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.”