'But Elizabetha kept her promise, and to thus following her fairy friend's advice she owes it that she is now the object of universal esteem and affection, instead of being hated, despised, and feared as the owner of "a hasty tongue."'
Cecil stopped.
"Is that all?" said Carrots.
"Yes, that's all. Did you like it?"
"I did understand better about the fairy," Carrots replied. "I think she was a werry good fairy; don't you, Floss?"
"Very," said Floss. "I think," she went on, "whenever I am cross, I shall fancy my tongue is bewitched, just to see if it would be best to say the opposite of what I was going to say. Wouldn't it be fun?"
"Better than fun, perhaps, Miss Flossie," said nurse. "I think it would be a very good thing if big people, too, were sometimes to follow the fairy's rule."
"People as big as you, nursie?" asked Carrots.
"Oh yes, my dear," said nurse. "It's a lesson we're all slow to learn, and many haven't learnt it by the end of their threescore years and ten—'to be slow to anger,' and to keep our tongues from evil."
"That's out of the Bible, nursie, all of it," said Floss, as if not altogether sure that she approved of the quotation.