he snow--for she was very very
old--in fact, as old as anything which you are likely to come across,
except the difference between right and wrong.

And, when she saw Tom, she looked at him very kindly.

"What do you want, my little man? It is long since I have seen a
water-baby here."

Tom told her his errand, and asked the way to the Other-end-of-Nowhere.

"You ought to know yourself, for you have been there already."

"Have I, ma'am? I'm sure I forget all about it."

"Then look at me."

And, as Tom looked into her great blue eyes, he recollected the way
perfectly.

Now, was not that strange?

"Thank you, ma'am," said Tom. "Then I won't trouble your ladyship any
more; I hear you are very busy."

"I am never more busy than I am now," she said, without stirring a
finger.

"I heard, ma'am, that you were always making new beasts out of old."

"So people fancy. But I am not going to trouble myself to make things,
my little dear. I sit here and make them make themselves."

"You are a clever fairy, indeed," thought Tom. And he was quite right.

That is a grand trick of good old Mother Carey's, and a grand answer,
which she has had occasion to make several times to impertinent people.

There was once, for instance, a fairy who was so clever that she found
out how to make butterflies. I don't mean sham ones; no: but real live
ones, which would fly, and eat, and lay eggs, and do everything that
they ought; and she was so proud of her skill that she went flying
straight off to the North Pole, to boast to Mother Carey how she could
make butterflies.

But Mother Carey laughed.

"Know, silly child," she said, "that any one can make things, if they
will take time and trouble enough: but it is not every one who, like me,
can make things make themselves."

But people do not yet believe that Mother Carey is as clever as all that
comes to; and they will not till they, too, go the journey to the
Other-end-of-Nowhere.

"And now, my pretty little man," said Mother Carey, "you are sure you
know the way to the Other-end-of-Nowhere?"

Tom thought; and behold, he had forgotten it utterly.

"That is because you took your eyes off me."

Tom looked at her again, and recollected; and then looked away, and
forgot in an instant.

"But what am I to do, ma'am? For I can't keep looking at you when I am
somewhere else."

"You must do without me, as most people have to do, for nine hundred and
ninety-nine thousandths of th