So this was only a joke of Ambrosia’s.

Now to go on and finish my story.  It was ten years more before the Fairies revisited their Godchildren in the lower world, and this time they were to decide who had given the best Fairy gift.

And I dare say you expect me to give you as long an account of their visits to the young ladies of twenty, as I did of their peeps at the little girls of ten.  But I really do not think it worth while.  I would do so indeed in a minute if there were anything quite fresh and new to describe.  But on the faith of a story-teller I assure you, it would be “the old story over again,” only on an enlarged scale.

Did you ever look at any interesting object first with your natural eyes, and then through a microscope or magnifying glass?  If so, you will remember that through the magnifying glass you saw the same thing again, only much bigger.

In the same manner the ten years acted as a sort of magnifying glass over Aurora, Julia, and Hermione.  Everything was the same, but increased in size and made clearer and plainer.

Aurora’s triumphant joy as she entered the ball-room as a beauty, was much greater certainly than her pleasure at her Mamma’s dinner party.  But the weariness and anxiety afterwards were increased also.  She was still getting away from our friend Time present, and forecasting into some future delight.  “The good time coming, Boys,” was her, as well as many other people’s bugbear.  She never could feel that (with God’s blessing) the good time is always come.

The only time she ever thoroughly enjoyed was the moment of being excessively admired.  But judge for yourselves how long that can last.  Could you sit and look at a pretty picture for an hour together?  No, I know you could not.  You cannot think how short a time it takes to say “Dear me, what a beautiful girl!” and then, perhaps, up comes somebody who addresses the admiring gazer on the subject of Lord John Russel’s last speech, and the “beautiful girl,” so all important in her own eyes, is as entirely forgotten as if she had never been seen.  And then, to let you into another secret, Aurora was by no means a very entertaining companion:  nobody can be, with their heads full of themselves:  and she had often the mortification, even in that scene of her triumph, a ball-room, of feeing her admirers drop off, to amuse themselves with other people; less handsome perhaps, but more interesting than herself.

And so the Fairies, having accompanied her through a day of Triumphs, mixed with mortifications, followed by languors, unsettled by hopes of future joy, clouded with anxieties that all but spoilt those hopes:—­came one and all to the conclusion that Aurora could not be considered as a model of human happiness.