She was the tiredest fairy in and out of Christendom.
So June found Paradise Court.
She rapidly recovered, and looked about her.
"This is very, very ugly," said she to herself. "The fairies can't have been here for ages."
She touched the dingy window-pane with her wand. The glass divided and opened inwards, as if its two parts were separately hinged; but the atmosphere of the room was so old and very evil that June waved the wand and closed the pane in a hurry. Human eyes, examining the glass, ever so carefully, would have been positive it had never been parted. Brothers, how blind we are!
"Can the fairies ever have been there!" murmured June to herself.
She cleared the pane with wishes. It became so clear and burnished that the glass itself seemed invisible; and then, pressing forward eagerly, she looked inside the room, and examined mankind in one of its cages.
"It is a good thing they are shadows, and cannot know or feel very much. If they were as real as we are, that would be bad--bad! Even now I should like to turn them into sparrows; they would be far more fortunate so. Poor people! And there is a child!"
The sight of Sally Wilkins working constantly with ever-weary hands, made June so to tremble and shake with agitation, that she nearly dropped her wand and fell from the sill; but once more she clung with her infinitesimal hands to the narrow column of wooden framework, and, beginning now to feel indignant and angry, looked still more eagerly into the room.
The picture she saw was, alas! not uncommon. Ten thousand interiors of London life down in the grey parts where grinding Poverty is king, were more or less repetitions of the sight June gazed upon.