"If we were naughty, I meant," said Molly. "Oh, Sylvia, you explain—I always say things the wrong way."
"It was I that said you looked like a fairy godmother," said Sylvia, blushing furiously, "and that put it into Molly's head about the frogs and mice."
"But the only fairy godmother I remember that did these wonderful things turned mice into horses to please her god-daughter. Have you not got hold of the wrong end of the story, Molly?" said grandmother.
"The wrong end and beginning and middle too, I should say," observed Ralph.
"Yes, grandmother dear, I always do," said Molly, complacently. "I never remember stories or anything the right way, my head is so funnily made."
"When you can't find your gloves, because you didn't put them away carefully, is it the fault of the shape of the chest of drawers?" inquired grandmother quietly.
"Yes, I suppose so,—at least, no, I mean, of course it isn't," replied Molly, taking heed to her words half-way through, when she saw that they were all laughing at her.
Grandmother smiled, but said no more.
"What a wool-gathering little brain it is," she said to herself.
When she smiled, all the children agreed together afterwards, she looked more like a fairy godmother than ever. She was really a very pretty old lady. Never very tall, with age she had grown smaller, though still upright as a dart; the "November roses" in her cheeks were of their kind as sweet as the June ones that nestled there long ago—ah! so long ago now; and the look in her eyes had a tenderness and depth which can only come from a life of unselfishness, of joy and much sorrow too—a life whose lessons have been well and dutifully learnt, and of which none has been more thoroughly taken home than that of gentle judgment of, and much patience with, others.