged if _she_ had had the
arranging of them.

There was only one thing Floss wished for very, very much, and that was
to have a brother or sister, she did not much care which, younger than
herself. She had the most motherly heart in the world, though she was
such a quiet little girl that very few people knew anything about what
she was thinking, and the big ones laughed at her for being so
outrageously fond of dolls. She had dolls of every kind and size, only
alike in one thing, that none of them were very pretty, or what you
would consider grand dolls. But to Floss they were lovely, only, they
were _only_ dolls!

Can you fancy, can you in the least fancy, Floss's delight--a sort of
delight that made her feel as if she couldn't speak, when one winter's
morning she was awakened by nurse to be told that a real live baby had
come in the night--a little brother, and "such a funny little fellow,"
added nurse, "his head just covered with curly red hair. Where did he
get that from, I wonder? Not one of my children has hair like that,
though yours, Miss Flossie, has a touch of it, perhaps."

Floss looked at her own tangle of fluffy hair with new reverence. "Hair
something like my hairs," she whispered. "Oh nursie, dear nursie, may
Floss see him?"

"Get up and let me dress you quickly, and you shall see him--no fear but
that you'll see more of the poor little fellow than you care about,"
said nurse, though the last words were hardly meant for Floss.

The truth was that though of course every one meant to be kind to this
new little baby, to take proper care of him, and all that sort of thing,
no one was particularly glad he had come. His father and mother felt
that five boys and girls were already a good number to bring up well and
educate and start in life, not being very rich you see, and even nurse,
who had the very kindest heart in the world, and had taken care of them
all, beginning with Jack, ever since they were born, even nurse felt, I
think, that they _could_ have done without this red-haired little
stranger. For nurse was no longer as young as she had been, and as the
children's mother could not, she knew, very well afford to keep an
under-nurse to help her, it was rather trying to look forward to
beginning again with all the "worrit" of a new baby--bad nights and many
tiring climbs up the long stairs to the nursery, etc., etc., though
nurse was so really good that she did not grumble the least bit, and
just quietly made up her mind to make the best of it.

But still Floss was the only person to give the baby a really hearty
welcome. And by some strange sort of baby instinct he seemed to know it
almost from the first. He screamed at Jack, and no wonder, for Jack, by
way of salutation, pinched his poor little nose, and said that the next
time they had boiled mutton for dinner, cook need not provide anything
but turnips, as there was a fine crop of carrots all ready, which piece
of wit was greatly applauded by Maurice and the girls. He wailed when
Cecil and Louise begged to be allowed to hold him in their arms, so that
they both tumbled him back on to nurse's lap in a hurry, and called him
"a cross, ugly little thing." Only when little Floss sat down on the
floor, spreading out her knees with great solemnity, and smoothing her
pinafore to make a nice place for baby, and nurse laid him carefully
down in the embrace of her tiny arms, "baby" seemed quite content. He
gave a sort of wriggle, like a dog when he has been pretending to burrow
a hole for himself in the rug, just before he settles down and shuts his
eyes, and in half a second was fast asleep.

"Baby loves Floss," said Floss gravely, and as long as nurse would let
her, till her arms really ached, there she sat on the floor, as still
as a mouse, holding her precious burden.

It was wonderful how trusty she was. And "as handy," said nurse, "indeed
far more handy than many a girl of five times her age." "I have been
thinking," she said one day to Floss's mother, "I have been thinking,
ma'am, that even if you had been going to keep an under-nurse to help
with baby, there would have been nothing for her to do. For the help I
get from Miss Flossie is really astonishing, and Master Baby is that
fond of her already, you'd hardly believe it."

And Floss's mother kissed her, and told her she was a good little soul,
and Floss felt, oh, so proud! Then a second thought struck her, "Baby
dood too, mamma," she said, staring up into her mother's face with her
bright searching grey-green eyes.

"Yes," said her mother with a little sigh, "poor baby is good too,
dear," and then she had to hurry off to a great overhauling of Jack's
shirts, which were, if possible, to be made to last him another
half-year at school.

So it came to pass that a great deal of Floss's life was spent in the
nursery with Carrots. He was better than twenty dolls, for after a while
he actually learnt, first to stand alone, and then to walk, and after a
longer while he learnt to talk, and to understand all that Floss said to
him, and by-and-by to play games with her in his baby way. And how
patient Floss was with him! It was no wonder he loved her.

This chapter has seemed almost more about Floss than Carrots you will
say, perhaps, but I couldn't tell you anything of Carrots' history
without telling you a great deal about Floss too, so I daresay you won't
mind. I daresay too you will not care to hear much more about Carrots
when he was a baby, for, after all, babies are all very like each other,
and a baby that wasn't like others would not _be_ a baby! To Floss I
fancy he seemed a remarkable baby, but that may have been because he
was her very own, and the only baby she had ever known. He was certainly
very good, in so far as he gave nurse exceedingly little trouble, but
why children should give trouble when they are perfectly well, and have
everything they can possibly want, I have never been able to decide. On
the whole, I think it must have something to do with the people who take
care of them, as well as with themselves.

Now we will say good-bye to Carrots, as a baby.




CHAPTER II.

SIX YEARS OLD.

    "As for me, I love the sea,
     The dear old sea!
         Don't you?"

                                _Song._


I think I said there was nothing very remarkable about the place where
Carrots lived, but considering it over, I am not quite sure that you
would agree with me. It was near the sea for one thing, and _that_ is
always remarkable, is it not? _How_ remarkable, how wonderful and
changeful the sea is, I doubt if any one can tell who has not really
lived by it, not merely visited it for a few weeks in the fine summer
time, when it looks so bright and sunny and inviting, but lived by it
through autumn and winter too, through days when it looks so dull and
leaden, that one can hardly believe it will ever be smiling and playful
again, through fierce, rough days, when it lashes itself with fury, and
the wind wails as if it were trying to tell the reason.

Carrots' nursery window looked straight out upon the sea, and many and
many an hour Floss and he spent at this window, watching their strange
fickle neighbour at his gambols. I do not know that they thought the sea
at all wonderful. I think they were too much accustomed to it for that,
but they certainly found it very _