admired her.

It is a very pleasant thing to be admired, both for children and grown
up people. "The love of approbation," as it is called, i.e. the wish
to be approved of and admired is a feeling which is very strong in
most people; not in quite all, perhaps, but in _most_ people
certainly. But like all other powers of the mind considered apart from
the influence of the heart and conscience, it is capable of being used
to a very bad or a very good purpose. Thus you may remember what our
Saviour says of the Pharisees who stood praying at the corners of the
streets that they might be seen of men: Verily, they had their
reward--viz: that men admired them: whereas those who do good deeds
and pray privately, i.e. unseen and unadmired by men, should verily
have their reward in that day when God who seeth in secret himself
shall reward them openly.

Here you see is the same strong feeling,--love of approbation,
exercised in a wrong and a right direction. The Pharisees wish for the
approbation of men, good people wish for the approbation of God.

Now, love of approbation exists about much smaller matters than I have
just been mentioning. But I would warn my young readers, that, to be
always thinking, and bothering yourselves as to what other people are
thinking about you, is one of the most uncomfortable and injurious
habits a person can get into. It makes them so selfish and
egotistical. And here was one of Aurora's dangers. Because she knew
she was pretty, she was always wondering what other people were
thinking about her, a habit which so far from contributing to what the
good Fairy had wished, viz. her happiness, was constantly spoiling her
comfort from hour to hour. And here, at ten years old, was this little
lady swinging languidly and idly on the rocking chair, wishing it was
six o'clock, instead of enjoying, as she might so well have done, that
small portion of time, time present, which is, as I told you before,
the only bit of him we can ever lay hold of, as it were. Of time
present, just then, she thought nothing. She would have said, (had she
been asked), that the old gentleman moved very slowly in spite of his
wings, for her eye was fixed on that delightful time future, six
o'clock. Well! at last the clock struck, and Aurora sprang from her
chair,--her whole face altered in a moment. "Now, Nurse, I may dress,
may I not?" she exclaimed, radiant with animation, and all the languor
and dreaminess gone over like a c