wrong, and had never been heard
even to rebuke her in the mildest way since he found her; and when Mrs.
Shelley remonstrated with him, as she sometimes did, he excused himself
by saying she was not his own child, so he did not feel the same
responsibility about her.

Luckily for Fairy, Mrs. Shelley did not humour her and look upon her
with the same excessive admiration the shepherd and the boys did; they
regarded her as a superior being, and thought her way of queening it
over them perfectly right and natural. Mrs. Shelley loved the child she
had been a mother to tenderly, and was proud of her beauty and
cleverness, and yet, while she constantly impressed on her boys that
Fairy was a lady by birth and therefore in a very different position to
any of them, and, moreover, might any day be claimed by her own parents
and taken into her own sphere, she insisted on the same obedience from
her as she expected from her own children.

"Jack had far better become a man learned in sheep than in birds, seeing
he is to be a shepherd. I can't see the use of all the learning Jack
gets hold of; it can't do him any good," said the shepherd.

"Oh! you dear, good old shepherd, I believe you think the world was made
for sheep, and shepherds the only useful people in it," exclaimed Fairy.

"I think if Jack learns his business and his Bible and Prayer-book, he
will do very well without any other learning. It is quite right and
proper that my little Fairy should learn to play the spinnet and to
speak French, which nobody here understands, and many other things of
which I don't even know the names, but I don't think that kind of
knowledge will make Jack a good shepherd or a good Christian, and that
is all he is required to be," said John Shelley, stroking Fairy's
golden head fondly as he spoke.

"But if he could be a very clever man some day and perhaps learn a
profession, you would think that better than being a good shepherd,
would you not?" said Fairy, who was in Jack's confidence, and knew that
as he watched the sheep on the downs he dreamt dreams of this kind.

"No, Fairy, no; if God had meant Jack to be a gentleman he would not
have given him a shepherd for his father. His duty is to labour hard to
get his own living in that state of life in which it has pleased God to
call him, as the Catechism says."

"But, John, why did God let me be brought up by a shepherd, then?" asked
Fairy. "You see He does not always mean people to remain