The night--I 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 intervals 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,
demure 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 Carrier 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.
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