these years we had gone on quietly living at Windy Gap, without ever
going away. Going away never came into my head, and if dear grandmamma
sometimes wished for a little change--and, indeed, I am sure she must
have done--she never spoke of it to me. Now and then I used to hear
other children, for there were a few families living near us, whose
little boys and girls I very occasionally played with, speak of going to
the sea-side in the summer, or to stay with uncles and aunts or other
relations in London in the winter, to see the pantomimes and the shops.
But it never struck me that anything of that sort could come in my way,
not more than it ever entered my imagination that I could become a
princess or a gipsy or anything equally impossible.

Happy children are made like that, I think, and a very good thing it is
for them. And I was a very happy child.

We had our troubles, troubles that even had she wished, grandmamma could
not have kept from me. And I do not think she did wish it. She knew that
though the _background_ of a child's life should be contented and happy,
it would not be true teaching or true living to let it believe any life
can be without troubles.

One trouble was a bad illness I had when I was six--though this was
really more of a trouble to granny and Kezia than to me. For I did not
suffer much pain. Sometimes the illnesses that frighten children's
friends the most do not hurt the little people themselves as much as
less serious things.

This illness came from a bad cold, and it _might_ have left me delicate
for always, though happily it didn't. But it made granny anxious, and
after I got better it was a long time before she could feel easy-minded
about letting me go out without being tremendously wrapped up, and
making sure which way the wind was, and a lot of things like that, which
are rather teasing.

I might not have given in as well as I did had it not happened that the
winter which came after my illness was a terribly severe one, and my own
sense--for even between six and seven children _can_ have some common
sense--told me that nothing would be easier than to get a cough again if
I didn't take care. So on the whole I was pretty good.

But those months of anxiety and the great cold were very trying for
grandmamma. Her hair got quite, _quite_ white during them.

These severe winters do not come often at Middlemoor; not very often, at
least. We had two of them during the time we lived there