'We knew very little of our neighbours, though we were not living in London, for we had only just come to St. Austin's. We had come there to spend the winter, as it was a mild and sheltered place, for I, then a girl of sixteen, had been in delicate health for some time.' ["You wouldn't believe it to see me now, would you?" said auntie, looking up at the children with a smile on her pretty young-looking face, but it was quite true, all the same.] 'I was my mother's only girl,' she went on, turning to her manuscript again, 'and she was a widow, so you can fancy what a pet I was. My big brothers were already all out in the world, in the navy, or the army, or at college, and my mother and I generally lived by ourselves in a country village much farther north than St. Austin's, and it was quite an event to us to leave our own home for several months and settle ourselves down in lodgings in a strange place. 'It seemed a very strange place to us, for we had not a single friend or acquaintance in it, and at home in our village we knew everybody, and everybody knew us, from the clergyman down to farmer Grinthwait's sheep-dog, and nothing happened without our knowing it. I suppose I was naturally of rather a sociable turn. I knew my mother used sometimes in fun to call me "a little gossip," and I really very much missed the sight of the accustomed friendly faces. We had been two days at St. Austin's, and I had spent most of those two days at the window, declaring to my mother that I should not feel so "strange" if I got to know some of our neighbours by sight, if nothing more. 'But hitherto I had hardly succeeded even in this. There did not seem to be any "neighbours" in the passers-by; they were just passers by who never seemed to pass by again, and without anything particular to distinguish them if they did. For St. Austin's was a busy little place, and our house was on the South Esplanade, the favourite "promenade" for the visitors, none of whom, gentlemen, ladies, or children had particularly attracted me till the morning I first caught sight of my funny little trots. 'I do think they would have attracted any one--any one certainly that loved children. I fancy I see them now, the two dears, coming slowly and solemnly along, each with a hand of their nurse, pulling _well_ back from her, as if the effort to keep up, even with her deliberate rate of walking, was almost too much for their fat little legs. They looked exactly the same size, and were alike in everything, from their dresses--which this first day were brown holland, very easy about the bodies, very short and bunchy about the skirts--to the two white woolly lambs, clasped manfully by each in his or her disengaged hand. Whether they were boys or girls I could not tell in the least, and to this day I do not know. '"_Aren't_ they darlings, mamma?" I said. '"They certainly are two funny little trots," she replied with a smile, using my own expression.