their natural appendages. But the decrepitude of old age and the wings
of youth and power are a strange mixture:--a bald head, and a Fairy's
swiftness!--how ridiculous it seems, and so I think I may well say
Time is a very odd sort of thing.

Among those who have to deal with Time, few are more puzzled how to
manage him than we story-tellers. In my first chapter, for instance, I
gave you a half-hour's conversation among some Fairies, but I think
you would be very angry with me were I to give you as exactly every
half-hour that passed over the heads of the little girls with Fairy
Godmothers, till they grew up. How you would scold, dear little
readers, if I were to enter into a particular description of each
child's Nurse, and tell whether Miss Aurora, Miss Julia, Miss
Hermione, &c. &c. &c. were brought up on baked flour, groat-gruel,
rusks, tops and bottoms, or revalenta food! Whether they took more
castor-oil, or rhubarb and magnesia; whether they squalled on those
occasions or were very good. When they cut their teeth and how,
together with all the &c. and ups and downs of Nursery life which
large families, such as you and I belong to, go through daily.

Well then, suppose I altogether pass over a period of ten years, and
enter into no minute particulars respecting that portion of Time. You
must know that the Fairies had agreed that all the children should
have the same (and rather a large) amount of intellect, or what you
would call cleverness: that is to say, they were all equally capable
of learning anything they chose to learn: also they had all fair
health, plenty to eat and drink, and all the so called "necessary"
comforts of life.

Now then to our story.