Scene VIII.
Tiny remembers now that the fairy had said her wings would last only till sunset, so she thinks it is time to fly towards home; for the sun is getting low already. You see, they are fairy wings, so she can fly just as fast as she pleases; and in a few minutes she alights in the wood, near the spot she had started from.
The first thing she sees, close to her in the long grass, is a handsome grasshopper. “How d’ye do, dear?” chirps he. “I am very glad to see you, for I am bored to death with the conversation of this stupid mole.” As he speaks, he points out to Tiny the mole’s nose just peeping out of a molehill. “You see,” he continues, “instead of being like me, instead of having bright sparkling eyes, and wearing a splendid green coat, all over gold, he is a very poor creature, with scarcely any eyes at all; and he spends his time almost always under ground, so of course he knows nothing, and is very dull company.” “What good do you do, with your green coat and gilding?” replies the mole. “You do nothing but chirp, while I devour the vermin that would eat up the roots of the corn. So that, although buried, I am useful to others.”
“Certainly the mole has the best of the argument there,” thinks Tiny. At that moment the sun goes down: Tiny’s wings drop off on to the ground, and at once shrivel up and disappear; she recovers, too, her natural size. Then she sees her mother’s cottage through the trees, and a candle just lighted is burning in the window.
As she walks towards it, she talks to herself as if she were somebody else. “Now, Miss Tiny,” she begins, and she touches her own breast with the point of her finger as she speaks,—“now, Miss Tiny, let us think a little. The good fairy told you you should learn a lesson and grow wise. Let us see what you have learnt. All these creatures are more or less conceited, and, just because they are so, they are always quarrelling; and how disagreeable and ridiculous they make themselves, to be sure! I wonder if Miss Tiny is as disagreeable and absurd as they are? If she is, she won’t be so any more. From this day, she will always try to see whatever there is that’s good and nice and pretty in everybody else, and make the most of it.”
Tiny keeps to her resolution; the consequence is, that everybody loves her, and she is happier than ever she has been before.
NURSERY RHYME.
There was an old woman called Nothing-at-all,