hild, I do not know. That is Lady Why's business, who is mistress
of Mrs. How, and of you and of me; and, as I think, of all things that
you ever saw, or can see, or even dream. And what her reason for making
fire burn may be I cannot tell. But I believe on excellent grounds that
her reason is a very good one. If I dare to guess, I should say that one
reason, at least, why fire burns, is that you may take care not to play
with it, and so not only scorch your finger, but set your whole bed on
fire, and perhaps the house into the bargain, as you might be tempted to
do if putting your finger in the fire were as pleasant as putting sugar
in your mouth.

My dear child, if I could once get clearly into your head this difference
between Why and How, so that you should remember them steadily in after
life, I should have done you more good than if I had given you a thousand
pounds.

But now that we know that How and Why are two very different matters, and
must not be confounded with each other, let us look for Madam How, and
see her at work making this little glen; for, as I told you, it is not
half made yet. One thing we shall see at once, and see it more and more
clearly the older we grow; I mean her wonderful patience and diligence.
Madam How is never idle for an instant. Nothing is too great or too
small for her; and she keeps her work before her eye in the same moment,
and makes every separate bit of it help every other bit. She will keep
the sun and stars in order, while she looks after poor old Mrs. Daddy-
long-legs there and her eggs. She will spend thousands of years in
building up a mountain, and thousands of years in grinding it down again;
and then carefully polish every grain of sand which falls from that
mountain, and put it in its right place, where it will be wanted
thousands of years hence; and she will take just as much trouble about
that one grain of sand as she did about the whole mountain. She will
settle the exact place where Mrs. Daddy-long-legs shall lay her eggs, at
the very same time that she is settling what shall happen hundreds of
years hence in a stair millions of miles away. And I really believe that
Madam How knows her work so thoroughly, that the grain of sand which
sticks now to your shoe, and the weight of Mrs. Daddy-long-legs' eggs at
the bottom of her hole, will have an effect upon suns and stars ages
after you and I are dead and gone. Most patient indeed is Madam How. She
does n