In any case it must
have been a strong call that took her: for there are no fairies in
London. I regret that my researches do not allow me to tell you how
the Small People at home took her departure; but we will suppose that
it grieved them deeply. Nor can I say precisely how the girl fared
for many years. I think her fortune contained both joy and sorrow
for a while; and I suspect that many passages of her life would be
sadly out of place in this story, even if they could be hunted out.
Indeed, fairy-tales have to omit so much nowadays, and therefore seem
so antiquated, that one marvels how they could ever have been in
fashion.
But you may take it as sure that in the end this girl met with more
sorrow than joy; for when next she comes into sight it is in London
streets and she is in rags. Moreover, though she wears a flush on
her cheeks, above the wrinkles it does not come of health or high
spirits, but perhaps from the fact that in the twenty years' interval
she has seen millions of men and women, but not one single fairy.
In those latter days I met her many times. She passed under your
windows shortly before dawn on the night that you gave your dance,
early in the season. You saw her, I think?--a woman who staggered a
little, and had some words with the policeman at the corner: but,
after all, a staggering woman in London is no such memorable sight.
All day long she was seeking work, work, work; and after dark she
sought forgetfulness.
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