He had been in some ways a good deal of a baby for his age, there is no doubt. He had a queer, baby-like way of not seeming to take in quickly what was said to him, and staring up in your face with his great oxen-like eyes, that did a little excuse Maurice's way of laughing at him and telling him he was "half-witted." But no one that really looked at those honest, sensible, tender eyes could for an instant have thought there was any "want" in their owner. It was all _there_--the root of all goodness, cleverness, and manliness--just as in the acorn there is the oak; but of course it had a great deal of _growing_ before it, and, more than mere growing, it would need all the care and watchful tenderness and wise directing that could be given it, just as the acorn needs all the rain and sunshine and good nourishing soil it can get, to become a fine oak, straight and strong and beautiful. For what do I mean by "it," children? I mean the "own self" of Carrots, the wonderful "something" in the little childish frame which the wisest of all the wise men of either long ago or now-a-days have never yet been able to describe--the "soul," children, which is in you all, which may grow into so beautiful, so lovely and perfect a thing; which may, alas! be twisted and stunted and starved out of all likeness to the "image" in which it was created. Do you understand a little why it seems sometimes such a very, very solemn thing to have the charge of children? When one thinks what they _should_ be, and again when one thinks what they _may_ be, is it not a solemn, almost too solemn a thought? Only we, who feel this so deeply, take heart when we remember that the Great Gardener who never makes mistakes has promised to help us; even out of _our_ mistakes to bring good. As I have said, the affair of the lost half-sovereign did not leave any lastingly painful impression on Carrots, but for some days he seemed unusually quiet and pale and a little sad. He had caught cold, too, with falling asleep on the dressing-room floor, nurse said, for the weather was still exceedingly chilly, though the spring was coming on. So altogether he was rather a miserable looking little Carrots. He kept out of the way and did not complain, but "mamma" and nurse and Floss did not need complaints to make them see that their little man was not quite himself, and they were extra kind to him.