“In short, it was as perfect a fancy as their love for the Tods, and their ideas of enjoyment could make it.  Nothing uncomfortable, nothing sad, was ever heard of in that cellar-home of their lost pets.  No quarrelling, no crying, no naughtiness, no unkindness, were supposed to trouble it.  Nothing was known of, there, but comfort and fun, and innocent blunders and jokes, which ended in fun and comfort again.  One thing, therefore, you see, was established as certain throughout the whole of the childish dream:- the departed favourites were all perfectly happy, as happy as it was possible to be; and they sent loving messages by Carlo to their old friends to say so, and to beg them not to be sorry for them, for, excepting that they would like some day to see those old friends again, they had nothing left to wish for in their new home:-

“And here the Tod story ends!” remarked Aunt Judy, in conclusion, “and I beg you to observe, No. 6, that, like all my stories, it ends happily.  The children had now got hold of an amusement which was safe from interference, and which lasted—­I am really afraid to say how long; for even after the fervour of their Tod love had abated, they found an endless source of invention and enjoyment in the cellar-home romance, and told each other anecdotes about it, from time to time, for more, I believe, than a year.”

When Aunt Judy paused here, as if expecting some remark, all that No. 6 could say, was:-

“Poor little things!”

“Ay, they were still that,” exclaimed Aunt Judy, “even in the midst of their new-found comfort.  Oh, No. 6, when one thinks of the strange way in which they first of all created a sorrow for themselves, and then devised for themselves its consolation, what a pity it seems that no good was got out of it!”

It was not likely that No. 6 should guess what the good was which Aunt Judy thought might have been got out of it; and so she said; whereupon Aunt Judy explained:-

“Did it not offer a quite natural opportunity,—­if any kind friend had but known of it,—­of speaking to those children of some of the sacred hopes of our Christian faith?—­of leading them, through kind talk about their own pretty fancies, to the subject of what really becomes of the dear friends who are taken away from us by death?

“Had I been their Aunt Judy,” she continued, “I should have thought it no cruelty, but kindness then, to have spoken to them about their lost mother, and told them that she was living now in a place where she was much, much happier, than she had ever been before, and where one of the very few things she had left to wish for, was, that one day she might see them again:  not in this world, where people are so often uncomfortable and sad, but in that happy one where there is no more sorrow, or crying, for God Himself wipes away the tears from all eyes.