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 Carrots.
"Then it must be this way," said Floss, and on they trudged.
In a few minutes they came to large gates, on one side of which stood a pretty little house, but such a little house, hardly bigger than a cottage.
"Is that auntie's house?" said Carrots.
"I'm afraid it's too little to be auntie's house," said Floss. "I wish it was. I would much rather auntie lived in a cottage."