The night -- mean the real night: not going by
Fairy clocks -- was wearing now; and in this stage of
the Carrier's thoughts, the moon burst out, and shone
brightly in the sky. Perhaps some calm and quiet
light had risen also, in his mind; and he could think
more soberly of what had happened.
Although the shadow of the Stranger fell at in-
tervals upon the glass -- always distinct, and big, and
thoroughly defined -- it never fell so darkly as at first.
Whenever it appeared, the Fairies uttered a general
cry of consternation, and plied their little arms and
legs, with inconceivable activity, to rub it out. And
whenever they got at Dot again, and showed her to
him once more, bright and beautiful, they cheered in
the most inspiring manner.
They never showed her, otherwise than beautiful
and bright, for they were Household Spirits to whom
falsehood is annihilation; and being so, what Dot
was there for them, but the one active, beaming,
pleasant little creature who had been the light and
sun of the Carrier's Home!
The Fairies were prodigiously excited when they
showed her, with the Baby, gossiping among a knot
of sage old matrons, and affecting to be wondrous
old and matronly herself, and leaning in a staid, de-
mure old way upon her husband's arm, attempting --
she! such a bud of a little woman -- to convey the
idea of having abjured the vanities of the world in
general, and of being the sort of person to whom it
was no novelty at all to be a mother; yet in the
same breath, they showed her, laughing at the Car-
rier for being awkward, and pulling up his shirt-
collar to make him smart, and mincing merrily about
that very room to teach him how to dance!
They turned, and stared immensely at him when
they showed her with the Blind Girl; for, though
she carried cheerfulness and animation with her
wheresoever she went, she bore those influences into
Caleb Plummer's home, heaped up and running over
The Blind Glrl's love for her, and trust in her, and
gratitude to her; her own good busy way of setting
Bertha's thanks aside; her dexterous little arts for
filling up each moment of the visit in doing some-
thing useful to the house, and really working hard
while feigning to make holiday; her bountiful pro-
vision of those standing delicacies, the Veal and Ham-
Pie and the bottles of Beer; her radiant little face
arriving at the door, and taking leave; the wonderful
expression in her whole self, from her neat foot to the
crown of her head, of being a part of the establish-
ment -- a something necessary to it, which it couldn't
be without; all this the Fairies revelled in, and loved
her for.
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