“It’s too late to talk about that now, my dear,” said her godmother (a fairy godmother, too!); “the baby is a very fine boy, and if you will let me know when the christening-day is fixed, I will come and give him a present. I can’t be godmother, though; I’m too old, and you’ve talked about responsibilities till I’m quite alarmed.” With which the old lady kissed her goddaughter, and nearly put out the baby’s eye with the point of her peaked hat, after which she mounted her broomstick and rode away.
“A very fine boy,” continued the young mother. “Ah! that’s just where it is; if it had only been a girl I shouldn’t have felt so much afraid. Girls are easily managed. They have got consciences, and they mend their own clothes. You can make them work, and they can amuse themselves when they’re not working. Now with boys it is quite different. And yet I shouldn’t wonder if I have a large family of boys, just because I feel it to be such a responsibility.”
She was quite right. Years went by; one baby after another was added to the family, and they were all boys. “Twenty feet that want socks,” sighed the good woman, “and not a hand that can knit or darn!”
But we must go back to the first christening. The godmother arrived, dressed in plum-colored satin, with a small brown-paper parcel in her hand.
“Fortunatus’s purse!” whispered one of the guests, nudging his neighbor with his elbow. “The dear child will always be welcome in my poor establishment,” he added aloud to the mother.
“A mere trifle, my love,” said the fairy godmother, laying the brown-paper parcel beside her on the table and nodding kindly to her goddaughter.
“That means a mug,” said one of the godfathers, decidedly. “Rather shabby! I’ve gone as far as a knife, fork, and spoon myself.”
“Doubtless ’tis of the more precious metal,” said Dr. Dixon Airey, the schoolmaster (and this was his way of saying that it was a gold mug), “and not improbably studded with the glittering diamond. Let us not be precipitate in our conclusions.”
At this moment the fairy spoke again. “My dear goddaughter,” she began, laying her hand upon the parcel, “I have too often had reason to observe that the gift of beauty is far from invariably proving a benefit to its possessor.” (“I told you it was a purse,” muttered the guest.) “Riches,” continued the fairy, “are hardly a less doubtful boon; and the youth who is born to almost unlimited wealth is not always slow to become a bankrupt. Indeed, I fear that the experience of many centuries has almost convinced us poor fairies that extraordinary gifts are not necessarily blessings. This trifle,” she continued, beginning to untie the string of the parcel, “is a very common gift to come from my hands, but I trust it will prove useful.”
“There!” cried the godfather, “didn’t I say it was a mug? Common? Why there’s nothing so universal except, indeed, the knife, fork, and spoon.”