that they shall be," she thought, "for unhappiness and
discontent are among the foxes that spoil the vines. Stupid they shall
not be, while I can think of any force to stir their brains; they have
ordinary intelligence, all of them, and they shall learn to use it; dull
and sleepy children I can't abide. Fairly good they will be, if they are
busy and happy, and clever enough to see the folly of being anything
_but_ good! And so, month after month, for many years to come, I must be
helping Nancy and Kathleen to be the right sort of women, and wives, and
mothers, and Gilbert and Peter the proper kind of men, and husbands, and
fathers. Mother Carey's chickens must be able to show the good birds the
way home, as the Admiral said, and I should think they ought to be able
to set a few bad birds on the right track now and then!"

Well, all this would be a task to frighten and stagger many a person,
but it only kindled Mrs. Carey's love and courage to a white heat.

Do you remember where Kingsley's redoubtable Tom the Water Baby swims
past Shiny Wall, and reaches at last Peacepool? Peacepool, where the
good whales lie, waiting till Mother Carey shall send for them "to make
them out of old beasts into new"?

Tom swims up to the nearest whale and asks the way to Mother Carey.

"There she is in the middle," says the whale, though Tom sees nothing
but a glittering white peak like an iceberg. "That's Mother Carey,"
spouts the whale, "as you will find if you get to her. There she sits
making old beasts into new all the year round."

"How does she do that?" asks Tom.

"That's her concern, not mine!" the whale remarks discreetly.

And when Tom came nearer to the white glittering peak it took the form
of something like a lovely woman sitting on a white marble throne. And
from the foot of the throne, you remember, there swam away, out and out
into the sea, millions of new-born creatures of more shapes and colors
than man ever dreamed. And they were Mother Carey's children whom she
makes all day long.

Tom expected,--I am still telling you what happened to the famous water
baby,--Tom expected (like some grown people who ought to know better)
that he would find Mother Carey snipping, piecing, fitting, stitching,
cobbling, basting, filing, planing, hammering, turning, polishing,
moulding, measuring, chiselling, clipping, and so forth, as men do when
they go to work to make anything. But instead of that she sat quite
still with her c