o would know how to enjoy and
employ them."

"I wonder," suggested a very little Fairy, scarcely grown to her full
size, "why you don't just give your Godchildren moderate good health,
and enough money to make them quite comfortable without puzzling
them?"

"You are a complete Solomon," observed Euphrosyne, "but you must know,
my dear, that moderate good health and a mere comfortable competency
would hardly be considered Fairy gifts by our friends in the lower
world. These things are, as it were, the absolute _necessities_ of a
happy life; they are the beef and mutton (to borrow an earthly simile)
of the entertainment. Fairy gifts form the somewhat unnecessary (and
questionably wholesome) second course, the sweets, the bonbons, the
luscious luxuries of the repast.

"Very few, by comparison, get them. Very few infants you know have
Fairy Godmothers, but we make it a rule that those who have, shall
always be distinguished from the crowd. Other-wise our power would not
be believed in. No, my little Aglaia, all our Godchildren start from
the point you spoke of--'caeteris paribus,' as those dingy black
lawyers say--all other things being equal--it is a question now of
bestowing extra superfine Fairy gifts."

Aglaia tittered--"I know Sister Euphrosyne is thinking of the
christening suppers, and the whipped creams, and the syllabubs!" and
away she tripped to the other end of the bay, lest the older Fairies
should scold her for impertinence.

"Certainly," pursued Euphrosyne, "I have a great contempt for riches
myself. Bah! the idea of all the troublesome as well as wicked things
men do in order that they may be able to keep a lumbering thing they
call a carriage, to drive them round a dirty town. Just think of that
one thing alone! It is hardly credible." And Euphrosyne laid her head
by the side of Leila's, and looked up into the deep blue sky.

"Remember," said Ambrosia, from behind, "it is a choice with poor
mortals between heavy foot-walking, and the lumbering vehicles you
talk of. Perhaps when their legs ache terribly, the carriages are not
such bad things. We can hardly judge dispassionately in such a matter,
we who can float and fly!" and the delicate Ambrosia, springing up,
floated softly round the bay, and then returned smiling to her
companions. "It made me almost ill to think of aching legs," observed
she, "how I do pity the mortal race!"

"How pretty you looked as the sun shone golden upon your white robe,"