"Ah! Grass-green," answered the Queen, smiling, "you have never seen the Temple I am speaking of, but it is better than ours, for it lasts—lasts for ever. Wind and rain, frost and snow, will spoil our Temple in time; but the Temple of the mortals lives on, and is never destroyed."
"Do tell us about it, dear Queen," said all the fairies; "we will try to understand."
"It is called by rather a long word," said the Queen, "its name is 'character'; that is what the mortals build, and the stones they use are more precious than our stones. I will tell you the names of some of them. First there is Truth, clear and bright like the diamonds; that must be the foundation; no good character can be made without Truth."
Then the sisters Crystal-clear smiled at each other and said, "We brought diamonds for truth".
"There are Honesty, Obedience, and many others," continued the Queen, "and Kindness, which is like the pure gold that was brought by Gold-wings, and makes a lovely setting for all the other stones."
The little fairies were glad to hear all this about the Temple which the mortals build, and Gold-wings said that she would like above everything to be able to help boys and girls to make their Temple beautiful, and the other fairies said the same; so the Queen said they all might try to help them, for each boy and girl must build a Temple, and the name of that Temple is Character.
II. OBEDIENCE.
2. The Two Voices.
There was once a little boy who said that whenever he was going to do anything wrong he heard two voices speaking to him. Do you know what he meant? Perhaps this story will help you.