12 The Fairy Godmothers.

“¢ Seeing is believing ” —but you perceive, dear
readers, we are forced to believe in the wind though
we never fee him at all.

To return to Time who is travelling faft on
while I am rambling after the wind, he has puz-
zled the artifts a good deal I fhould fay, for with
all their fkill at reprefentation they have never hit
upon any better idea of him than an old Man with
wings. An old man with wings! Can you fancy
anything fo unnatural! One can quite underftand
beautiful young Angels with wings. Youth and
power and {wiftnefs belong to them. Alfo Fairies
with wings are quite comprehenfible creatures ;
for one fancies them fo light and airy and tranf-
parent, living upon honey dew and ambrofia, that
wings wherewith to fly feem their natural appen-
dages. But the decrepitude of old age and the
wings of youth and power are a ftrange mixture :
—a bald head, and a Fairy’s fwiftnefs !—how ridi-
culous it feems, and fo I think I may well fay
Time is a very odd fort of thing. |

Among thofe who have to deal with Time, few
are more puzzled how to manage him than we
ftory-tellers. In my firft chapter, for inftance, I
gave you a half-hour’s converfation among fome
Fairies, but I think you would be very angry with
me were I to give you as exactly every half-hour
that pafled over the heads of the little girls with
Fairy Godmothers, till they grew up. How you
would fcold, dear little readers, if I were to enter
into a particular defcription of each child’s Nurfe,