Poppypink laughed with joy. "I am so glad, so very glad!" she said. "I had forgotten all about my wings."
Lower she flew to help the little ones who cried about the gutters. She led the starving and shelterless to comfort, the toddlers to safety; she brought a flower to the hopeless, ease to sick ones racked with pain; at night she flew with glittering dreams from room to room, so that even sad-eyed feeble babies laughed for pleasure in their sleep. Day after day, night after night she toiled, for weeks and months and years. There was so much to do! The time passed like a moment. So busy was she that she had forgotten all about her wings.
One day there came a flash of colour in the air beside her, and Wonderwings and all the older fairies stood around her. "Dear Poppypink," cried one, "how your wings have grown! And how beautiful they are! They are so tall that they reach above your head and almost to the ground, and they glow with so many colours that it seems as if a million jewels had been flung upon them and had stuck, growing into a million flashing stars that make a million little rainbows with every sway and movement of your body."
Poppypink laughed with joy. "I am so glad, so very glad!" she said. "I had forgotten all about my wings."
"Yet they have grown with use," said Wonderwings; "and for every deed of kindness done a star has sprung, to shine in beauty there for evermore."
